Last night, I grabbed this from Amazon for a whole 99c. It's the first fiction book Roz Morris has published under her own name. She's written a lot of stuff before, but it's all been ghost-writing for people like [SSSHHHH! trade secret!]. I was intrigued to see what she would do when writing with her own voice.
Carol is a gifted musician who needs nothing more than her piano and certainly doesn’t believe she’s lived before. But forced by injury to stop playing, she fears her life may be over. Enter her soulmate Andreq: healer, liar, fraud and loyal friend. Is he her future incarnation or a psychological figment? And can his story help her discover how to live now?
A novel in the vein of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Vertigo and The Gargoyle, My Memories of a Future Life is much more than a twist on the traditional reincarnation tale. It is a multi-layered story of souls on conjoined journeys – in real time and across the centuries.
I have to confess that after the first episode, I'm still slightly confused as to what's going on. That's not a bad thing - it's because this is not a complete story. It's the opening part of a 4-parter. I'm very much looking forward to the next part (due out next week) - a feeling I haven't had before with prose. We're used to episodic content in comics or TV, but it's a form that's more or less disappeared from literary fiction since the glory days of pulp SF magazines.
Roz's writing is beautiful, simple, and evocative. She makes you empathize with the characters almost instinctively, despite - or more likely because of - their flaws and weaknesses. They, more than the plot, are what kept me reading until I'd finished the book in one sitting. I cared what happened to them more than I cared what happened next.
In my review on Amazon, I've given this four stars rather than five only because I'm still unsure where this is going. The story could develop in several different ways, some of which appeal to me more than others. The elements of hypnosis, sci-fi and time travel are intriguing, but I'm hoping the Ripper sub-plot doesn't turn out to be too much of a cliche.
Roll on September 5 and Episode #2! I'll happily throw Roz another dollar.
(If you don't like the idea of waiting for each part, hang on until September 19th and buy all four episodes.)
2 comments:
Matt - what can I say? Thanks so much, and hope you keep enjoying the ride!
I don't know if it's necessary to add this, but if you found MMOAFL in your local bookstore, it would be in General Fiction, not SF/Fantasy. Hmm... maybe that's the kind of steer that has no place in the modern digital publishing world. Just mentioning it so you know not to expect "Let's Kill Hitler" ;-)
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