Beggars in Spain
By Nancy Kress

A bad cover, but a short, interesting and readable book. Don't get me started about book covers ...

This award-winning novella is set in the near future; a future that might as well be today given how familiar it is. Genetic engineering is now capable of changing and improving many aspects of us, and not just the physical traits of height, strength or looks. A discovery has led to the capability of modifying the coding that relates to sleep and this leads to the birth of people who do not need to sleep at all.

The sleepless turn out to have a big advantage over those of us who spend so much of our lives in bed. They can do a lot with all the extra time: learn, practice new skills, make money. This advantage leads to worldly success but also jealousy, and eventually increasing antagonism. As history shows, humanity usually doesn't appreciate a group of people "better" than us, even if they are decent, moral, law abiding citizens. The novella follows the lead character and her "sleepless" group through a world that starts to turn against people like her.

This was a short and quick read (100 pages) but well told. A very believable tale told without unnecessary drama or excitement and better for that. The book has easily seen flaws if you think about it but nothing glaring to put one off the main point. The novella has been expanded into a full novel and there are also sequels, and I might check them out at some point, but as a satisfying tale, the short version is one I would be happy to rest at.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
By Claire North

This novel is about a man who dies only to discover he is re-born in the same year and in the same place as he was before. He then lives through the same period before dying, then being re-born yet again; this happens every time he dies. So, immortality apparently but of a slightly different configuration to one we normally find in works of fantasy. The difference between this novel and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is that Harry August remembers his previous lives. I really liked Life After Life and I like this novel as well, perhaps more. It was certainly a novel I savoured reading.

Written in the first person, after dying once or twice Harry comes to realise and accept what is happening and all the possibilities this presents: good and bad. It turns out that there are also a few terrible dangers being someone with this condition. The dangers come from the "linear" sorts (i.e. normal like you or me) as well as people who live and die the same way he does. These special people are uncommon but have formed a secret "club" over the course of history. They sometimes get messages from the future due to the way their lives can overlap.

It turns out that the future is going significantly wrong and Harry needs to find out why; and if things can be fixed.

A really enjoyable almost-mainstream science-fiction novel. Claire North is definitely a novelist to read again. In fact, Slow Gods is on my queue now.