YMMV / The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

• Moral Event Horizon: Vincent and Virginia forcibly mind-wipe hundreds of members of the Chronus Club, temporarily wiping it out for several generations, and even abort quite a few kalachakras, in order to allow Vincent to work undisturbed.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Not the book as a whole, but the first act seems to consist mainly of Harry being tortured by evil authority figures in graphic detail. The perpetrators quickly fade into insignificance and never get held accountable.
• The Woobie: Harry's biological mom. First, she's raped by her boss. Then she finds out she's gotten pregnant by this. Then, when her pregnancy starts to show, the family of said boss unceremoniously fires her, sends her away, so she's going to have to have a child (which will constantly remind her of the traumatic way it was conceived) with no way to support either the child or herself. They also keep her letter from ever reaching Rory Hulne (by now he's gone to fight in WWI). And then she dies giving birth to said child. Even after her death, there is still sadness in her story because when giving birth she happens to have a letter adressed to Patrick August (who has nothing to do with the entire situation) on her, leading the couple helping her at the time to assume this is the baby's father and contacting him, instead of the actual biological father, who gets off scott-free.

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