So Bookalicious!: Review: The Lightbearers by Nora M. Garcia

Thursday 17 April 2014

Review: The Lightbearers by Nora M. Garcia

Synopsis

Jean Crystal is held captive on a laboratory table by a motion sensitive laser directed toward her central nervous system. Unaware of her invisible prison, upon awakening from a narcotic sleep induced by Dr. Natas, she attempts to move and finds herself wracked with a mind numbing pain. By astrally projecting herself she is able to overcome the pain and investigate her circumstances. George Martinez, her husband, has already been assassinated and while awaiting her own demise, George pays Jean a visit in the lab, assuring her of their eternal vow to each other. Dr. Natas has developed a school run by robots and computers and Jean and George have discovered the use of a protein chip fed to the children at this school. After Jean is assassinated their spirits reunite to plan their return. They agree upon a place, a time and a signal by which they can find and identify each other in their next lifetime. They plan to meet on the first monday of October, 2024 outside the UCLA Computer Science building. She'll find him sitting under a tree with a guitar strumming and singing "Imagine". The reunion takes place 20 years later, but not without a hitch.

- Goodreads -

Opinion

The Lightbearers had a very unique view on reincarnation. And since I’ve always been intrigued by reincarnation I didn’t hesitate for a moment when I was approached to review this book.

From the first page I got sucked into the story. A women is laying strapped on table. And you can’t help wondering, just like she does, why that is. Through a series of flash backs you find out why this women, Jane, is held prison and how she ended up there.
The flashbacks were interesting because we got to see what happened the years before, even centuries before, through Jane’s eyes.

Throughout the book you find out how Jane first met her husband, George, in ancient Egypt. He was Akhenaten and she was Nerfertiti. And since then they have been inseparable. Every time they die they pick a place and time in the future were they will meet again.
The book is partly set in the future and is shows what technology might do to this world. Dr. Natas is slowly taking over the world with his robots without people even noticing it. Technology definitely is definitely more present in our everyday live, but I can’t see something happening like described in the book. Certainly not in the near future.

What I loved most about this book was the reincarnation. The idea that it might be possible is really appealing to me. The author described well how all the other aspects of a lightbearer like astral projection and telekinesis were possible.
But there were also things I had a lot of trouble with in this book. The author was sometimes to focused on the past and the flash backs. Like when they met in ancient Egypt, that part was essential for the story but it could have been a lot shorter. There were just too many details that weren’t necessary for the book. And the present felt to rushed, sometimes years passed within a page. And suddenly the ending was there and you had no idea what actually happened during those last twenty years. Also there wasn’t enough dialogue in the book for my taste. The book was more descriptive and at times it felt a bit mechanical.

I still give this book tree stars because the concept was definitely very original and there were many times I still enjoyed this book.

*Note I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*