Name: Reincarnation Blues
ISBN: 9780399178481

Michael Poore

In the tradition of Cloud Atlas comes a wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself.

Reincarnation Blues

Varjak Karga

I remember checking the Goodreads review page when I was halfway through the book and was startled by the amount of people that were left unsatisfied. Now that I've finished the book, I'm still startled.

Reincarnation Blues was a nearly-overwhelmingly refreshing read. I'm usually not a fan of romance, but the way it's handled here is very beautiful. Timeless, literally. Over and over again, two that are destined to be together are separated and forced to jump hurdles just to sit next to each other and catch their breath. Milo, especially, has to come to terms that sometimes what he thinks is best is not what's best.

(view spoiler)[This book isn't about Milo becoming the best person in the universe. His goal was never to be the best person, it was to find a way to fudge it so he could be with Suzie. He's a chronically morally gray character and he was morally gray by the end of the book, and that's completely fine. You don't need to be lawful good to be what's considered a good person. He experiences his own character growth; learning that his own bias can't save him from judgement, no matter how "good" or "bad" he thought his actions were in the moment. (hide spoiler)]

It's a very powerful message that can be applied to a lot of things happening right now in the world: Bias will not save you. Morality isn't something you can determine on your own.

I will say, however, that I thought the ending felt a bit rushed, and I really wasn't a fan of a nonblack author using the N word to describe dark-skinned islanders, regardless of if it "made sense" in context; it was more ridiculous and unnecessary than anything else.

Jeff James

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from NetGalley, but I listened to the audiobook from the library.

In Reincarnation Blues, Milo is the ultimate slacker. He’s lived thousands of lives, but he still hasn’t reached perfection. Instead, he just wants to spend his time in the afterlife with his girlfriend, Susie, who also happens to be one of the incarnations of death. They’ve been together for more than eight thousand years, give or take, and Milo’s primary goal in the afterlife is avoiding transcending to the oversoul so that he can spend eternity watching TV on a couch with Susie.

Things get complicated, as they often do, when Mama and Nan, the caretakers of the afterlife, explain to him that he is about to run out of lives. Every soul gets no more than ten thousand reincarnations, and he’s down to his last five. If he can’t reach perfection and join the oversoul, Mama and Nan will push him off a floating sidewalk into nothingness and oblivion.

Milo thought that all he needed to do was be a wise man, which is why he’d spent his most recent life dispensing wisdom from fishing boat, but it turns out that perfection isn’t that simple. Part of the problem is that every life he lives feels more like killing time until he dies and gets to go back to Susie. Even still, Mama and Nan’s warning scares him into action, and he decides that he’ll do anything he can to reach perfection and avoid dissolving into nothingness.

The conceit of this book means that we follow Milo over the course of a dozen or so lives, each stranger than the last. It’s a bit like reading a collection of short stories with a through-line and common main character. The tone of the book is drily funny throughout, which is helpful because several of Milo’s lives are bleak or downright horrifying.

I will say that there is a point about halfway through the book where it almost lost me. Milo reincarnates somewhere far in the future as a young man with a promising future, but he is falsely accused of rape and sent to a nightmarish prison where the other prisoners rape and torture him.

If the trope of a false rape accusation wasn’t bad enough, the sheer unpleasantness of Milo’s life in prison started to drag the book down for me. However, I hung in to see how things played out, and I’m glad I did, because the end of the chapter redeemed itself. That said, several of Milo’s lives do happen in dystopias, so don’t go into this book expecting a happy time.

Reincarnation Blues is hilarious, moving, shocking and occasionally disturbing. The result is a wonderful coming-of-age story if those can happen to someone after they’ve lived close to ten thousand lives. Maybe a coming-to-wisdom story? Highly recommended.

This review originally appeared at Full of Words.

Mira McMahon

** spoiler alert **
           I would have rated this higher because the writing and plot was fun but there were some problematic themes introduced. I don’t have a problem with “irreverent” but I can’t stomach the patriarchal stuff that runs through the book. TW rape and rape myths

A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself. "Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman's Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) First we live. Then we die. And then . . . we get another try? Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to "get it right." Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything. Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn't make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her. More than just Milo's lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living--as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he'll never have to leave her side again. But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle--if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut's, Michael Poore's Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking. Because it's more than Milo and Suzie's story. It's your story, too. Praise for Reincarnation Blues "The most fun you'll have reading about a man who has been killed by both catapult and car accident."--NPR "This book made me laugh out loud. And then a page later, it made me sob. Reminiscent of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore, Poore finds humor in the dark absurdities of life."--Chicago Review of Books "Charming . . . surprisingly light and uplifting . . . It reads like a writer having fun."--New York Journal of Books

Bill Mazza

Man this one took me by surprise - mostly bought it because I liked the cover and didn't know much going into it. A little bookstore in Tahoe recommended it to me during a vacation and I finished it in a few days. Blew me away! Such a unique, charming book. Highly recommend it. Clever, funny, with some really interesting sci-fi elements, but I wouldn't call it sci-fi. Hard to capture the overall feel - just a damn good book!

Laura

I absolutely adored this book. The characters were engaging, the story was fascinating. Highly recommend.