Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

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?

Jodi Meadows expertly weaves soul-deep romance, fantasy, and danger into an extraordinary tale of new life.


This book had me so torn. When it came down to sitting and writing out my thoughts on the book I found they are jumbled and are hard to express. But I am going to try. Firstly I was not sure for a long time how I was going to rate the book, but I decided to stick with my gut feelings and stay with the 3 stars over a 4.
Let me firstly say that I am lover of character driven books. I wanted so much for Ana to be a heroine that was tough, strong and kicked butt. I feel that she did not quite meet what I expected of her. She is a soft spoken and naive girl. She does slowly grow throughout this story, but when it came down to the absolute ending when I wanted to her just fight, I felt that she came off a little flat. There was one instance in the very end of the story I was proud of her, but it wasn't that emotional culmination I was expecting. Which also may be explained by the fact that this is the first in a series, so they had to leave some of the anticipation for the next book? I don't know.
The majority of the story we get to know Sam and Ana. They travel together and they learn from each other and grow to care about each other. Even though Ana is a new soul and very naive about the way things are I do believe that Sam learns just as much from her and she from him. When it came down to the subject of music and learning music, I felt these parts of the story dragged a little, the pace slowed incredibly and it really took me a while to get back into the world around them.
The ending and the world building is what almost brought the story up to 4 stars
for me. I just wished it hadn't felt like it took so long to get there and then it ends too fast. Right as everything really gets interesting the story ends. The world is by far a 5 star rating, but the characters and the pace had a lot more potential.
This is not a negative review. 3 stars does mean that I liked this book. In fact after that ending I am still looking forward to see what happens in the next book, and I love the cover, that artwork is amazing.
My favorite part of the novel is the main idea, that the souls are reincarnated. I giggled at the concept of being reborn as another sex. My imagination goes wild thinking of what that would be like to be in love with somebody, and having you or them reborn into a different body altogether. How love can have no boundaries? But what if your love was not born until you were 40 or 50 years old..is that possible to still be in love yet so far apart in age. My opinion is yes, it's the actual acts and in intenseness of the emotion of love that changes, not the feeling.