Transcendence

So, I admit it.  I had a very lengthy review all typed up here about C.J. Omololu's Transcendence.  And for some reason, my keyboard tends to delete everything with the touch of some mysterious button that I know not it's location (else wise I would destroy it).  I feel like crying.  However, I shall persevere.  The computer shall not win the day!

I will say this, I love time travel books.  Especially those by Connie Willis (just saying check out her books if you haven't).  But, until yesterday, I don't believe I have ever read a book dealing with reincarnation.  Who know it could be so much fun?

Nicole "Cole" Ryan was just a normal sixteen-year-old girl (minus the whole child prodigy bit).  Until she started to "fall" into visions.  Visions of things that happened in the past.  No, not her immediate past, but from times long ago.  We first meet Cole as she is traipsing her way through London to go visit the Tower of London with her sister Kat.  While there, she literally falls on the Tower Green while having a vision of an execution.  It is there that we meet Griffon, a boy who's father is a Tower warden, though conveniently enough for our story, mainly lives in the United States with his mother.  And, it turns out, in the same city that Cole lives in: San Fransisco.  Which is great because she is going to need his help in the future.

Cole is not having idle daydreams.  No.  She is becoming one of the Ahket, which is a group of people who came remember their past lives.  Generally they use this knowledge for good and are assigned tasks once they turn eighteen in order to put their quite literal thousands of years of knowledge for use for the betterment of society.  Except for those who go rogue and use their knowledge for evil and to promote their own agendas. 

Happily for Cole, Griffon is Ahket, and has been one for about four hundred years.  He can be her guide as she tries to wrap her head around the idea that she can remember past lives.  They like each other, but Griffon is carrying a lot of baggage, however, as he can remember all of his previous relationships and while he likes Cole, he isn't sure if he wants to commit to a relationship.  He has promised her that he will protect her "this time".  And why does Cole need protection?  Oh, maybe because there just might be a rogue Ahket after her for something she did in a previous lifetime.  But for what?

I enjoyed getting to know the child prodigy cellist Cole in modern life, but also in her two main previous lives detailed in the book.  That of Lady Allison Wyatt who was executed on Tower Green in 1538 and as Italian cellist Clarissa Catalani who was making a concert tour of America in the late 1800s with a group of young musicians including her best friend, Alessandra Barone and Alessandra's boyfriend Paolo.  Something went wrong in that life, as well, but she isn't quite sure what.  Cole's visions of past lives generally occur when a sight or smell brings a memory to the surface.  However, whenever she touches Veronique, a grad student to whom she is giving cellist lessons, she always gets visions of her life as Clarissa. 

No, not Lady Allison, but rather Lady Jane Grey.

Okay, I admit that I had the correct villain pegged early on, but it was still a fun romp through history.  Plus, that way I could yell at Cole as she attempted to muddle her way through thoughts of "who is causing all of these 'accidents' around me". 

I can't wait to read the second book, as I am guessing that we are going to be learning more about her life as Lady Allison and perhaps discover why she had to die.  And, hopefully we will get a bit more insight into Griffon and perhaps some of his other lives.  A girl can dream, right?