What would you do if you had essentially infinite lives? What would matter to you? How would you value the lives of others who aren't like you (referred to as linear)?
North gives Harry plenty of opportunity to explore those questions. He discovers the "Cronus Club": an organization of kalachakras like himself that assists those who have been reborn as children with escaping the tedium of going through yet another childhood, and establishing some income and housing stability. A common view of those in the Chronus Club is that "complexity should be your excuse for inaction": the reasoning being that if you were to kill Hitler for example, how do you know that an even more effective leader with the same views wouldn't take his place, and possibly win World War Two? Through trying to influence the world in many ways the consensus of the Chronus Club is that the large historical events are largely fixed and mostly immune to change.
Given that WWII will always happen no matter what you do, how would you choose to live your life? Some escape to calmer countries during the war, some fully participate and revel in the unpredictability of war because it delivers new experiences each time.
Ironically, to give purpose to the lives of the Chronus Club members, some sort of mutual objective is desirable, and one materializes in the form of Vincent, our antagonist. Vincent's only real crime is chasing a macguffin, in this case a quantum mirror which will help him understand time and matter on a much deeper level. He pursues it with ruthless efficiency, killing those who get in his way, and with no care for how much he may be changing the course of history in the process. He perfects methods to create advanced technology faster than it was ever supposed to happen - delivering gift-wrapped inventions to the best scientists of the time. I've often wondered about this subject myself: given modern education, and the ability to time travel, how effective could a single person be at accelerating technological advancement? Vincent is certainly helped by having a photographic memory.
I loved the idea of handing messages forward and backwards through time by passing them young to old, old to young through the Chronus club. The implication received through these messages from the future is that technological advancement precipitates environmental collapse, and bringing forward the pace of that change, also brings forward the end of the world.
There's some logic holes that aren't really explained in the story: say Harry and Vincent are separated by 10 years at birth, but Harry dies at 20 and Vincent lives for another 50 years. If Harry is reborn and then Vincent is reborn 10 years later with all of his extra 50 years of memories, was Harry waiting in limbo for 50 years? Multiply that problem by thousands of kalachakras.
Spoilers.
The ending seems a little too easy. Vincent just gives up his point of origin for no good reason. I didn't buy Harry's strategy of talking to him about his own childhood in an effort to get Vincent to divulge his, Vincent guarded that secret as his most prized possession for hundreds of years. Also I didn't buy that Harry wouldn't slip up over several decades of working closely with Vincent. It would have happened somehow, some bit of knowledge would have peeked through. Harry's very long-game strategy just wouldn't have worked. I especially don't think he could have maintained composure through the Jenny incident.
Overall though, spectacular read.
5 stars.
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