`LAW OF LOVE' A WILD RIDE : MULTISENSORY ADVENTURE NOT FOR FAINTHEARTED.

Byline: Marta Barber Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Title: ``The Law of Love''

Author: Laura Esquivel

Data: 288 pages, 11-song CD, Crown; $25

Our rating: Four Stars

Pack your preconceptions lightly, leave behind your inhibitions, and loosen your judgmental seat belt. There's a helluva ride waiting for you in Laura Esquivel's ``The Law of Love,'' the second novel by the author who tantalized us with her old-fashioned recipes for unrequited love and elaborate Mexican food in ``Like Water for Chocolate.''

Be ready to travel through time, from the 16th century to the 23rd, with stops along the way in 1985 (the year of the Mexico City earthquake) and at the turn of the 19th century. This is a voyage of reincarnation and out-of-this-world encounters, of computer-age wizardry and ages-old Guardian Angels, of soul-searching and body-swapping. It is a mystery oozing political and social accusations and a story of love found and lost. It is at times hilarious, at times biting, at times hard to follow but always intriguing. And it is different.

The story begins in the chaotic days of the fall of the Aztecs to the conquering Spaniards. A ``valiant captain'' in Cortes' army becomes obsessed with an Indian noblewoman, rapes her on the sacred Pyramid of Love, impregnates her and keeps her as little more than a slave when his wife arrives from Spain. Rodrigo the Conquistador, Citlali the noble Aztec, Isabel the Spanish wife and the child of Rodrigo and Citlali die, take on other bodies, other souls, other names throughout the centuries taking their turns as predator or prey, perpetrator or victim, manifesting hate, revenge, destruction, but ultimately redemption: One of them is called upon seven centuries later to implement the Law of Love.

If taste is the catalyst in ``Like Water for Chocolate,'' here the sense of hearing delights - and bruises - body and soul by awakening `` ... energy receptors in the human body called chakras. ... As each chakra ... resonates, so does that of its twin (soul), and these two identical tones generate a subtle energy that courses through the spinal column, rising to the brain center and bursting outward to fall like a shower of color saturating the aura from top to bottom.''

Music is also a mirror to the past, one needed to be unveiled to regress into the subconscious. At specified moments during the narrative, the reader is to play a track from the accompanying CD, each one a piece of the puzzle. Puccini, the romantic Italian composer of ``Madama Butterfly'' and ``Tosca,'' is a favorite: five of his arias plus a portion of another are included. When his music is playing, the words stop and images (artwork by Spanish artist Miguelanxo Prado) take over. Listen - and look - intently; for within the sublime opera arias are hidden the swooshing sound of a sword, a helicopter dashing through, the sobs of a woman, images unfolding in front of your eyes. Why describe rape and murder when music and drawings paint the picture in your mind? The perplexing combination works.

As you plunge into the labyrinthine plot wondering who's who - and sometimes the revelations are not that pretty - the mysterious path lures you in with its magical images: the 660-pound daughter of a presidential candidate sitting atop a pyramid bursting with the candidate's skeletons of her past; a brilliant diamond capturing a soul's most inner feelings on its way to reincarnation.

Despite a lack of attachment to any of the characters, the book's love-conquers-all message paves the way to pardon past sins while delivering an uplifting philosophy, though its can't-we-all-get-along stance at times borders on the Pollyanna-esque.

It seems that for Esquivel, life with all of its passions forms a pentagram, five parallel lines each corresponding to a sense. She's pulled already the strings of taste and hearing. What's next? Touch? Smell?

``The Law of Love'' may not be for everyone. You can't ``read'' it quietly in bed, unless your portable CD player has earplugs, and you'd be missing a lot if you allow yourself to skip the music, even if you don't like dancing alone, as some tracks call for. The plot may be disorienting, and knowing something about Mexican politics and history is helpful for the double entendres. But, that's like trying to guess the meaning of Mona Lisa's smile without admiring the painting.

If your imagination lets you run for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, Laura Esquivel's multisensory novel dares you to travel along the a-maze-ing path of ``The Law of Love.'' It's that much of an adventure.

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Photo: no caption (Book cover - The Law of Love)