Harry August is living his life over and over again, always born to the same mother in the
same time and place, but living in a world that’s altered each time because of the actions
of the others who are also reliving their lives. The world Claire North (aka Cat Webb) built
has a rich, interlocking structure: The repetitions are synchronous in that the entire life
of the universe plays out before restarting from the beginning for everyone, but only a
handful, such as Harry, remember the previous time around. Those who do remember have formed
a society whose overriding purpose is to keep the status quo because once a change is made
and a person is not born during a cycle of the universe, that person will never again be
born. The society also arranges a system to send messages back through the generations by
having young reborn children contact older society members who are near death. From time to
time, changes in the universe cause new members to be born, and thus, Harry appears just in
time to become embroiled in a vicious plot to change everything.
I was fortunate to meet
Cat Webb at the 2015 Campbell Conference in Lawrence, Kansas, where she cheerfully talked to
me and Rob Maslen about anything and everything during the week leading up to the
announcement of Harry August as the winner of the 2015 Campbell Award for the best
novel of the year. Yay, Cat (and yay for your friendliness and wry sense of humor)!
My first life, for all it lacked any real direction, had about it a kind of happiness, if
ignorance is innocence, and loneliness is a separation of care. But my new life, with its
knowledge of all that had come before, could not be lived the same. It wasn’t merely
awareness of events yet to come, but rather a new perception of the truths around me,
which, being a child raised to them in my first life, I had not even considered to be
lies.