The Reincarnationist Papers

The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz

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The setup of this book is that the author has found three volumes of Bulgarian memoirs. The memoirs narrate in the first person the story of an arsonist who discovers that he is one of the very small minority of people who perfectly recall their past lives. Life, for them, is not a matter of starting from scratch, but, rather, a continuation of one life through a succession of bodies.

There are about thirty such people in the world. They have formed a society called the Cognomen for their mutual benefit and friendship. The arsonist, Evan, is discovered by a member of the Cognomen by chance and taken to their home base in Zurich, where he is admitted to the society and learns about the past lives of a couple of members.

The story was competently written. I enjoyed it and felt involved in the writing. The problem I had is that the element of “conflict” was mostly missing. Certainly, I wanted to know about this mode of existence and the society of reincarnationists. So, the question of what's going on provides some conflict, but of a minor sort. Likewise, Evan has some problems with the hedonism of his mentor, but this is minor. He also gets involved in a theft, which leaves him in a dire situation, but at the end, since he reincarnate, the situation does not seem so dire.

Maybe that's the theme of the book - reincarnation solves everything?

There are a couple of books that this reminds me of. Steven Brust has a couple of books called “The Incrementalists” which involve personal survival by a small group of people able to implant their psyches into the minds of other people (who are than suppressed.) Michael Marshall Smith The intruders is also a story of a secret society where people can arrange to have themselves reborn.

There are some attempts at deep thinking where the character has discussions about whether the Reincarnationists are divine, or, at least, kind of divine. None of this was really deep. Most of it was mildly insulting to the thinking capacity of anyone who takes spiritual issues seriously

The book accomplished what it set out to accomplish. It did not do more than that. Of these three similar stories, The Intruders is the best as a story.