The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North

I rated this book 4/10

No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.

Until now.

As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. ‘I nearly missed you, Doctor August,’ she says. ‘I need to send a message.’

At last! After five months I have finally finished this book! I've finished so many other books in between it in that time, but I had to keep putting Harry August down.

Don't get me wrong, the concept is fascinating - but I just found myself analysing all of the flaws in North's plan every time I settled down to read it.

Surely - if a group of people lived their lives over and over throughout the course of time, and changed their actions each time they lived, ALL events throughout history and the future would be changed each time they died and were re-born. And so these people could not put bets on race winners (for example) knowing the outcome in advance, because everything has a knock on effect and everything would be changed each time round. The politicians, presidents, political leaders would never be the same people; the wars would never have the same outcome.

And what if these people had children?

And why would these people not want to use their knowledge to gain some kind of power, considering they were essentially hundreds of years old and infinitely more wise?

I was trying to figure out how all of this could work; maybe I missed something. But it completely wrecked my head.

And so I am over the moon that I have finished it - some of it was alright and some of it a bit dull. Harry himself wasn't that interesting, his antagonist being a little more so. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this to anyone - but if somebody asked me about it I would probably tell them that it might be worth a read.