the first 15 lives of harry august review

One downside to the club is that they are fiercely against one of their own using their knowledge to change world events. Once you are in the club, you can take advantage of the passing of good advice from one member to the next (invest in this stock, it’ll be huge when you hit twenty) where life spans overlap. I’ll concede to say that one interesting concept in the novel is the Chronus Club, which is comprised of other Kalachakras like Harry. Having Harry’s friends/families/acquaintances live different lives each time he lives again makes my brain hurt. So, when he makes changes and the day starts over, they are doing exactly what they did the day before. I just watched Edge of Tomorrow (which was great) and all of the people around the MC’s life are living the exact same way, down to what they say, every day. How is it possible that she lives a solitary life span if there are two alternatives presented right there? Great – they are rare, but is the act of remembering what makes them different? Because everyone lives multiple lives in this world – how could they not? Harry is married in one life and then not married to that woman in the next. “Kalachakra generally occur at a rate of one in every half million of the population.” I don’t know if I am just not grasping the concept or if I missed something huge, but isn’t everyone living multiple lives here?

Harry’s very nature raised a big question for me that I couldn’t quite shrug away. Unsurprisingly, the story remains pretty lackluster until a girl comes to him near the end of his twelfth life and tells him that the world is going to fall apart and he needs to ferret out who’s causing the end. I would detest being a Kalachakra – how mundane the first 18 years of your life would be, having the mind of an adult in a child’s body. Our titular character Harry is a Kalachakra, an individual who can be infinitely be reborn and retains all of his memories from each of his lives.

I wanted more substance when there was already a whole lot.

By 30 percent in though, I realized that the book just wasn’t the one for me. The writing was solid, the cover teased an interesting plot and the author crafted a really inventive concept. When I started The First Fifteen Lives of Harry Augustby Claire North (April 8, 2014//Redhook) I thought I had a winner.

I received a copy of this book for free from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The first 15 lives of harry august review