THE REINCARNATIONIST
M.J. Rose
Mira
Thriller
ISBN-10: 0778324206
ISBN-13: 9780778324201

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview –– September 7, 2007

M.J. Rose is an enviable fountain of talent and energy. She composes one of the most popular author blogs on the planet, and does so with great regularity; is a tireless source of marketing ideas; and writes strong, memorable novels. Rose has published eight works of fiction to date, ranging from thrillers to erotica to all points in between. In her latest effort, she combines genre elements with historical research and a good old-fashioned mystery.

Josh Ryder, the main protagonist of THE REINCARNATIONIST, is a press photographer whose world is turned upside down when he is caught on the edge of a terrorist’s bomb blast. Almost immediately he begins to experience vivid memories of Rome circa 386 A.D. and an existence as someone named Julius who is living a life very different from the one he has always known. Ryder starts working with The Phoenix Foundation, a research facility devoted to documenting cases of past life experiences in children, even as he hopes to achieve some answer to explain his own memories. When Ryder, at the behest of the foundation, meets with an archaeological team working in Rome at a dig that uncovers what appears to be the tomb of a priestess, Ryder’s flashbacks become even more intense.

It seems that Julius is a pagan priest who is involved in a passionate, forbidden affair with Sabina, a Vestal Virgin, one of the six high priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. Their affair, secretive by necessity --- sexual intercourse is, by definition, forbidden to the vestal virgins --- is played out against a background where they risk discovery by their own high priests, even as the Roman emperor Theodosius I embarks on an increasingly aggressive campaign to disband the religion.

The tomb is robbed by a murderous stranger who makes off with a pouch that’s in a box buried with the priestess. The pouch, it appears, contains jewels that have become known as the Memory Stones, which have the power to recall past lives and past secrets. The stones themselves have secrets of their own, however. And even as Ryder is drawn, almost against his will, to Gabriella Chase --- an archaeologist who may or may not be his beloved Sabina --- he finds himself sucked into an increasingly dangerous circumstance with people who will do whatever it takes to recover the stones and use them for their own mysterious purposes.

This is by far Rose’s most ambitious work, incorporating archaeology, mythology, eros and mystery into a plotline that is built layer by subtle layer and reveals its secrets only bit by bit. The conclusion, perhaps, is the most intriguing part of the book, by itself a fitting ending yet keeping open the possibility of further explorations into the lives --- past and present --- of all involved. THE REINCARNATIONIST should cause Rose’s already impressive and loyal readership to grow one-hundredfold, and deservedly so.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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