The Collector of Dying Breaths by M.J. Rose
Published By: Atria Books (@AtriaBooks)
(an imprint of Simon & Schuster: @simonschuster), 8 April, 2014
Official Author Websites: Site | Twitter | Facebook | GoodReads
Available Formats: Hardback & E-Book
Page Count: 384
Converse on Twitter: #TheCollectorOfDyingBreaths, #TheReincarnationist,
Acquired Book By: I was selected to be a tour stop on the “The Collector Of Dying Breaths” virtual book tour through HFVBT: Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. I received a complimentary ARC copy of the book direct from publisher Atria Books, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Intrigued to Read:
What sparked my interest is the aspect of reincarnation stitched into the series as a whole as I used to collect books on reincarnation when The Reincarnation Library was still in existence, which was a small publisher who curated titles which had fallen out of print and then, re-issued the books in such lovely editions as cloth-bound hardback copies! The titles were both non-fiction and fiction dealing with as many different aspects of reincarnation as you could be happenstance to stumble across! In the series Rose has created, the idea of coming across tools to add one’s memory of past lives is more than tempting to explore!
– as quoted from Jorie’s Box of Joy No.3
Book Synopsis:
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.
Author Biography:
M.J. Rose is the international best selling author of fourteen novels and two non-fiction books on marketing. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in many magazines and reviews including Oprah Magazine. She has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the ’80s in advertising, has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and since 2005 has run the first marketing company for authors – Authorbuzz.com. The television series PAST LIFE, was based on Rose’s novels in the Renincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and runs the blog- Buzz, Balls & Hype. She is also the co-founder of Peroozal.com and BookTrib.com.
Rose lives in CT with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.
A bit of a note on the Reincarnationist series:
I had the forethought to consume the previous books in the Reincarationist series ahead of my stop on this particular blog tour, except to say the hours flew out the window before I could even grasp a strong hold of them! I even attempted to finish where I was happily entrenched inside “The Book of Lost Fragrances” as I had picked up the first trilogy of novels (“The Reincarnationist”, “The Memorist”, & “The Hypnotist”) during Bout of Books Readathon 10.0 this past month, however, unfortunately for me I could not settle my mind & heart into the first book of the series. There was too much starkly dark & intense sequences to where I could not gather a secure footing into the series. I was about to chuck the whole idea completely and simply read the novel at hand, when I realised that perhaps out of the research I had conducted ahead of my Interview with Ms. Rose, perhaps the more telling truth is that I should begin this series on book four “The Book of Lost Fragrances”!
Clearly, led to read that particular book for a reason, I had washed away the outside world and entered the realm between the character Jac L’Etoile’s quest to save her family’s parfum business and the counter weight of dipping back into the historical past whilst there was a tomb being uncovered in Egypt during Napoleon’s reign! I loved the shifting perspectives in time and place, as much as the appeal for me to approach the notion of a ‘scent’ of lingering death & life wrapped inside the vial of a singular parfum which could effectively bring back a person’s recollective memory!
The book was taking me on this adventurist journey where I felt as though I had morphed a bit through the pages as I was reading the text of the story! I love the sensation of stepping through the lens and portal of stories, where we can feel ourselves being inserted into the character’s mind, heart, and spirit!? Those are the stories which linger around our mind’s eye and do not let us abate from our murmurings after their stories are known. I have come across quite a few since I first started my sojourn with M.J. Rose’s series and I am hopeful that as I conclude reading “The Collector of Dying Breaths” I will be hungry to return backwards through “Seduction” & “The Book of Lost Fragrances” because for me the Reincarationist series begins at the jettison point of fragrance!
My Review of The Collector of Dying Breaths:
A small collection of memories filled my mind’s eye as I settled into Chapter 3, as Robbie was a robust brother surprising his sister after a long absence from each other where I had left him last in The Book of Lost Fragrances. To find him abreast his deathbed in The Collector of Dying Breaths was a bit difficult to take in at first, but then, given the nature of the story nearly felt a bit fitting as his sister Jac E’Toile had not yet risen to her position of one gifted with a nose for scent! She was struggling to come to terms with her father’s incapacity to run the family’s business in the previous installment, which positioned the state of the company in the worst of straits. She was attempting to make logical sense out of chaos, and apparently, wherever her path led her then she was still not comfortable rising into the shoes her father believed she should wear even now.
The story transitions between the 16th Century and the Modern Era, as the juxtaposition between Jac attempting to sort out the mystery of the ‘dying breath’ formula for not only percuring a dying breath from the moment it escapes the body but to captialise on the re-cataclysmal nature of its ability where le Florentine left off. The shifting eras heighten the arc of the history contained in the narrative, as both perspectives help fill in the missing pieces of what is not known when a reader such as I had not fully eclipsed the previous two volumes. A fluttering of recognition murmurs back into my ears as I read the current status of Jac’s life, with full measurement of sorrow expelled.
There is an allure of unweaving the past in such a way as to untangle each thread to reveal what each layer of its knowledge can speak through the centuries. The adventure awaiting inside is one hidden within the folds of time, of centuries past, and of lives destroyed or anguished by the actions of others. It is through precognitive dreams and premonition states of awareness that Jac is able to gain further insight into what she already knows and yet has already forgotten the knowledge of. The way in which Rose heightens our awareness of each past life through Jac’s perception of the lives themselves is seamlessly interlocked into the narrative itself. We can meander through a past life’s revealing scene as quickly as we can re-adjust into the present. The writing is writ in such a way as your mind feels betwixt knowing what is being revealed and what is being kept hidden.
The time that Jac spends at the château in France reminds me of my own fever of excitement to visit a physical place whose heritage runs the gambit of time itself. Centuries folding on top of centuries, allows the mind and the heart to imagine what life would have revealed if a little measurement of that lived age during the height of its hour were to be seen? What secrets would spill out of its tome of silence? What ruminations of boundless energy and knowledge outside the perimeters of one lived generation could encompass to contain? A quickening of excitement to find a tangible connection to the past in the present has a very real appeal to me. Likewise, whilst Jac was at the château it was entirely plausible that she was touching on ripples within the time continuance which allowed her to see what was no longer there.
The shroud of mystery surrounding Malachai etches away as bits of his humanity shine out inside the middle of the story, where he opens himself to vulnerability for the first time since Jac had known him. They share a close bond yet a complicated one as he has always been in full belief of her abilities whereas she has always been the cynic who attempts to root out the logic. In this installment of the saga, we find his human heart and his passionate disappointment for a love gone sour. Jac in this instance is turnt to as a listening ear, whereas previously their roles were quite reversed. The wounded is now in effect helping the healer. Jac is a woman who sees herself as a wounded bird whose wings are not quite set to fly. Her stasis is self-inflicted out of fear and out of the inability to shift past what she fears as the unknown gap between what can be logically proven by science and what has to be accepted on faith.
This is a story etched out of history’s tapestry of where the fates of entwined lovers cross against the barriers of time. Where the allure of reincarnation and of a life past the one once lived fever a man’s brow to gain a power he can barely understand much less muster into creation. The story is haunting as it is real, traumatic as it is emotional, but more than that, is a cautionary tale for how best to live each breath we’re given whilst we’re alive.
A note of curiosity the passages on pages 80-82 where Jac describes her history with hallucinations vs past lives is nearly word for word how I remember it being explained and disclosed from “The Book of Lost Fragrances” and there were a few other sequences as well that I felt stemmed out of my earlier reading of the former book. I do know that writers can sometimes stitch into successive volumes of a series ‘a walkabout of timelines and facts’ and having thus recognised this particular cluster as one of the larger ones, I do not think anyone would have trouble in following the pace nor the intricacies between where “The Book of Lost Fragrances” begins, “Seduction” continues, and where “The Collector of Dying Breaths” picks up from a combination of the previous two adventures.
This Book Review is courtesy of:
as I am happily honoured to be a blog tour hostess for:
Please visit my Bookish Events page to stay in the know for upcoming events!
Previously I interviewed M.J. Rose on the Dying Breaths Tour!
My upcoming tour for HFVBT is “Mrs. Poe” by Lynn Cullen 5-6th of June!
{SOURCES: Book cover for “The Collector of Dying Breaths”, Author Biography, Author Photograph of M.J. Rose, Book Synopsis, the blog tour banner and the HFVBT banner were provided by HFVBT – Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Blog Tour badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.
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