Review: Incarnate

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

Published by Katherine Teagan books

Genre: YA (fantasty?)

$16.99 (US hardback)

384 pages

What it's about:

New soul

Ana is new. For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from previous lifetimes. When Ana was born, another soul vanished, and no one knows why.

No soul
Even Ana's own mother thinks she's a nosoul, an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her away from society. To escape her seclusion and learn whether she'll be reincarnated, Ana travels to the city of Heart, but its citizens are afraid of what her presence means. When dragons and sylph attack the city, is Ana to blame?
Heart
Sam believes Ana's new soul is good and worthwhile. When he stands up for her, their relationship blooms. But can he love someone who may live only once, and will Ana's enemies--human and creature alike--let them be together? Ana needs to uncover the mistake that gave her someone else's life, but will her quest threaten the peace of Heart and destroy the promise of reincarnation for all?



My thoughts:
I love books about reincarnation because I find them interesting, but Incarnate blew away all the other books about reincarnation I've ever read. This book was fantastic.

The reason this book is so fantastic isn't necessarily the characters (though they were pretty awesome) but how Meadows set up how reincarnation works in this world. There are about 1 million people in this world and they have all been reincarnated over and over for 5 thousand years. So everyone knows each other, has given birth to each other, been the children, the parents, and so on of each other. How would all that work? How would you feel toward each other? The dynamics of this world blew my mind away thinking about them. Each person has been born hundreds of times, you don't always come back as the same sex, yet it is always you in your mind. You remember all your old lifes, all your deaths, everything. I can't imagine being thousands years old in my mind but being in a childs body. There would also be complications of how do you feel in your own body.

And then to be Ana, a newsoul in a world full of people who have lived thousands of years together. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with knowing your crush has lived for so long, has been both a man and a woman, died hundreds of times, and loved many people? How do you face those realities without going mad? And Meadows does acknoledge and ask all the awkward questions. Ana has to face the fact that her crush has been a woman (and Ana wears his old clothes from that time) and has been many people before now.

And I really liked Ana's character. She grew up in a very abusive home, knowing that no one wants her there, that she "stole" someone elses life and yeah, it made her bitter. She was no Cinderella, just taking the punishment and still being the sweetest thing in the world. She is bitter, she is cynical, she is real. She deals with being in this world the best she can. I liked that about her. How she had to learn how to be around the oldsouls, how to feel, how to act, all of that.
Then there was Sam, the love interest. I loved how he wasn't this manly man, wasn't the hero, and needed saving himself. I liked how he wasn't the typical flawless love interest. Living so long does not mean that you are flawless. I loved it!

This book is definitely worth reading even to just have your mind blown by all the questions you have to ask yourself about being reincarnated for so long. I love to over analyze the books I read and this one had me asking so many questions. It was fantastic. Plus the plot is well done, the characters are interesting, and the writing well done. Overall, this book was great.

My rating: 10/10

I read it in a few hours. I could not put it down.