I received a free copy of this book, and I read it as part of the judging effort for the SFINCS3 novella competition. I’m part of Team TBR, but these thoughts are my own and do not reflect the final rating of the team.
That said, since this review is a bit late, I’m happy to share that this book was selected as one of our five semi-finalists.
A Second Life Worth Living
By Karen Lucia
Years ago, I came across a song by Lustral called A Quiet Revolution. I don’t remember the lyrics well enough to say that they fit the story, but the name of the song kept popping up in my mind as I read this novella.
A Second Life Worth Living is about the small-scale, quiet revolution that happens in the shadow of the big, dramatic, heroic one. It’s about small acts making a difference and about looking after the people closest to you. Or, it’s about believing that the quiet revolution matters.
Ben, our main character, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he got picked up by the authorities, tortured for information he didn’t have, and executed. Then he came back to life, as you do. Apparently, in the world of the story, that’s a common enough thing that the government uses second lifers as a convenient scapegoat for when blame needs to be assigned for “stuff.”
Small wonder there’s a revolution just waiting to explode.
So, there’s Ben, who was killed on television and came back to life, and who sits on the couch in his apartment afraid to make the best of his second chance at life. Or is it? Is he afraid? What’s best? What do you do if you come back to life after being killed? How do you change? Who would you be?
This could easily be a parallel to a myriad motivational tales about having an epiphany and turning your life around after a near death experience, but it’s not. A Second Life Worth Living takes a different angle. Ben doesn’t start living life to the fullest, and he doesn’t seize the day. He doesn’t even start going to the gym.
That doesn’t mean his death didn’t have any impact on him, only that the impact isn’t what spiritual influencers or pop-culture life-coaches would have you expect.
Ben’s change is slow and reluctant, but profound in its own way. In fact, that’s the case with the entire book. It starts out slow – not boring, but low-paced – as if even the story itself is reluctant to leave the safety of Ben’s apartment and look beyond its dingy walls. There’s just enough tension to keep me reading, until, at some point, I found myself both reluctant to go on and unwilling to put the book down. The kind of situation where you’re afraid something bad will happen, and you don’t want it to, but you know you need to see it through til the end.
…and on the edges of the story, the revolution keeps building momentum, and it keeps trying to pull Ben along with it.
What I’ll whine about
I don’t know if it says more about me or about the story, but I felt that whenever Ben was confronted about his unwillingness to support the revolution, he had no solution or suggestion for a better option. As a reader/observer, I would have loved a fix for the problem, but I’m not sure it’s in the nature of the story to provide that. I don’t think the story would have been better for it, but part of me still wish for it. Parts of me fret at unanswered questions.
What I’ll gush about
Realness. The story doesn’t contain much in the way of world building. Ben just got a second chance at life after he died, and that’s that. There are mentions of small magics and wild magic, and the wastes outside the city, which are more of a jungle, but again, that’s that. The story doesn’t explain what any of that or, and it doesn’t explain what’s going on with the government, and it doesn’t explain a lot of things, but it does not need to.
It does not need to.
Somehow, the world still feels lived in and relatable. The story contains elements extreme, outlandish, and fantastic, but within those boundaries, everything that happens is eminently plausible. It’s easy to draw parallels to what’s going on in the real world.
Perhaps most of all, Ben’s a person, and with all his flaws, I found it way too easy to identify with him.
Final Words
A Second Life Worth Living is not at all the story the title might imply, and that makes it all the more worth reading.
