Incarnate

I was at the library a couple weeks ago, picking up a book I'd put on hold.  On a whim, I thought I'd see if Jodi Meadows' Incarnate was in - didn't expect it to be, as this was the small, local branch library.  I was pleased to discover that it was.

Since then, I've been putting it aside to read later.  Clearly, if I checked to see if it was there, I wanted to read it - mostly because the author is a regular on Robin McKinley's blog forum (and it's partly her fault that I learned/relearned to knit).  However, I'd gone to the library to get a specific book, and this one was a bonus, and I've been spending the last few weeks trying to be productive (i.e., dealing with all the boxes of stuff,  mostly paper, that I'd left at my parents' house when I left for France).  This doesn't really leave a lot of time to read the extra book I'd grabbed partially on a whim.

The cover is beautiful.  I've seen pictures of it online, of course, but the real thing is gorgeous.  The book itself is a lavender hardcover, the flyjacket has been covered in that shiny clear library plastic, and hasn't gotten all beat up yet, and the artwork is surprisingly attractive (I don't usually like those artsy photo-of-a-person-with-additions kind of covers that seem popular lately).

A few days ago, I finally read the first couple of pages, and though I kind of wanted to read faster, I paced myself.  But yesterday, after having gotten perhaps a quarter of the way through, I found myself reluctant to put it down.  I read it while waiting at the doctor's office, then as soon as I got back to my car after, I read for a couple of minutes to finish the chapter that had been interrupted.  I read while I scanned piles of paper (mostly high school era standardized test results) (which is pretty much the only productive thing I did yesterday).  I read it after I went to bed, by light of flashlight (such a juvenile thing to do!).  And I finished it late last night.

The writing is beautiful.  It flows well, the first-person voice is never jarring, the word choices and sentence structure work well, and I never found myself falling out of the story because of how it was written.  It has clearly been meticulously edited, and on a first read-through, I found no inconsistencies of timeline - both things that are probably my biggest problems when trying to stay "in" a story.

The storyline is relatively standard - a young girl coming of age, finding out who she is, with a bit of romance thrown in.  However, the way that Ms Meadows has found to bring this story to us is what makes this book special.

The idea of a world, that has existed for a long time, previously - and continually - inhabited by creatures that often try to kill the latecomer humans (it is not made clear whether the dragons, centaurs, sylph, and others are sentient or not).  The humans number exactly one million. Their souls are reincarnated, life after life after life, with their names, memories, experiences, skills intact, for more than three thousand years.  Everybody knows everybody else, though there are, of course, close friendships, enemies, acquaintances.  However, a little over twenty years prior to this story, Ciana died - and instead of being reborn, Ana came to be.

Raised by a mother who belittled and taunted her in an isolated cabin, Ana believes that she is worthless - a nosoul.  Finally leaving on her eighteenth birthday, Ana promptly runs into trouble of a potentially fatal kind.  After all, she hasn't been taught much, and she lacks the memories that might have let her do well. She's rescued by a young man who tries to convince her that she is not a nosoul, but a newsoul, and helps her discover some worth in herself and why it is that she has come to be.

This book strikes a good balance between danger and excitement, romance, introspection, doubt and fear, happiness, sorrow, and discovery.  Not all the questions are answered - this is the first of a trilogy - but enough that the story had a satisfying ending.  I'm torn between wanting to reread it while I have the physical book still in hand, or rereading it in a few weeks on my Kindle.  There was just enough suspense that I did what I sometimes do when I read a good book - I sort of half-skip pages to find out what happens next (which is to say, I will read ahead by half a page or a page, then come back and read the bit I skipped, but with perhaps less attention to detail than it truly merits).  Nothing about this book leads me to believe that I won't enjoy it as much the second time around - and quite possibly, several more times in the years to come. I look forward to early next year, when the next installment, Asunder, is scheduled to come out.