The Collector of Dying Breaths by M J Rose

Do you believe in the idea of reincarnation and of the ability to reanimate someone using their last breath? You don't need to in order to read this book, but I am sure you would find it even more fascinating if you did. As it is, I need to suspend belief on lots of the things that drive the characters and that happen in the book but, in this case, it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the book. That isn't always the case as I have a bit of an up and down reaction to M J Rose's books. The last book in this series that I reviewed was Seduction (the fifth book) having not read The Book of Lost Fragrances and I really think that I would have enjoyed it more had I read in order.

This book is the sixth book in the Reincarnationist series, but I would argue that there are two linked trilogies that form the series. To get the most out of this book I think it definitely helps to have read at least The Book of Lost Fragrances and Seduction because the modern day storyline tracks through these three books.

Let's start with that modern day story. This book picks up two years after the last book. Jac L'Etoile is in Paris, mourning the loss of an incredibly important person in her life. I don't want to say who because even the death happens right at the beginning of the book, it is a character from the previous two books. I will say that I was quite upset that this character had been killed off, but we did get to witness some additional appearances in ghostly and paranormal forms. Jac is invited to recommence working on a project which has an eccentric but very wealthy woman trying to achieve the seemingly impossible - to reanimate a body after death.

Jac is, in effect, continuing the work of Rene le Florentine who was the master perfumer to one of the more infamous women in history, Catherine de Medici, Queen of France in the 16th century. Rene was a young apprentice in a Florentine monastery when he was accused of murder. He was only saved because of his knowledges of perfumes and poisons when Catherine takes him to Paris as part of her retinue as she marries into the French royal family.

Over the years, Rene continues his search for the secret to reanimation that he first started learning when he was still a young boy. He knows that it starts by capturing the very last breath of the person who you want to bring back, and he knows that the process will require many difficult to obtain ingredients but he is determined that he will get to the point of reanimation in time.

Catherine de Medici has been accused of many things both in her lifetime and since her death. She was accused of witchcraft and of poisoning her rivals, and the author skilfully shows how these things might have come to be and what a master perfumer's whose only loyalty is to the queen who saved his life all those years ago role could have been. Even when he comes to love a lady in waiting from the court, it is Catherine who seems to have the last word on the fate of lovestruck Rene.

As part of her research, Jac is taken to Rene's home. She is immediately drawn to the scents that she finds there, quickly locating secret rooms where she finds the perfumers workshop, pretty much untouched in 500 years. She knows that she needs the expertise that Griffin North, the only man she has ever loved, and with whom she believes she has been linked over many lifetimes, many of them ending in tragedy. Jac knows that she has placed Griffin in danger before and so she is determined not to do so again, but Griffin may have other ideas, especially as he is determined to prove once and for all that they belong together.

This is a thriller, so you do have good guys and bad guys, and sometimes people who are both. There is tension and danger and crime and in that regard it works. The most fascinating aspect though is that around scents, particularly the more unusual ingredients that come from very obscure sources like the ambergris which comes from the digestive systems of sperm whales. I find the discussion about how this particular ingredient would likely react different chemically today than it did 500 years before because of how different the environment is quite interesting, and there were numerous other titbits liek that scattered through the book.

I just wanted to mention something about The Book of Lost Fragrances. As I have mentioned, I read this book after I read the subsequent book. Actually I didn't read it but rather I listened to it on audio where it was narrated by the always excellent Phil Gigante. I think it is a sign of a truly excellent narrator if you can still hear their voices when you read other books in the series months down the track. That was particularly true for Griffin's voice!

To me, the end of this book very much felt like the end of this particular thread of story for Jac, although of course I could be completely wrong. It just felt like a good place to leave here. I will therefore be interested to see what M J Rose does next with this series.

Rating 4/5

About the Tour

Tour Schedule: http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/collectorofdyingbreathstour
Tour Hashtag: #DyingBreathsTour
M J Rose's website.
M J Rose on Facebook
M J Rose on Twitter.

About the Book

Publication Date: April 8, 2014
Atria Books
Hardcover; 384p
ISBN-10: 1451621531

From one of America’s most imaginative storytellers comes a passionate tale of love and treachery, spanning the days of Catherine de Medici’s court to the twenty-first century and starring a woman drawn back, time and again, to the past.

In 1533, an Italian orphan with an uncanny knack for creating fragrance is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. To repay his debt, over the years René le Florentine is occasionally called upon to put his vast knowledge to a darker purpose: the creation of deadly poisons used to dispatch the Queen’s rivals.

But it’s René’s other passion—a desire to reanimate a human breath, to bring back the lives of the two people whose deaths have devastated him—that incites a dangerous treasure hunt five centuries later. That’s when Jac L’Etoile—suffering from a heartache of her own—becomes obsessed with the possibility of unlocking Rene’s secret to immortality.

Soon Jac’s search reconnects her with Griffin North, a man she’s loved her entire life. Together they confront an eccentric heiress whose art collection rivals many museums and who is determined to keep her treasures close at hand, not just in this life but in her next.

Set in the forest of Fontainebleau, crisscrossing the lines between the past and the present, M.J. Rose has written a mesmerizing tale of passion and obsession. This is a gothic tale perfect for fans of Anne Rice, Deborah Harkness, and Diana Galbadon.

Seduction by M J Rose

I am going to start with a huge disclaimer about my review of this book. I didn't enjoy this as much as I expected, mainly because it wasn't the book I expected to read.

To be honest, that is my own fault. I have read a number of M J Rose's books before and liked them well enough, but after reading the third book in her Reincarnationist series I decided that was enough for me. It's not that I didn't enjoy the books I read but thrillers aren't really my thing and I am not invested in the paranormal aspects to a great degree, and so I felt it was time to let this series go.

When the next book, The Book of Lost Fragrances, came out last year I stayed strong and didn't read it, just like I apparently didn't read the blurb closely enough when I was offered this book for review. I have a very clear memory of thinking that it was interesting that M J Rose was choosing to go in a new direction. I guess I was stuck on the references to Victor Hugo on the island of Jersey (I had no clue that he had lived there) and didn't actually read the rest of the blurb.

Here's the thing though... the blurb and the cover don't really help considering that there is nothing in either that tells you that this is part of the Reincarnationist series. And that is a real bug to me because as a reader I prefer to read a series in order. I prefer not to find out that a book is part of a series when I read the second chapter and recognise a character name from the previous books. And yes, I am sure that there are plenty of people who would tell me that this is a standalone book, and it was to a degree, but there were still a lot of references to the events of the previous book.

Anyway...enough of my ranty mcranty rant. How about the book itself?

There are three strands in the story that link together over time to form the whole story. The first and most interesting to me related to the aforementioned Victor Hugo who was living in exile on the island of Jersey along with his wife and some of his children, and his mistress. Very cosy! It was while living there that Hugo becomes interested in trying to communicate with his daughter Didine who had died in a boating accident ten years before. He becomes more and more involved with seances and, in doing so, opens himself up to other paranormal experiences. Along the way, Hugo records all of his experiences in some journals, including his relationship with a young woman named Fantine.

In the present day, Jac L'Etoile is asked to head to Jersey by an old friend. Theo and Jac shared an important friendship in their teens but they were separated and hadn't seen each other for many years. Jac is now a mythologist and she is intrigued by the Celtic links that are present in the ruins and the history of the island. When she gets to Jersey and Theo shares the Victor Hugo connection, she is even more intrigued and agrees to help Theo find the lost journals that could reveal more about the famous author's time on the island and also about the history of Theo's family.

The final strand in the story concerns a Druid priest who is called upon to make an unfathomable sacrifice. The emotional trauma to his family presents through time as the characters relive their conflicts time and time again through history in each new identity.

There is much to admire in Rose's writing. The language is evocative, drawing the reader to the past with ease, to the power of scent and it's role in memory and to the shadowy world of seances and ghostly presences. There is no doubt that the writing draws the reader into the story, building the tension as each new twist in the story seems to in turns ravel and unravel the threads in the story. The author must also be commended for not falling into the all too predictable trap of throwing in an obviously romantic conclusion. This doesn't mean that the ending isn't satisfying, because it is, but this is not a 'and they lived happily ever after kind of read'.

Having said that, there were threads that didn't feel fully developed to me, particularly in relation to the losses that Jac was trying to coming to terms with, and I would have liked to have more focus on the historical stories in particular.

If you enjoy a good thriller or like books that explore intellectual discussions of the paranormal realm with interesting historical settings, then this could be a book that you would enjoy. It wasn't a bad read for me, it just wasn't the book that I wanted to read right now. And I suspect that is actually a lot more about me than it was about the book!

Rating 3/5

Tour Details

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Twitter Hashtag: #SeductionVirtualTour
M J Rose's website.
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Synopsis

From the author of The Book of Lost Fragrances comes a haunting novel about a grieving woman who discovers the lost journal of novelist Victor Hugo, awakening a mystery that spans centuries.

In 1843, novelist Victor Hugo’s beloved nineteen-year-old daughter drowned. Ten years later, Hugo began participating in hundreds of séances to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with the likes of Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, Dante, Jesus—and even the Devil himself. Hugo’s transcriptions of these conversations have all been published. Or so it was believed.

Recovering from her own losses, mythologist Jac L’Etoile arrives on the Isle of Jersey—where Hugo conducted the séances—hoping to uncover a secret about the island’s Celtic roots. But the man who’s invited her there, a troubled soul named Theo Gaspard, has hopes she’ll help him discover something quite different—Hugo’s lost conversations with someone called the Shadow of the Sepulcher.

What follows is an intricately plotted and atmospheric tale of suspense with a spellbinding ghost story at its heart, by one of America’s most gifted and imaginative novelists.

The Hypnotist by MJ Rose

An FBI agent, tormented by a death he wasn't able to prevent, a crime he's never been able to solve and a love he's never forgotten, discovers that his true conflict resides not in his past, but in a…Past Life.

Haunted by a twenty-year old murder of a beautiful young painter, Lucian Glass keeps his demons at bay through his fascinating work as a Special Agent with the FBI's Art Crime Team. Currently investigating a crazed art collector who has begun destroying prized masterworks, Glass is thrust into a bizarre hostage negotiation that takes him undercover at the Phoenix Foundation—dedicated to the science of past life study—where, in order to maintain his cover, he agrees to submit to the treatment of a hypnotist.

Under hypnosis, Glass travels from ancient Greece to 19th century Persia, while the case takes him from New York to Paris and the movie capital of world. These journeys will change his very understanding of reality, lead him to question his own sanity and land him at the center of perhaps the most audacious art heist in history: the theft of a 1,500 year old sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

International bestselling author M. J. Rose's The Hypnotist is her most mesmerizing novel yet. An adventure, a love story, a clash of cultures, a spiritual quest, it is above all a thrilling capstone to her unique Reincarnation novels, The Reincarnationist and The Memorist. 

When FBI agent Lucian Glass is attacked during the course of an investigation it isn't the first time that this has happened to him. The first time was twenty years before when he walked into the framing business owned by his girlfriend's father to find her dead and to be attacked himself during a robbery that crossed the line into homicide.

Now he finds himself on the trail of the Memory Tools - a series of objects that are believed to be "deep meditation aids that could help people access past-life memories." The legacy of this second attack are frequent headaches, and a unnerving compulsion to capture images of several women who he has never even met before. All he knows is that he must draw their faces and that he doesn't quite get them right. During the course of the investigation, he finds himself being hypnotised and that those faces are connected to his current case in ways he could never imagine.

In many ways, this is a by-the-book thriller. There are numerous characters, all with their own agendas, and seemingly unconnected until key moments in the story. There are dramatic and life threatening moments, complete with incredible escapes and moments of heroics from the major players in the story. 

The most desperate characters are those who are trying to gain possession of Hypnos, an eight foot tall statue that is said to hold the key to unlock incredible mental powers. Whilst some of those efforts include pursuing legal ownership of the statue, others are prepared to do absolutely anything, including destroy priceless artworks, and kill, to get what they want.

It is the destroyed artwork that begin to draw the threads of the story together for Lucian, for the destroyed painting is the very one that was stolen the night that his girlfriend was murdered, a crime that is still unsolved. It also brings him into contact with her cousin, Emeline, who maybe, just maybe might be the person who can finally help him get past what happened that fateful night.

I mentioned before that this in some ways is a standard thriller style novel. In other ways it really isn't because the background includes discussion of things like past life regression, as well as other forms of reincarnation and the spending time inside the rarefied air of the Metropolitan Museum of Art brings yet another fascinating aspect of the book to the fore.

At its heart this novel is a story about how far different people will go to get their heart's desire, in this case either the statue of Hypnos or the memory tools themselves. At its spiritual core it is a story about the ties bind people to their past lives. As a whole, it is multiple threads of plot woven together with skill.  And for Lucian, it asks the question can he ever get past the tragedies of his past.

When I mentioned a few days ago that I was reading this book, I talked about being uncomfortable with the fact that I was reading a series out of order. M J Rose responded in the comments and said the following:

What connects them is that there are ancient memory tools that have been lost and they aid in reincarnation and in each book a different tool surfaces but an all new group of main characters are involved.

Anything that repeats - like the foundation in NY that studies reincarnation and its directors - is written so that anyone can read any of the books out of order and understand everything. Unlike a book where the main character repeats - these are quite different.

I think given that many of the characters are new in the book, I didn't necessarily worry too much about the fact that I hadn't read the earlier books once I got into the story. I don't know that I necessarily felt the lack of that background, but I have no doubt that there would have been elements that would have been enhanced had I read the previous books.

The thriller is really a genre that I don't read that much of, so I enjoyed this step outside my normal reading comfort zone, and I am planning to read the earlier books in this series soon.

Rating 4/5

Thanks to Meryl L Moss Media Relations for sending me a copy of this book for review purposes and to TLC Booktours for letting my jump on board their blog tour for this book. You can visit other stops on this blog tour at the following stops.

Wednesday, July 21st: The Book Vixen review
Wednesday, July 21st:  The Book Vixen Author Guest Post
Thursday, July 22nd: Rundpinne
Monday, July 26th: Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Tuesday, July 27th:  Fiction Vixen Book Reviews
Tuesday, July 27th:  Layers of Thought Guest Post and Giveaway
Wednesday, July 28th: The Cajun Booklady
Thursday, July 29th: Bellas Novella
Friday, July 30th: Savvy Verse and Wit
Monday, August 2nd: Books, Movies, Reviews! Oh My!
Tuesday, August 3rd: Fantasy & Sci Fi Lovin’ News and Reviews
Wednesday, August 4th:  Rex Robot Reviews
Thursday, August 5th:  Adventures of an Intrepid Reader
Friday, August 6th: Luxury Reading
Monday, August 9th: The Book Faery Reviews
Wednesday, August 11th:  Book Junkie
Thursday, August 12th:  Starting Fresh
Monday, August 16th: The Tome Traveller
Wednesday, August 18th: Layers of Thought

Currently Reading: The Hypnotist by M J Rose

I am doing something a little bit out of the norm for me. I am reading the third book in a series first. Normally I am very much a stickler for reading a series in order, but I am assured that I will not notice it. We'll see I guess. Given that the Publisher's Weekly review says "special agent Lucian Glass of the FBI's Art Crime Team continues to pursue Malachai Samuels of the Phoenix Foundation as well as the list of Memory Tools (deep meditation aids that help people access past-life memories) that Malachai covets." I am not convinced.

So here's the blurb for The Hypnotist:

An FBI agent, tormented by a death he wasn't able to prevent, a crime he's never been able to solve and a love he's never forgotten, discovers that his true conflict resides not in his past, but in a…Past Life.

Haunted by a twenty-year old murder of a beautiful young painter, Lucian Glass keeps his demons at bay through his fascinating work as a Special Agent with the FBI's Art Crime Team. Currently investigating a crazed art collector who has begun destroying prized masterworks, Glass is thrust into a bizarre hostage negotiation that takes him undercover at the Phoenix Foundation—dedicated to the science of past life study—where, in order to maintain his cover, he agrees to submit to the treatment of a hypnotist.

Under hypnosis, Glass travels from ancient Greece to 19th century Persia, while the case takes him from New York to Paris and the movie capital of world. These journeys will change his very understanding of reality, lead him to question his own sanity and land him at the center of perhaps the most audacious art heist in history: the theft of a 1,500 year old sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

International bestselling author M. J. Rose's The Hypnotist is her most mesmerizing novel yet. An adventure, a love story, a clash of cultures, a spiritual quest, it is above all a thrilling capstone to her unique Reincarnation novels, The Reincarnationist and The Memorist.

Very early in the novel there are several famous paintings that are mentioned and that form part of what appears to be quite a complex plot. I am starting to see what role this particular thread of the plot will play, but I could be completely mistaken. I thought I might try to find some pictures of those paintings to share.

The first is View of the Sea at Scheveningen by Vincent Van Gogh.

The second is Beach at Pourville by Claude Monet:

The third is Portrait of a Lady by Gustav Klimt

I couldn't find the name of the fourth painting but it is described as pink roses, so I am hoping it is this one

The final painting mentioned is View of St Tropez by Matisse. I couldn't find an image or a mention of that painting so instead I am sharing View of Collioure.

In the book, the View of St Tropez is described in the following way:

The exuberant brushstrokes, which appeared so primitive up close, created a luminous beach scene when viewed from a few feet away. It was brighter and louder than the Monet - there was more joy in this painting, less contemplation.

This short trailer talks about the whole series. The more I think of it, the more I think I probably have started at the beginning of the series!