In this tale, souls get 10,000 chances to reach perfection.
If they achieve this, they go into the great cosmic soul forever; bliss, but
with no individuality. If they fail, they are obliterated forever. Most people
manage it in significantly fewer than 10,000 lives. Not Milo, though- Milo is
at 9,995 and it’s not looking promising. Milo knows this- at least between
lives, he does. During the resting period between lives, a soul is fully
conscious of all their lives. In Milo’s case, two spirits (deities? Avatars?),
Ma and Nan, aid (mostly by harassing) his journey to perfection. Also with him
between lives is one of the many avatars of death, Suzie. Suzie and Milo are in
love. They want to find a way to stay together. Also, Suzie wants to stop being
death and open a candle shop.
We follow Milo through a number of his lives. Lives can be
as anything; trees, kings, cats, pirates, slugs, slaves, male, female, poor,
rich, whatever. He comes *close* to perfection, but somehow always screws it up
at the end. The lives are pretty interesting; short tales of near perfection in
a prison, turning around the human race on a different prison world where the
Water Cartels run everything; and tiny tales, a page long or less, of marching
in Selma Ala., and hiding a cache of Polish pornography from the Nazis. Some
tales of being not so nice a person. He also has adventures between lives, too-
the afterlife is quite a busy place. The whole book is a collection of short
stories, with Milo (he tends to keep that name throughout) as the star of them
all. Some parts are horrific, some are very funny- his style reminds me of
Christopher Moore (and, at times, of certain periods of Robert Heinlein’s work)-
but for some reason, Milo never seems to take anything seriously. It made it a
little difficult for me to really feel for him. Suzie isn’t around enough to
make a real connection with her. I really enjoyed the book- it’s a lot of fun!-
but for some reason I just can’t make it five stars. Four stars out of five.
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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review.
neither of these things influenced my review.
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