“ The Revolutions,” by Felix Gilman (Tor, $26.99), imagines a Victorian London where science and magic walk hand in hand. Harry’s arch enemy ends up becoming, in a sense, his best friend as well as colleague, making their mutual betrayals all the more wrenching. The true heart of the book lies in Harry’s twisted relationship with this nemesis, because the only way to kill a kalachakra is to get him to reveal the specifics regarding his birth. Meanwhile, Cronus Cub members are being killed off by one of their own, and it’s up to Harry to stop the rogue kalachakra by any means necessary. That system works fine until a little girl tells an old man named Harry that the world is ending - but in every succeeding timeline, the end happens earlier. If doomed to repeat one’s life over and over again during the 1940s, who wouldn’t try to kill Hitler? Yet not interfering with history is one of the cardinal rules of the Cronus Club, a select group of people known as the kalachakra, who loop through time in “ The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August,” by Claire North (Redhook, $25).Anyone who breaks the rules gets punished by the club to make sure the offense isn’t repeated in the next life.
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