The Heavens

The Heavens is a book that is by turns confusing, compelling and frustrating. Confusing because the structure is a bit hard to follow, with multiple timelines slipping in and out of view....but hang on, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

Kate lives in New York in the year 2000, but not the New York that we know. This is a world where there is no war, where a Green senator named Chen is about to become the first woman President, and where the UN has landed on Mars. Kate meets Ben at a party hosted by the fabulously wealthy Sabine. Ben is entranced but doesn't know what to make of this rich girl with an interest in left wing politics and who doesn't seem to actually DO anything.

Kate is a dreamer. Literally. In her dreams she travels in time back to 16th Century England where she inhabits the body of a woman called Emilia. But the really odd thing occurs when Kate wakes up - for the world has changed subtly. And she doesn't know how to fix it. And she keeps seeing visions of a dead, destroyed city.

This is the premise of The Heavens. Can Kate save the world before it burns? Are the things she dreams actually altering reality? Because only she can remember her “real world” when she awakes. Either that or she's going insane.

So is this a New York love story, a time travel novel or a bit of both? Yes. And no. Ben and Kate's relationship is damaged by Kate's dreams, because Ben thinks she is going crazy. She gets upset when people don't remember the world as she did. As time goes on the changes get more and more extreme. There is war in Afghanistan. Gore is President. Then Bush. 9/11 happens. Each time the world gets a little bit worse, shifts closer to the dead, burnt city.

I'll admit that the first half of the book was a bit meh, a bit okay where is this going? But it kicks into gear just past the halfway point as Kate's desperation to “fix” things makes for a compelling conclusion. Her dream life is extremely well done and I preferred that to the socialite New York bits, which seemed more unreal than the dreams.

I'm not sure that it's totally successful in what it sets out to do. Is it satirical? Speculative? Dystopian? In the end it's a love story. A well written mess, perhaps. It's good, we'll worth a read, but not something I'll return to. Hence the three stars.