Review 131: Reincarnation Blues

Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A soul named Milo, has been reborn nearly 10,000 times. Once your soul gets to that many lives it will be annihilated forever, ceased to exist. The goal for a soul is to reach perfection. Once you reach perfection your soul goes to join the oversoul. Milo also has this problem of loving Death, who is also named Suzie. Suzie has decided she no longer wants to be Death. Over the long 8,000 plus years, of Milo being reborn, they grow to be lovers while Milo hangs out in the afterlife, between being dead and being born down below again.

The book highlights some of the lives Milo lived, going forward and back in time, although generally when reborn you do go forward in time, although not always. Just the story didn’t always stay linear in that way.

Something in this tale clicked for me. There is the overall relationship, trying to find a way to have their love, and the universe finds it out of balance. They are rebels, both of them. Plus Milo doesn’t seem to know what exactly he is doing wrong so he cannot reach perfection. Suzie and Milo have a plan, when he finally does reach perfection he will refuse to join the oversoul so they can stay together. In his last five or six lives, he finally does really try hard to get to that perfection.

It is a goofy book, for sure. And it goes to the far future, so there’s weird sci-fi kind of things, but not much.

The more I think about this book, the less I appreciate it. Yes, I did find enjoyment within the pages, but there were some areas that bothered me, and it looks like they are being highlighted when I think of the book. There are some extremes here, where it did not need to go. Why did we have this seemingly okay guy go out and shoot at people on a highway? This is just one example, others are even worse. So there’s that aspect. Major discomfort with aspects in the book, and I think it was there on purpose. It bothers me. Another part that bothers me is why does Milo live all these lives and we mostly get the character as a straight male. Once, very briefly we get a female life, but she dies young. We are told in passing his soul was a female many times, but we don’t see that in the book.

I downgraded my initial rating of stars. And now feel somewhat chagrined I did enjoy the book more than I expected, and particularly now with hindsight. Its now short-lived enjoyment. I think the tone reminded me of a couple of authors I like when I was younger. It's been years since I read those books, and now wonder if some flaws there would stand out. Although, those books were written in an earlier time.


I received a free copy of this book at a library conference. I was not required to write a review, but felt like it and, of course, the above opinions are my own.