During several sections of the book I was leaning toward a 5 star rating, at other times I felt the humor was misplaced, the author trying to be too clever. Other scenes were more disheartening, full of despair. Such is life. Still a very good exploration of what it means to be human, to want to be good, how striving for perfection can be an almost impossible task. Recommended.

This quirky books tell the story of one soul- Milo and his nearly 10 000 incarnations. Each chapter tells the story of a different incarnation and the strange experiences and characters he encounters- everything from being eaten alive by a shark, to travelling the cosmos. Milo is in love with Death herself- Suzie, who he meets after he dies and the short stints he spends with her before moving on to his next life. He encounters her in each of his incarnations, although he does not remember her. They are madly in love with each other, but it is their complicated relationship of her being Death and him almost finishing his incarnational cycle that they devise a plan in order for them to be together. The plan is for Milo to achieve Perfection- meaning he can surpass becoming part of the Oneness of the universe and can therefore be with his true love. We accompany Milo during his different soul experiences, sometimes laughing, sometimes relishing in the simple beauty of life, and sometimes grieving alongside him. As someone who has always been fascinated with the concept of reincarnation, I thought this book while appearing to be yet another mystical fiction read, turned out to be a much deeper metaphysical exploration of the human experience. Appreciating the fragility of life while living up to your soul’s contract is a delicate balance we are all hoping to achieve.

It is easy when reading this book to jump to conclusions and cringe when we see Milo making a mistake and smiling when he’s done good……if only life were that easy. In the beginning of the book Milo does not want to stop reincarnating as he tells Death and some other elusive cosmic characters that “who doesn’t want to live?” What becomes apparent, is that Milo truly wasn’t living, he didn’t treasure every single moment of his lives because somewhere deep down inside he knew he would be back for another turn again. I believe the whole concept of reincarnation comes with a massive responsibility- we all like the idea of being recycled when we die, but somehow, that can become a cop out and excuse for not living a full life. Perfection- the state Milo is so desperately trying to achieve is not something we strive for, it’s something we must become.

It may be about one person's 10,000 lives, but this novel moved along at a fast clip that I didn't want to end. The main character, Milo, has been reincarnated nearly 10,000 times, but unfortunately he has never achieved perfection. His incarnations have been millennia in the past, far in the future, human and otherwise. Each time he dies he ends up in the afterlife before a new assignment that depends on how well he performed most recently. Along his journey, he has gotten to know death very well, in the person of Suzie; after many incarnations their friendship turned into romance, a relationship against the order of things. While we read to see if Milo will achieve perfection by his ten-thousandth lifetime, his journeys range from rollicking to horrific, are never boring, and often thought-provoking. I hope this book gets all the attention it deserves.

This was a lovely book. Gripping and well written, the concept is startling and well executed. I could not put this down once I started.

Some characters, but not the plot, were reminiscent of The Shack. Milo's 'support team' of Mama and Nan and his special relationship with Death/Suzie provided much humor, along with the moralistic lessons shared through his many lifetimes. Great concept, characterization which provided much enjoyment in this read!

Thanks to Michael Poore for his book and the opportunity to read it provided by Netgalley.com and Del Rey/Ballantine.

A fantastic, whirlwind read that left me seriously thinking about life and love when I was finished. Milo is in love with Death. And he dies over and over and over so he can get back to his love. It's a joy to go through each reincarnation, to think about the idea of perfection and what it might mean to live a perfect life. The paths we each take through this funny world are all so different and every choice we make has the possibility to change millions of other pathways. Milo has tried thousands of lives and is still figuring out what it all means--the only thing he truly knows is that he has to get back to Suzi, aka Death. I adored this book--one of the best reads I've had this year!

Milo has lived 9,995 lives and only has 5 more to try and make it to Perfection. The main reason Milo hasn't achieved Perfection yet is because he is in love with Suzie, who works for Death. Each time Milo dies, he gets to spend time with Suzie before he starts another life However, if he doesn't achieve Perfection by the end of his 10,000th life, he will cease to exist forever. I loved the creativity of this book. The author shares so many of Milo's different lives. He was juggler, a bug; he has died by being eaten by a shark, blown up by the sun. Milo goes back in time hundreds of years and forwards in time and lives in space. There were some hilarious parts and some sad and disturbing parts but Milo learns something from each life he lives. My favorite part of the book is the ending because Perfection means something different to everyone and I love what it means to Milo. This was a heartfelt and thought provoking story that had me wishing I could read about all of Milo's 10,000 lives.

So very wonderful and imaginative and funny and sad and brilliant and beautiful.

Milo is an old soul – he has lived 9995 lives so far and has yet to achieve perfection. In fact he isn’t even sure he wants to achieve perfection as he is in love with Death (or rather a Death – Suzie). This has to change when he is informed that every soul has in fact only 10000 lives to get it right or it will be erased. This short synopsis doesn’t really do the book justice but it will have to suffice because I think going into this book relatively blind worked well for me.

I adored this book and enjoyed reading it immensely. I love stories told unchronologically and this story is told in a series of interconnected glimpses into Milo’s lives; some of these glimpses were very short and some a bit more elaborated and I thought this worked absolutely wonderfully.

This book combines many of the things I adore in fiction and does so in a way that feels uniquely catered to me. I am genuinely in love with this book and spent most of my time reading with a huge grin on my face. I love short stories – so I adored the longer descriptions of some of his lives so very much. In fact, the first complete life we get to spend with Milo would work brilliantly as a short story, even without the added layer of the rest of the book.

I even enjoyed the love story, which is something I do not often do. But here I found it believable and unique and essential for the story told. I was keeping my fingers crossed for Milo and Suzie to find a way to stay together and to carve out their own place for their love. This is due mostly because they were such well-drawn character in their own rights first and their relationship grew out of that.

While I enjoyed the whole book, I found the ending to be a bit weaker than the rest; however the very last chapter was beautifully executed and so it ended on a high note for me.

First sentence: “This is a story about a wise man named Milo.”

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"Why don't you leave her?" asked Milo.
Floyd digested this question for five full minutes.
"I'm trying to be mature about things," he said at last. "I thought maybe we just needed time. Marriage is work.
...
"The problem with a barracuda," said Milo, "isn't that you aren't being mature. The problem is that it's a barracuda. If you don't like being in the boat with it, one of you has to go."
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I really wanted to like this one... With clever, pithy lines about life and love like the one above (to illustrate the point, Milo actually pulls a barracuda into the boat, where it thrashes at Floyd's feet - one of the BEST illustrated life lessons EVER in fiction!), how could I not be intrigued?? I was a little apprehensive, because Douglas Adams and Christopher Moore are hit-and-miss authors for me, and there were more than a few comparisons between those authors and Poore, but I was optimistic because of the subject matter. I'm fascinated by the concept of reincarnation and love when Death is a character - there are so many wonderful possibilities to explore in the complex relationship between man and Death... I was semi-turned off from the get-go though - the book opens with reference to death by shark, and I have a ridiculous life-long phobia about sharks, so I was battling the eight ball from the opening line. Unfortunately, things never really picked up for me after that...

I still really like the concept, and am still somewhat curious to see where Suzie and Milo wound up - which is unusual for a book I've given up on. I was curious enough, in fact, that I sought out other reviews to see if it was worth sticking with this one. After reading what others thought, I suppose it's possible that if I'd kept slogging through I would have made it past the jumble of time-lines and perspectives that I found so unnecessarily scattered and distracting and gotten into the story, but I was getting too frustrated to stick with it and after putting it down multiple times I finally decided it simply wasn't for me. No one spoiled the ending, although a number of readers commented that the end surprised them. Those comments moved the book from a solid position on my "gave up on" pile and into my "come back to it later" one - although there are a slew of Adams and Moore works in line ahead of it and those have been there for some time...

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"Death was a door. You went through it over and over, but it still terrified people."
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Reincarnation Blues had me hooked when I first heard the premise that Milo is an ancient soul that has lived 9,995 lives, each time hoping only to meet Death (A.K.A. Suzie) each time he dies. Milo is in love with Suzie, and this is what is preventing him from reaching Perfection, for fear he won't be able to ever see Suzie again. But Milo has only five more lives - five more opportunities to reach Perfection - until he becomes Nothingness.

The best part about this book is that it really is a combination of all genres mixed together: historical fiction, science fiction, contemporary, fantasy, dystopian. Milo lives in all different periods of time, including during 2600 B.C., in many futuristic colonies in space, in the current day, and in the "afterlife."

Reading this book is kind of like reading a bunch of short stories that take place in multiple time periods and locations but are all about the same person, Milo. Because of this, most stories recounting one of Milo's lives don't go very far in depth and therefore have more "telling" than "showing." But the stories are interesting nonetheless. This book goes in depth in detail for the last five lives that Milo lives, and the shorter snippets are told in between those five lives.

The story is told in a third-person omniscient perspective. It's interesting though because sometimes the story will be in the future tense, and sometimes the POV will be that of a shark, or a dog, or a whale.

Reincarnation Blues is a highly original, eccentric book that's full of magical realism. Poore's writing can be very poetic at times, which just adds to the beauty of the story. I highly recommend this book.

"Milo had squeezed so much learning and experience into his one, single soul that the knowledge had grown pressurized and hot and transformed into wisdom the way coal changes into diamonds. His wisdom was like a superpower."

What a unique, fun, and witty book! I'm always excited to read something new and this one is has unique pouring from it. Death is a woman named Suzie and everyone gets 10,000 lives to get "it right" and achieve perfection. The little pieces of wisdom sprinkled throughout the book were wonderful and I loved the humor. I'll be reading everything Michael Poore writes!

What a curious book.

Milo has lived nearly 10,000 lives and is still trying to achieve what is known as Perfection. With each new life Milo is sure that this time he will finally figure out the secret to reaching perfection yet inevitably messes it up again and again.

This isn't just a tale of an old soul attempting to learn a lesson. This is a tale of morality, love, loss, pride, meditation, family, depression and basically everything. Poore touches on most topics within this novel. The mistakes Milo makes are strangely easy to relate to while still being pretty far fetched. The details may be fantastical but the story is one that is familiar to all of us.

Poore takes such care with the details here. Each life that Milo lives is like a story in itself, but put together they make up a charming tale.

I have been fretting about turning 40 tomorrow and oddly Milo's story soothed a bit of this age related anxiety. Maybe I will come back as a lazy cat or a wombat. This life is just one in my story.

Milo has had many chances to get it right—almost 10,00 to be exact. One would think that he’d be able to get it right and achieve not just perfection, but Perfection. At least, that’s what his definitely not gods think. In Reincarnation Blues, by Michael Poore, we see Milo on his last chances to live a perfect life. The only problem is that Milo isn’t ready to move on. He’s in love with Death (who prefers to be called Suzie) and they get to be together after every incarnation. What’s the point of perfection if it means leaving the person he’s loved for millennia behind?

We meet Milo just before he’s eaten by a shark. It’s the end of one more life on earth, but it’s routine for an old soul like Milo. (His favorite death was the time he was catapulted over the walls of Vienna in 1683.) Every time he dies, Milo gets to spend time with Suzie, who he’s known almost since his first death. When he gets the itch, he picks a new life and head to earth for a while. It’s a surprisingly cozy existence for Milo—until he learns that he only gets 10,000 tries to live a Perfect life. If he doesn’t get it right, his soul is erased. No more Suzie. No more interesting lives. Nothing.

In Reincarnation Blues, we see Milo struggle to figure out how to get it right and still hang on to Suzie. These last chances play out in short episodes, with glimpses of his past lives. He lives in an asteroid prison colony, is a student of the Buddha, and more. As his clock winds down, Milo tries ever more desperately to show love to his fellow souls and make huge sacrifices to show his worthiness for just a little more existence.

This book has so many of the things I love: a non-linear view of history, a quirky love story, and plenty of reincarnation. On top of that, the tone and storyline remind me a lot of Christopher Moore’s Lamb, one of my absolute favorite books, with its irreverence and off-kilter cosmology. I truly enjoyed reading this book because it kept raising the stakes for Milo in terms of what a perfect life might be. It’s not just a matter of following rules or being kind. Rather, a soul has to make a difference in the world with its lives, so that the arc of history really does bend towards justice. The best thing, in Milo’s universe, is to improve as many lives as possible. No wonder souls have 10,000 chances at it.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 22 August 2017.

This book is different, it's unlike anything I've ever read before, which is a good thing. It is an amazing and mesmerizing story that was hard to put down. I absolutely loved this book and couldn't wait to get to the end to see everything that happened and how it would end. It has so many different things: reincarnation and multiple lives, a love story, divine oneness with the universe, achieving growth and perfection, selfless love, making a difference in others lives, peace and meditation, moral stories, and humor, and darkness, and light, and what it means for the main character to finally get it right after living ten thousand times. I seem to be on a streak of picking really awesome five star reads here lately and this one deserves five stars for sure. Highly recommend, especially if you like reading about reincarnation, living multiple lives, and having a love affair with death herself. I especially loved the story Milo told of the lesson of Jonathan Ya Ya, I think it's a very valuable lesson we all need right now! I received an advance copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This was the first book I have read by this author. I will have to check out his other work because I really liked his style. He took an offbeat subject and combined it with magical realism to create a fictional masterpiece in my opinion.

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC. I don't rate a lot of courtesy copies a 5, but I'm rounding up from 4.5 for the sheer entertainment and inventiveness of it. Milo's lifelines ranged ranged from interesting to amazing, some of them could be the basis of their own novel. He is a lovable hero as an almost-perfect soul, and his relationship with Death, er, Suzie, is sweet. The writing was casual and flowed along nicely so you stayed in the story well. Very enjoyable, would be a great choice for a buddy read. Hats off to the author for a job well done!

If Douglas Adams wrote a fiction novel on reincarnation, I suspect that it would read a lot like this one. There are bits of dry humor interspersed with gleanings of wisdom from Milo's 10,000 lifetimes, as Milo discovers things about himself, the gray areas between right and wrong, and understanding the human experience. During this journey Milo also discovers the love of his lifetimes, who ironically turns out to be Death (who prefers to be called Suzie). Funny, insightful, and entertaining.

Reincarnation does it exist? Well Milo got informed he is running out of reincarnations. Who would think that is even possible? If he doesn't reach perfection before he reaches his 10,000 life he will go into the nothingness. He doesn't want that and neither does his afterlife girlfriend who just happens to be death. What is perfection you might ask yourself well Milo would like to know that as well? So get ready to see what reincarnation is like and let me tell you it isn't all fun and games. See what a relationship with death is like and find out if Milo will reach perfection.

Not my favorite but an interesting read. Read it and let me know what you think.

Milo is on his 9,995th life and pretty happy with the love affair he enjoys with Death (aka Susie) in between lives. Unfortunately, he finds out that he must achieve Perfection before he hits 10,000 or else be consigned to walk the long sidewalk into Nowhere (yes, it really is a sidewalk). A brash, authority-defying, hero (even the Universe and the Oversoul don’t get to tell him what to do), we join Milo on his adventures through multiple lives and the progression of his love with a Being outside of reality.

Poore weaves science fiction and historical stories into the vignettes of Milo’s many lives. He expounds on philosophies of economics, politics, love and the great mysteries of the Universe - all simplified into bite sized nuggets. He has fun with some pretty bizarre characters and silly yarns with very little point (at one point, Milo finds himself the love interest of a very sloppy camel). Still, plenty of big themes: What makes life worth living? What does it mean to be in love? When do you go along with the Universe and when do you tell it to shove it?

Fans of Kurt Vonnegut will find a similar style and creativity.

An interesting book, with a good premise and good messages delivered through every life our main character lives. It funny and it's unique, although the craziness of the world building in those short stories was a bit confusing, and made me lose focus of the main plot, it felt too much at times. Regardless, it was a good read.

That was such a fun and entertaining read. Reincarnation Blues not only has this great narrative tone but also great imagery and use of language. It's quirky and casual while maintaining a solid foundation in humor, and the underlying seriousness of the Afterlife.

Personification and anthropomorphism play a big part is Poore's exhibition of style. He seems delightfully willing to hand out emotions and human attributes to underscore his intentions. Poore's descriptive language is thoroughly enjoyable to read.