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A review by book_concierge
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
4.0
Audiobook performed by Anna Fields
In the sequel to Russell’s stellar The Sparrow, Father Emilio Sandoz has made significant progress in recovering from his injuries suffered on the first mission to the planet Rakhat. His body may be healed but his soul is still in turmoil, and the last thing he wants is to return to the place where all other members of the mission met their deaths. But then ….
Once again Russell gives us a morality play in a science fiction setting. I marvel at how richly imagined and intricately detailed the world of Rakhat and its inter-dependent species are. We learn what those first explorers – as well as the Runa and Jana’ata – misunderstood about these new cultures and how small mistakes led to devastating consequences. Russell shows that the influence of the humans, despite their original intention to merely observe, has drastically changed the natural balance that had existed and even led to civil war.
Even more than the first book, Russell plays with time and location, moving back and forth between Earth and Rakhat, between the “present” and the future. Time is relative, after all. This is a difficult technique to pull of and Russell does is marvelously well. However … there is one segment where she takes the characters into the future to have one of the Jana’ata explain what had happened when the humans were still traveling. This automatically lessens some of the suspense because we know the humans live. Was this done to give us hope? To reinforce the message that bad things can happen to good people? I found it jarring and felt I had missed something important until I recognized the jump in time.
This novel is also much more philosophical than her first book. The characters have significant conversations about their purpose and beliefs; they consider and are sometimes forced to listen to “the other side of the story,” changing their (and the reader’s) initial impressions of what has happened and why. And, as is suggested by the title, the story is very spiritual. I am reminded of the closing lines of John Gillespie Magee Jr’s poem High Flight
“And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
It’s a fascinating story, and gave me much to think about, so why not 5 stars? Somehow the novel lacked the impact of Russell’s first work. I think that was because too much time was spent on the civil war and various Runa and Jana’ata characters, and less time was spent with Sandoz and Mendes. THAT was the story I really wanted to know about and I felt a little disappointed in how little of the novel involved them. Additionally, as a sequel I cannot really recommend it to everyone I meet … you must have read The Sparrow first.
Anna Fields does a marvelous job performing the audio book. She has good pacing and her ease with pronouncing all those different names and foreign phrases is admirable. Her gift for voices and dialect makes it very easy to differentiate the many characters (mostly male) in the novel. Makes me wonder if Russell had the potential for audio in mind when she created the multi-cultural cast of characters.
In the sequel to Russell’s stellar The Sparrow, Father Emilio Sandoz has made significant progress in recovering from his injuries suffered on the first mission to the planet Rakhat. His body may be healed but his soul is still in turmoil, and the last thing he wants is to return to the place where all other members of the mission met their deaths. But then ….
Once again Russell gives us a morality play in a science fiction setting. I marvel at how richly imagined and intricately detailed the world of Rakhat and its inter-dependent species are. We learn what those first explorers – as well as the Runa and Jana’ata – misunderstood about these new cultures and how small mistakes led to devastating consequences. Russell shows that the influence of the humans, despite their original intention to merely observe, has drastically changed the natural balance that had existed and even led to civil war.
Even more than the first book, Russell plays with time and location, moving back and forth between Earth and Rakhat, between the “present” and the future. Time is relative, after all. This is a difficult technique to pull of and Russell does is marvelously well. However … there is one segment where she takes the characters into the future to have one of the Jana’ata explain what had happened when the humans were still traveling. This automatically lessens some of the suspense because we know the humans live. Was this done to give us hope? To reinforce the message that bad things can happen to good people? I found it jarring and felt I had missed something important until I recognized the jump in time.
This novel is also much more philosophical than her first book. The characters have significant conversations about their purpose and beliefs; they consider and are sometimes forced to listen to “the other side of the story,” changing their (and the reader’s) initial impressions of what has happened and why. And, as is suggested by the title, the story is very spiritual. I am reminded of the closing lines of John Gillespie Magee Jr’s poem High Flight
“And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
It’s a fascinating story, and gave me much to think about, so why not 5 stars? Somehow the novel lacked the impact of Russell’s first work. I think that was because too much time was spent on the civil war and various Runa and Jana’ata characters, and less time was spent with Sandoz and Mendes. THAT was the story I really wanted to know about and I felt a little disappointed in how little of the novel involved them. Additionally, as a sequel I cannot really recommend it to everyone I meet … you must have read The Sparrow first.
Anna Fields does a marvelous job performing the audio book. She has good pacing and her ease with pronouncing all those different names and foreign phrases is admirable. Her gift for voices and dialect makes it very easy to differentiate the many characters (mostly male) in the novel. Makes me wonder if Russell had the potential for audio in mind when she created the multi-cultural cast of characters.