Chain Reading

This was another quick and easy read from author M.J. Rose. It kept me in suspense throughout, however, I didn't like it quite as much as The Memorist. Overall I really liked the book but I just had a couple of problems with it.

First, the book is called The Reincarnationist, who is identified in The Memorist as Malachai Samuels, however Mr. Samuels is a VERY minor chracter throughout this book. I think the title is misleading because The Reincarnationist has nothing to do with this book. Maybe The Memory Stones or something else that at least hinted at what the book was about would have worked better for me.

Another thing that bothered me about this book was that a third story line was introduced at about Chapter 22. I was reading and enjoying Josh Ryder's flashes to the past when suddenly there's some girl Rachel having flashbacks in New York. I had to stop reading and flip through the chapters wondering if I had missed something somewhere. Her role comes into play later and it all ends up making sense, but I really needed her to be brought into the story much earlier for the book to flow better for me. That, or the author should have made some connections early on.

Anyway, enough negativity. Other than these couple of issues I really did enjoy the book. The flashbacks in this book are to Rome in 391 A.D., which is pretty awesome to read about. I thought it was interesting to gain a little perspective on how pagan religions were destroyed by the emperor at the time to make way for Christianity. It's obvious that M.J. Rose has done a lot of research about the time periods, as well as reincarnation. If you like thriller/mystery books and are interested in reincarnation, this will definitely be an interesting book for you. Just don't expect to learn much about The Reincarnationist until you get to The Memorist.