Review of "The Mills of God"
by Justin Smith

The Mills of God
by
Justin R. Smith

Constance Fairchild loses her parents when she is 14. With only a few distant relatives surviving, including her enormously wealthy and mysterious grandfather, she is sent to a boarding school in Lucerne. Soon after, she determines that the strange visions that she sees are memories of a previous life. In deed, she even finds hard proof that she was a computer security consultant that died shortly before she was born.

Constance's life at the school is far from normal. Someone is bugging her room, and she's being followed. Soon, to make matters worse, her acquaintances and friends start turning up dead. It's up to her and knowledge remembered from her former life to figure out just what is going on.

Smith writes well for a first time Novelist. The style is straight forward and easy to follow, while the first person point of view makes it easy to sympathize with the protagonist. The pace is a bit slow at first as Constance adjusts to her life at the school in Lucerne, but it picks up in the second half.

One issue I had was that the reincarnation theme really only impacts the plot at the beginning and end. It's kind of forgotten through the majority of the novel where it seems to do little more than to serve as a reason for Constance to philosophize.

I was also a little bit disappointed at the climax when the two main antagonists meet their resolution "off stage", so to speak. Rather than being seen or experienced by the protagonist, their plot outcomes are merely discussed in retrospect.

Mills has suspense to spare and the mystery is not one you're likely to guess to soon. There is also a good helping of poetry sprinkled in to spice things up. The Mills of God is an intriguing read whose suspense, philosophy and speculative aspects will keep the reader engaged and introspective.

--Daniel