The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is that rare book that I finished and immediately handed to Kevin so he could read it. It's a fun twist on the time travel narrative and pokes at some interesting questions about the end of the world and our duty to future generations.

Harry August, and others like him, keeps reliving his life over and over. When he dies, he goes back to the beginning to be born again. But this isn't a Billy Pilgrim situation where he's just come unstuck from time. While the circumstances of his birth and early life are always the same, Harry retains all knowledge from his previous lives. This initially leads to some time in mental institutions and various houses of various gods as he tries to figure out what's happening. But before long he's gaming the system to make his life easier.

The story is very jumbled, at least in the beginning. His first several lives are relayed in bits and pieces, grouped thematically more than chronologically. I thought it was effective, though it did make it somewhat difficult to keep everything straight. And when the main plot finally arrives and the book proceeds linearly, I found myself a little bored by the proceeding. Though that could also have been the setting.

Thankfully, things picked back up again before too long, leading to a very exciting ending. Even though it all got bogged down in the middle, I ended up enjoying this story a lot. It was different from the sorts of things I usually read, which helped hold my interest, since the characters tended towards the self-centered side of things.

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