Review: Incarnate

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book needed an editor. We start of by a whole bunch of really awkward and in-your-face sentences on how badly the main character has been abused by her mother, and it's completely pointless because later on the author does a great job of SHOWING it to us, rather than telling. I don't know why you'd wanna keep those informing sentences from the first twenty-something pages when you then do such a great job of showing how it has affected Ana, and keeps affecting her even after she left her mother.

The premise of this book is great, because it's so easy to explain. For 5,000 years everyone has been reincarnated over and over again, and then suddenly Ana shows up and she's brand-new. I mean, knowing NOTHING else about this world you immediately see how this would cause conflict in the community. And it does build up this conflict pretty nicely through-out the book, until we get a great revelation at the end. A revelation that wasn't mind-blowingly pulled out of thin air, but also not foreshaded to the point where you saw it coming from the first page. It was believable, and presented a whole bunch of other problems for the next books in the series, that I'm looking forward to reading.

There are things I didn't like about the book though, such as Ana's mother - Li - being stereotypically evil to the point where I couldn't even take her seriously. She only felt like threat when Ana thought of her or had flashbacks, but the characterization when she was in the story was too much.

Also, having sci-fi elements, such as laser guns and advanced technology, felt a bit misplaced in the fantasy setting. The technology didn't bother too much, it's reasonable that they would invent a device, for example, that could look at the genetic code of souls to know who was who ... but the laser guns is where I draw the line. I didn't really like them.

BUt yeah, while the book didn't start out well it actually surprised by how good it got once the story picked up pace. I didn't always relate to or agree with Ana, but I mostly understand her reactions and that's pretty important. Maybe not one of the greatest YA heroines of our time, but good enough for this story.

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True story.