Sometimes even we mothers need a little break from reality in the form of a good book, even if it keeps us up late. Such was the case for me the past couple of weeks as I read The Reincarnationist. Now, I have to be upfront and tell you that as a Christian, I believe “it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment.” I have to tell you as a human that I am not quite sure what death really means, since we are also told that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and that means the soul never dies. What I am trying to say is that I don’t believe reincarnation is likely, but I can’t rule it out entirely, either. And I am not likely to have considerable amounts of time to devote to research about it in the foreseeable future, or the next 20 years, which ever comes first.
All that said, there is a place for the enjoyment of fiction, just because it is well done, and that was the case for me and this book. I opened it prepared to dislike it, and found myself hooked before the end of the first chapter. The novel begins in modern day Rome, and on the second page, we are suddenly in Ancient Rome, and as a student of history that was it for me; my fight with the book was over right there on page 2. Setting alone: +10.
The writing is masterful, and Rose moves the story along at a satisfactory pace. Not so fast that important details are lost, and never slow enough for boredom and complacency to set in. The ending is quite surprising, and this novel met my one test for “great”. The day after I finished reading it, it was still on my mind, and I was drawing conclusions from it, still fitting the pieces together in my mind. I read maybe one book a year that sticks with me that way. In fact, with my minuscule amount of free time, the simple fact that I stuck with this book to the end is testimony of the author’s story-spinning skill. I know longer have the time and leisure to waste on books that are not top-notch, and I now start many more books than I finish.
This is a family oriented blog, so I have to mention this following bit as a caution. The book is clean except for a few expletives. No, one expletive. Rose uses the f-bomb several times. The first occurrence isn’t until page 162, and it was so oddly placed that I …checked the page number. There is no cussing in scenes where you would expect them to appear, and then when you least expect it, there it is. And only that one, no others at all. It’s almost as if they were sprinkled in as an after-thought in order to move the book up to “adult reading” category, much as some movies do it in order to get a tougher rating, hoping to draw in more interest. I think all told, less than a handful of times, and those were the only parts of the book that didn’t mesh.
I understand that there will be more novels, that this is the first in a series of at least four. I’m looking forward to reading the others.
