Take A Walk On The Wilder Side Of Death With 'Reincarnation Blues'

Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, video games, books and Starblazers. He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, but when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.

For a book that is all about death and dying — for a book which counts among its main characters an actual embodiment of Death (named Suzie) — Michael Poore's Reincarnation Blues is surprisingly goofy.

And I mean that in the sweet way. The way because goofy isn't easy to pull off in a serious book (which is), but Poore does it brilliantly. It is the story of 10,000 deaths — some good, most bad — and it begins like this: "This is a story about a wise man named Milo. It begins on the day he was eaten by a shark."