Review: The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

Title: The Cure for Dreaming

Author: Cat Winters

Information on series: Not part of a series

Audience:  Young Adult

Rating (scale of 1-5, with 5 being highest): 3.5

TL;DR: Historical fiction with a hint of fantasy. Highlights the struggle for women’s suffrage at the turn of the last century.

Longer review: This is Cat Winter’s second historical fiction book for a YA audience that has some fantasy/paranormal element. This book is set in 1900 in Portland, Oregon. The protagonist, Olivia Mead, is a pro-suffrage teenager who is struggling to assert her opinions or gain any freedom from her domineering and anti-suffrage father.

Olivia is chosen to be hypnotized by Henri Reverie on Halloween night (also her birthday, this fact plays a very minor role).  Olivia’s father sees this in the paper and hires Henri to hypnotize Olivia into more “ladylike” tendencies.  Instead, Henri tells Olivia to “see the world as it is.” This results in Olivia seeing her father as a vampire (her favorite book is Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and suffragettes with a heavenly glow.  Of course, there is a romantic element between Olivia and Henri. Together they team up to affect change and advance the efforts toward universal suffrage.

This book is a good introduction to fantasy for those who would not normally be inclined to read fantasy. The fantasy element is present, but there is no real world building beyond contextualizing the historical setting. Some of the message about free speech and rights is a little heavy handed at times, but that does go along with the storyline. Overall, it’s a quick read that may get some fantasy readers to learn about history or get some history lovers to appreciate the freedoms fantasy writing allows (humans doing things that they normally cannot).  The romantic element is fairly chaste and is suitable for older middle school readers.

Read alikes:
Life After Life—Kate Atkinson

The story of one girl’s life throughout the first half of the 20^th century. This story is largely historical fiction but may appeal to fantasy readers. The main character dies several times throughout the book, but is either able to change the past to prevent the fate or mysteriously defeats death.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds-Cat Winters.

Has a similar style and tone to The Cure for Dreaming, but set in 1918 during the height of the spiritualist movement and the Spanish Influenza. Features haunting pictures of the era to drive home how devastating the flu really was.

Review by Olivia of the Ericson Public Library

Review: The First Fifteen lives of Harry August by Claire North

Title: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Author: Claire North (pseudonym for Catherine Webb)

Information on series: Stand alone

Audience: Adult

Read alikes: Replay, by Ken Grimwood; Life after life by Kate Atkinson; The impossible lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer; My real children by Jo Walton

Rating (scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being the highest): 7.5

Tl;dr: A bit of a time travel tale mixed with a dose of Choose your own Adventure, this science-fiction/fantasy blend follows our protagonist Harry August as he navigates his life over and over again.  Harry is a kalachakra, one who is reborn into the same life while retaining memories of past lives, and has recently received a message from the future: The world is ending, and Harry may be the only one who can stop it. 

“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.” 

Meet Harry August. Harry is a kalachakra, an ouroboran, one who is reincarnated time after time as the same person. He follows a parallel path through life, experiencing the same major events, only to die and do it all over again. How he chooses to live each life is up to him, and Harry wears many hats over the course of the book. Harry’s lives all begin the same: born in an English train station on New Year’s Day 1919 his mother dies in childbirth, taking with her the secret of his father’s identity. Harry is raised by a groundskeeper and his wife and during his third life is inducted into a secret society comprised of other kalachakra, known as the Cronus Club. Under the guidance of the Club, Harry is educated in the ways of the kalachakra: You cannot change major events, no murdering Hitler as a child or preventing JFK's assassination. A kalachakra may use their knowledge of sporting events or stock patterns and benefit financially from these endeavors, though they must bequeath a good portion of their profits to the Club for future generations. Club members can pass information along to future or past kalachakra, either by finding an elderly ouroboran about to pass away and verbally giving them a message to carry back in time, or by carving a note in stone to be read by kalachakra to come. It is in this first manner that Harry receives a chilling message on the death bed of his eleventh life; the world is ending, faster and more violently with each reincarnation, and it is up to him to find out why.  Throughout his next four lives Harry sets out to determine the cause of the world's demise, a task that carries him around the globe, across the paths of past friends, enemies, and lovers, and delves deep into questions of philosophy, morality, mortality, hard science, and religion. As the culprit of the world's end is made known the book shifts from an exploration of Harry's lives on an emotional and metaphysical level to a discussion of scientific and technological advancements and their role in humanity. 

Conceptually, I thought this book was fantastic. While it is certainly not the first novel to play with timelines I felt the way the author handled reincarnation (being born again as the same person with prior lives' memories intact) was refreshing. Harry's first person narration is nonlinear as the plot jumps from life to life, often without preamble, which may be disconcerting to some readers. The pacing is also erratic, alternating between frustratingly stagnant to page-turning, which lowered my overall enjoyment. There were also times where the scientific concepts were above my own (extremely limited) grasp of quantum physics, though if that's a fault of the book or my knowledge I cannot say. 

Overall I found The first fifteen lives of Harry August to be quite a delightful read.