A Heart-Pounder, Part 2

    Last week I was extolling the mind-blowing plot line of Claire North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.  Can you imagine having to live your life over and over, making different choices, having to hide who you really were, and then finding yourself in a race to save the world from premature destruction?  That's why it's a heart-pounder.

     But it's also philosophical in places.  Here's a quote:

     When I am optimistic, I choose to believe that every life I lead, every choice I make, has consequence.  That I am not one Harry August but many, a mind flicking from parallel life to parallel life, and that when I die, the world carries on without me, altered by my deeds, marked by my presence.

     Then I look at the deeds I have done and, perhaps more importantly considering my condition, the deeds I have not done, and the thought depresses me, and I reject the hypothesis as unsound.

     What is the point of me?

     Either to change a world -- many, many worlds, each touched by the choices I make in my life, for every deed a consequence, and in every love and every sorrow truth -- or nothing at all.

     Delicious stuff.  Highly recommended.