The Reincarnationist (2007)

This book had so much potential. It could have been written to provide more tension, more mystery, more meat. Reincarnated persons crossing and re-crossing each others' paths could be so much more interesting and rewarding.

While it kept my interest enough for me to finish it, I'm disappointed (that I finished it). I literally didn't realize that the book was over until I turned the page and found the Author's Note. What?

Yes, it had a very UN-satisfying ending.

I will admit that I didn't see "the big twist" until about the time I was meant to see it, but it wasn't all that surprising. The plotting and character interactions were sloppy and fairly mechanical.

This is the author's 9th book. If this is what she's done after 8 previous attempts, I'm glad I didn't start at the beginning.

I will, however, look for other novels addressing the subject. Now that I've considered the potential for the story line, I'm interested in finding something more satisfying. ( )

Good reviews and a subject close to my heart - I was really looking forward to reading the Reincarnationist and there is a story hidden here, but it’s so hard to see the wood for all the trees. The story jumps about in what I’m sure, was meant to be an exciting way but only serves to puncture what little momentum and atmosphere had been built by the preceding chapter. It seems to me that there's an awful lot of plot but not enough skill to make it come alive.

At the same time, the characterisation is awful, there is no atmosphere to any of the locations past or present, and a terrible lack of vision about the central concept. The characters of the past are exactly the same as the characters they have become in our time – the women are all still women, men are all still men, the wicked, the thieves, the good, bad and ugly are all just as they were. If we’d just had one sex change from one regeneration to another, it would have been something.

The writing is appallingly pedestrian. There was never a point at which the story, the people, the places came off the page so that I felt I was in that world, in that man, that woman’s head. I was always aware I was reading words on a page.

Stolid, unimaginative prose, over-larded with laboured, clichéd metaphor; utterly lacking in vivacity, a tedious plot and two dimensional characters made this over-long novel very hard going for me. ( )

Basic idea was good but found the plot to be muddled; the bad guy obvious and the ending left me wondering why I bothered. ( )

Summary: Josh Ryder is a photojournalist on assignment in Rome, when a suicide bomb knocks him unconscious. He recovers, but the incident triggers flashes of hallucinatory clarity, visions of himself in ancient Rome, memories of dire events that Josh never lived through... or did he? He finds his way to the Phoenix Foundation, an institute that specializes in past-life experiences. When his involvement with the foundation lead him to an archeological dig outside of Rome - the possible tomb of one of the last Vestal Virgins - Josh becomes increasingly convinced that this site - and the woman buried alive inside of it - are of special significance to him personally. On his first visit to the tomb, however, Josh witnesses the murder of the site's lead archaeologist, and the theft of an ancient treasure of great power. It then becomes a race against time, for Josh must not only recover the treasure, but also deal with the increasing sense of urgency generated by his flashes: to somehow find and save the woman that he failed so desperately in a previous life.

Review: Color me underwhelmed. I'd heard so many good things about this book, and I was really looking forward to reading it, so I'm disappointed to say that it didn't live up to expectations. The premise as well seemed incredibly promising, and the fact that it featured one of my favorite story devices - interweaving past and present timelines - was in its favor. And, in truth, as I read I did find the plot interesting and involving, but I was underwhelmed by the pacing, the writing, and the characterization.

My main problem was that things just seemed to happen arbitrarily, with scenes often coming completely out of left field, and key explanations of what was going on either severely abbreviated or missing altogether. (For example, about 3/4 of the way through the book, the as-yet-unnamed bad guy is revealed to not only be a master of disguise and a criminal mastermind, but also a skilled hacker as well? What?) Most of the various pieces come together satisfactorily in the end, but for the bulk of the book, things just seem to be cobbled together in no particular order, and the rhythm and flow of the storytelling just felt off. There was also too much going on for any one piece of it to be fully developed. Too many characters for even the leads to have more than one dimension, too many past lives and plotlines for any one story or relationship to be particularly involving (the Percy/Esme flashbacks in particular I found to be overkill). In general, I was spending so much energy trying to make sense of the haphazard arrangement of the plot that I didn't have much left with which to care about the characters.

I'm giving this book the benefit of my good mood, though, because I really did find the story to be fascinating, even if I wasn't particularly enamored of the structure in which it was told. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Eh. Some people seem to love it, so it may just be an idiosyncratic case of me not getting along with Rose's prose style. But as novels about reincarnation go, I enjoyed Daniel Quinn's After Dachau much more. ( )

A great adventure thriller with a very good story line could not put this book down it certainly makes you think about our past and history and whether when we experience deja vu its actually our mind recollecting memories... ( )