The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

405 pages

English language

Published Dec. 31, 2013 by Orbit.

ISBN:
978-0-356-50258-8
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
894832998

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (76 reviews)

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. 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.' This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

6 editions

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"The world is ending, as it always must. But the end of the world is getting faster."

My review: wow!

I go through peaks and valleys with my books. I will have a stretch of excellent novels and then hit a rough patch where nothing appeals to me. I had just come off abandoning a multi book series even though the first novel was appealing on every level and shrugged my shoulders and thought "why not" to The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

Like a stray cat that showed up on your doorstep one day I don't know what lead me to Harry August. One day my Kindle was empty, and the next it was there. It didn't go through the proper process of being added to my To Read list, it jumped the queue and waited patiently for me. I want to credit r/fantasy but …

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August posits a strange version of mingled mortality and immortality, possibly repetitive, but capable of ending without warning or recourse.

I like the way the MC changes throughout the narrative. He's in very different mental states at different points in time, and the text does just enough to convey that without having the narrative voice shift in potentially jarring ways. Because it's told from one very specific point in his timeline, it grants a clarity of hindsight to experiences which range from euphoric to literally torturous. It also means that there's a bluntness to his descriptions, as the MC is remembering terror or joy, sometimes with little transition between the two. Chapters which are right next to each other may have very different moods in their detail, but his mood mostly changes between reflective and purposeful. The MC doesn't shy away from bloody descriptions, …

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is an entertaining time-travel meets Dr. Faustus suspense novel. It seems that time-travel novels about characters who either live their lives backward (e.g. Martin Amis' Time's Arrow ) or live them over and over again have a literary step-up on the more usual get in the machine and see the Morlocks story. I think this is because it is easier to draw parallels to our own short lives, and so enable finer literature in the former. As good as this novel is, these parallels are mostly hinted at, and the presence of the usually unmentioned time-travel paradoxes is a mild distraction.
Still, I recommend it, and it is better than many others in this sub-genre of science fiction.
Paradoxes that come to mind are: If your life is lived over and over again, is there a first time? What is special about the …

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This was a very impressive and thought-provoking story, expertly plotted, with a twisted construction that fits its subject and weaves its threads together satisfyingly. Harry’s a great character, and raises intriguing arguments about philosophy, cosmology, and immortality. By the time the story’s ending became inevitable, it was so riveting and cathartic to experience the details that it never felt predictable.

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Mixed feelings, well written fascinating to think of all the possibilities. The question of would I interfere absolutely.
But I hated the way the story jumped around, and I hated all the questions unanswered especially, why.
Why did he build it what did he really want, as the explanation in the book codswallop.

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I'm of two-minds about this book. I mean, it's time travel / reincarnation. I like that. Part spy thriller, part historical fiction, part mystery. All sci-fi. But the pace! Way too little happens for a book that spans lifetimes. If you go in with managed expectations, you should enjoy the ride.

But an interesting premise and I loved the ending. The ending saved it for me. Three stars.

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Let me start by saying: I really wanted to like this book. The author writes well, the premise is intriguing, and I'm a sucker for books that spiral in time. That said, either I'm stupid (distinct possibility) or it was unnecessarily complicated.

It started and ended strong, but in the middle, I became impatient with the details - not all were relevant to advance the plot or deepen the characters, and I found myself frustrated trying to keep track of everything - only to realize it didn't really matter in the overall arc of the story. I also think that despite the complexity (or maybe because of it?) the author missed opportunities to tie some of the loose threads back into the story in a way that would've made it even more clever (and more poignant).

Lots of people clearly like it, so maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. My …

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Es un libro distinto, con una historia interesante y original, pero que al principio puede hacerse pesada, porque tarda demasiado en dejar la presentación y comenzar el conflicto.
Esa lentitud se agrava por el hecho de mezclar dos "líneas temporales", una lineal relacionada con la historia, y otra a base de flashbacks relacionados con lo que pasa en la lineal.

Una vez acabada la presentación la cosa gana enteros, mejorando mucho el ritmo y presentando las ideas más entretenidas de toda la novela.

Review of 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

DNF at 62%

I'm done with this book. I cannot explain why I always feel so bogged down trudging through Russia unexpectedly, though I am aware of the similarity of, you know, every other invasion of Russia ever.

This isn't war, precisely, but I just stopped caring once it stopped being as much of a mystery and started being a story about making contacts through my least favorite part of Russian history. Maybe this turns out phenomenally, but I can't bear picking up the book and reading about half a page and then not being able to continue after that. I promised myself that this year it was okay to say I was not going to finish stuff. I intend to hold myself to that promise.

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Subjects

  • Reincarnation
  • Fiction
  • Time travel
  • End of the world