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bookswithjk's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
On the one hand, this book reads as a tale of love, loss and sorrow. It is a story about a man incapable of “dying” forced to relive his entire life over and over again, able to remember everything from each previous incarnation, mirrors by a similar man with higher ambition. The first half crawls at a glacial pace, with Harry introduced to us through his different lives in what is at times a tedious manner. However, once we hit halfway, the story immediately picks up.
Content Warnings
Minor: Torture, Child death, Murder, and Rape
keegan_leech's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
A fast-paced and brilliant time travel mystery. The plot is at times contemplative and thought-provoking, at others a tense thriller. It's certainly darker than I had expected. The conceit of the novel and first few chapters didn't prepare me for the sometimes extremely heavy subject matter. This does balance out a plot that might otherwise seem campy and melodramatic, but if one of those elements would put you off then this may not be the book for you. However, if you like the sound of the book, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.
The conceit of the novel (a story told by a man reliving his life over and over again) was, in my experience, a wonderful bait and switch. The strange metaphysical questions drew me in so quickly and so easily that when the plot began to really take off I hadn't realised just how deeply invested I was. And by the end, the things that had drawn me in seemed absolutely unimportant in comparison to reaching the brilliant final moments. It's a very well-constructed story from start to finish. (As an aside, very few or perhaps none of the books I've read have created so much anticipation with the title alone).
If you liked Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, or The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, then you'll certainly love The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. If for some reason those just didn't land with you, then this might be worth a try, but they have a very similar style and appeal.
The conceit of the novel (a story told by a man reliving his life over and over again) was, in my experience, a wonderful bait and switch. The strange metaphysical questions drew me in so quickly and so easily that when the plot began to really take off I hadn't realised just how deeply invested I was. And by the end, the things that had drawn me in seemed absolutely unimportant in comparison to reaching the brilliant final moments. It's a very well-constructed story from start to finish. (As an aside, very few or perhaps none of the books I've read have created so much anticipation with the title alone).
If you liked Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, or The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, then you'll certainly love The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. If for some reason those just didn't land with you, then this might be worth a try, but they have a very similar style and appeal.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Death, Terminal illness, Mental illness, and Torture
Moderate: Rape and Drug use
Minor: Child death and Animal death
squid0110's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Torture, and Murder
Moderate: Addiction, Child death, and Drug use
Minor: Forced institutionalization
bertramshotel's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture, Suicide, Child abuse, Child death, and Violence
candace's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Forced institutionalization, and Torture
Moderate: Medical content, Murder, Rape, and Sexual assault
booksthatburn's review against another edition
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
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, but he speaks about terror and torture without asking the reader to experience it with him.
One thing I think it gets right is that different kalachakra (a word which feels uncomfortable and stinks of cultural appropriation, though I hope I’m wrong) or ouroborans have very different reactions their status. Some want to explore the world, some embrace how full of war the 20th century is and get as much of it as they can, some stay home and keep things going for the future ouroborans to have a better start. It also embraces the idea that the MC, living so many lives in an era when travel is suddenly easier than in prior centuries, would do a great deal of travel across his lives. The story stays pretty focused in Europe, Russia, and the USA, but has snippets of time spent other regions of the world in a way that attempts to demonstrate the breadth of his travel without making the main story drag. It's also repeatedly concerned with ableism and how the mentally ill are treated. Since the MC and his friends have a perspective which is frequently mistaken for mental illness, I'm glad it doesn't shy away from the potential impact of that.
The narrative has a nice balance between mostly linear bits of narrative and digressions to other points in his personal history, it was engaging to read and I love the way it kept from giving away the ending (and the specific context of it) despite the whole thing being told in media res. The discussions of what one in this position of intertwined mortality and limited contextual immortality would do with oneself, and I come away from it feeling as though I've absorbed both a very good story and the summaries of several philosophical papers; mentally stretched in a good way. It's concerned with what the ouroborans actually do as much as it is with what they think about it, so the philosophical digressions are complete enough to be interesting to anyone who cares, but are usually placed so that they further the story and are shortly backed up by action.
I like this book, but I have a few reservations about recommending it. Spoilers are somewhat unavoidable in this discussion, but it concerns the handling of queerness in the story. I think it would have done better to either avoid queerness altogether, or to actually address the reality of the AIDS crisis with more than a passing mention via killing off a character with it. It irks me even more because that character is possibly queer, and I say possibly since she is implied to have AIDS because of drug use in this life, but in a previous one she didn't sleep with the MC because she was "giving homosexuality a go". The narrative treats it as noteworthy only as one of two reasons she didn't have a relationship with him in one life, the other was a life in which she was married. The other time queerness is explicitly discussed within the text is when the (male) MC is considering whether he should allow himself to be seduced by the (male) villain. No seduction is attempted, and thus it remains a thought exercise of hypothetical homosexuality, mostly notable for the MC's musings that he must be feign being appalled by any such attempt because of the era in which he was born.
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, but he speaks about terror and torture without asking the reader to experience it with him.
One thing I think it gets right is that different kalachakra (a word which feels uncomfortable and stinks of cultural appropriation, though I hope I’m wrong) or ouroborans have very different reactions their status. Some want to explore the world, some embrace how full of war the 20th century is and get as much of it as they can, some stay home and keep things going for the future ouroborans to have a better start. It also embraces the idea that the MC, living so many lives in an era when travel is suddenly easier than in prior centuries, would do a great deal of travel across his lives. The story stays pretty focused in Europe, Russia, and the USA, but has snippets of time spent other regions of the world in a way that attempts to demonstrate the breadth of his travel without making the main story drag. It's also repeatedly concerned with ableism and how the mentally ill are treated. Since the MC and his friends have a perspective which is frequently mistaken for mental illness, I'm glad it doesn't shy away from the potential impact of that.
The narrative has a nice balance between mostly linear bits of narrative and digressions to other points in his personal history, it was engaging to read and I love the way it kept from giving away the ending (and the specific context of it) despite the whole thing being told in media res. The discussions of what one in this position of intertwined mortality and limited contextual immortality would do with oneself, and I come away from it feeling as though I've absorbed both a very good story and the summaries of several philosophical papers; mentally stretched in a good way. It's concerned with what the ouroborans actually do as much as it is with what they think about it, so the philosophical digressions are complete enough to be interesting to anyone who cares, but are usually placed so that they further the story and are shortly backed up by action.
I like this book, but I have a few reservations about recommending it. Spoilers are somewhat unavoidable in this discussion, but it concerns the handling of queerness in the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, and Torture
Moderate: Violence, Drug use, Confinement, Mental illness, and Ableism
Minor: Rape, Racism, and Homophobia
CW for gaslighting, homophobia (minor), racism, rape (not depicted), ableism, starvation, confinement, mental illness, drug use, violence, suicide (graphic), torture (graphic), child death, major character death, death.
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