I didn't hate this book, but it was a bit of a letdown after The Sparrow. I really enjoy Russell's writing, so I had high hopes for this one. To be honest, though, it comes off like she was writing fanfiction about her own work. (Spoiler Alert) Like "Author's Note: This is a fic where Sofia actually didn't die and she lives on Rakhat and Emilio is going to get married then he gets kidnapped and taken back and there's like this huge ass war on Rakhat. Please R and R!"I really admired Russell's non-linear style in book 1, but here she jumps around so much that it's honestly hard to determine what happened when.The characters themselves don't exactly fit in with the characterization from The Sparrow. Sofia is the most problematic - in The Sparrow, she was a semi-devout Jew, at least devout enough to travel to Israel for a mikveh and she mentions at least once "the ashes of the six million." And she was a survivor of the "Second Kurdish War." In Children of God, she basically authors genocide. No joke. Given her background and apparent concern for the Holocaust, for this character to incite a war with a little 'final solution to the Jana'ata problem' on the side makes no logical sense. Despite Sofia's strong sympathy with the Runao, one would think that a Jewish character who had survived a war wouldn't, let's see now, behave exactly like Hitler. Unless this was some kind of very poorly rendered metaphor/life lesson of which I've missed the point entirely.The idea that a handful of humans could cause such upheaval on Rakhat is rather blatant imperialism. Despite their professed politically correct sensitivity that all on Earth will have reached by the 2016, the characters from the Sparrow and Children of God have no respect for the Rakhati way of doing business (ie Jana'ata eating the Runao. The Runao are basically cool with this until the humans show up). The humans manipulate intelligent beings (capable of transmitting signals to Earth when Earth can't figure out how to transmit signals to them) into doing "World War II Except With Aliens" and completely reversing a society that has been established since time immemorial. Yeah. And then...Heeeerrre they come to save the daaaaaayyyyy!!! Another Jesuit mission!! Emilio Sandoz who gets some kind of redemption or something! Reunited and it feels to good to play Simon Wiesenthal to Sofia "Himmler" Mendes. When those 'stupid aliens' epicfail and the Jana'ata are nearly extinct, the new crop of Jesuits fixes everything and everyone lives in peace and harmony, the end. And there's some kind of boring subplot with Sofia's autistic son. It doesn't have much to do with the book, aside from letting Russell's camera stay mostly on the humans.Honestly, it's not a terrible book. If you loved The Sparrow, you might like Children of God. It's nice to catch up with the few characters that remain, and Russell does tie up all the loose plot threads neatly, if not satisfactorily.
Children of God is the by-design sequel to The Sparrow.Should you pick up this book before having read The Sparrow, carefully take it out and place it carefully on the table/bookcase/floor and walk away as if it was filled with aging (and unstable) TNT. Locate a copy of The Sparrow and read it. Then and only then should you retrieve this book and commence to read it. You may not like either book, but you will thank me for this.Because this is a true sequel, it dovetails completely with The Sparrow. At least half of this book explains what happens at the end of its predecessor and how that affected the central character. The rest tells new stories and throws a zinger at you from the opening. Like the first novel, the book is split into different timelines and stories, but instead of being a clear before and after, it is all part of the “after”. Personally, I found the interleaved stories to flow more consistently than they did in The Sparrow, but there were still points at which I was frustrated by it. It settles down more (like the first novel) in the last quarter of the book.I am not going to write too much about the plot or contents of the book. It’s too easy to spoil things for another reader. I think that this book requires more fortitude and grit on the part of the reader because so much of the material is dark. Suffering, misery, abuse, and hatred are expressed and examined at great length. This isn’t gratuitous: they make the characters stronger and the novel depends on the depths of these emotions in order to create the story as we are meant to experience it.As usual, I have forestalled looking at anyone else’s review before composing this, but I have read that the author thinks that many people like this novel better than the first. I can’t say that is true for me. I liked the inventiveness that went into the first one; new languages, a culture and a whole world were created. In this novel we deal more with the frailness of humans and our beliefs as well as how one people overthrow another. Less is made up from the author’s mind, but she delves deeper into our psyche. I think both novels are powerful books well-written and full of ideas, but as they are so very different, there is no better or worse in an objective sense. At a personal level I am more in tune with the discovery of an ET world and the voyage to explore it. So I would say that I liked The Sparrow better on that basis.In any event, read The Sparrow and then read Children of God. Four-and-one-half (4.5) stars . As before, I am rounding it up for Goodreads.
What do You think about Children Of God (1999)?
Yes, Meghan, you were right.The sequel does redeem quite a lot of what ticked me off about the first book. Although there are even more bits of Jewish law and lore that are gotten WRONG WRONG WRONG! (view spoiler)[(No, Jewishness being passed through the mother is not something that changed during Middle Ages to legitimize the children of raped Jewish women.It dates from Sinai. And even if you are going by textual evidence in Tanach, it dates from at least the time of Ezra.) (hide spoiler)]
—rivka
I'm not sure I like the appellations "good or bad" for this book and its predecessor. It can't really be said (I don't believe) that these books are "enjoyable". Still, they are good and I recommend them highly. You may not want to "re-read" these as they are or can be somewaht painful in some ways if you identify with any of the characters. BUT, they will I believe touch you.The topics dealt with here are ones that will I believe at least provoke thought. I can't say how they will hit each reader. There are ideas and thoughts that are (at least peripherially) looked at from an attempted Christian perspective. The main character is a Roman Catholic and his life is what it his due to his experiences in The Sparrow. I won't say Christians will find anything here that they haven't considered before, but they will find it discussed in a different vehicle.I'm not sure it's correct to say I "liked"it, but I will say it's worthwhile.
—Mike (the Paladin)
I started reading this book back in 2004, right after I finished The Sparrow. When Emilio ended up on that ship headed back to space, I quit reading. Hasn't he been through enough already? I wanted him to marry Gina and have a nice life. Poor guy! I didn't want to go back to Rakhat myself and I didn't blame him for not wanting to go either. 4 1/2 years later, I picked the book up again and this time I read it all the way through. I love Mary Doria Russell and just hosted her at our library for a One Book, One Community event featuring A Thread of Grace. I knew I owed it to her and to myself to finish Children of God. You've got to love the first paragraph of this novel,"Celestina Guiliani learned the word "slander" at her cousin's baptism. That is what she remembered about the party, mostly, aside from the man who cried."From there, Russell spins a tale woven of misunderstandings and conflict. She does an excellent job of explaining what went wrong on the Jesuit mission in The Sparrow. But she doesn't hand it over to us all wrapped up with a bow. She makes us work for it, there are no easy answers. But in the end, we find redemption and reconciliation. The bottom line of this book is that "every soul is a small reflection of God, and that it is wicked to murder because when a life is taken, we lose that unique revelation of God's nature," p. 413. This is as true for the Jana'ata and Runa as it is for Israelis and Palestinians, Bosnians and Serbs, Tutsis and Hutus. Was the Jesuit mission really ordained by God? Did God have a reason for bringing these people to Rakhat? See p. 427. " . . . we are all--Jana'ata and Runa and H'uman--children of a God so high that our ranks and our differences are as nothing in his far sight" p. 358.See also pp. 146, description of joy--p. 237, "The great appeal of Jesus is the willingness of God to walk among the benighted creatures He just can't seem to give up on. There is a glorious looniness to it--the magnificent eternal gesture of salvation, in the face of perennial, thickheaded human inanity! I like that in a deity" p. 264."What if Moses had been an Egyptian, raised among the Hebrews?" p. 379Sandoz cries p. 401"If I can find you ten (innocents), will you spare the others for their sake?" p. 412-413
—Holli
