I was predisposed to hate this book. Both the title and the cover screamed "Preachy New Age." I'm so glad I'm in a reading group, and we chose it, for this is one great read.The story and characters are much better than the background. This is science fiction without the science. The most important hydrogen refueling planet is an earth type water world, with active volcanoes and no moon. Why extracting hydrogen from water is cheaper than skimming gas giants is never explained, or how a moonless world stays habitable (the Carbon Cycle should be broken and all oxygen should get locked up). And how you would have star-flight and still have humans, un-enhanced, very mortal, with our same life expectancy. The story, however, blew me away. A child is found on the refueling world, and returned to Earth against her will. The protagonist is a woman Catholic priest (why the cover art didn't include a collar is beyond me) and anthropologist sent to be her guardian. The company that owns the refueling operation wants the child for something else, something medical, and isn't sharing that information with the protagonist. Very early in the story you get mystery, tension, and powerful emotion. One relationship did bother me. That of the corporate CEO and one if its doctors. The doctor seemed outclassed by the rest of the main characters, I never did figure out why he was allowed to stay on the job when the CEO should have had better talent at her beck and call.However, each mystery that is resolved leads to a further and more profound one. By the time the book is wrapping up, the reader has followed these characters though many intense changes.
This was written in exactly the sort of "touchy-feely/hippity-dippity/medicine-woman" voice that I expected from the cover and the bookjacket blurb references to a nun and a child. I think I picked it up to prove myself wrong about "pre-judging"... Too bad I wasn't wrong and the most generous thing I can say is: The underlying mystery is not, ultimately, *that* interesting and the characters are all sort of... Meh... Then again, in it's good moments it's trying to tell an original story or suggest bits of original ideas that could have been exciting in the hands of a "crackpot craftsman"-type worldbuilder like Alan Dean Foster or Charles Maine.
What do You think about The Child Goddess (2005)?
I have always loved Louise Marley's books from the first book I'd read of hers The Terrorists of Irustan, and this book is no different. Marley weaves her characters into her stories. She blends plot, emotion, texture, sound, and culture expertly leaving you wanting to read more about the world that she creates.That being said, I was frustrated with this book with how she treated the mystery of Oa - I felt that she took too long to unfold the mystery. I won't say much more because I don't want to leave spoilers. But overall, I would happily read it again, and recommend it to others.
—Liz
I was so caught up in the story I hardly noticed the time passing, and read the entire book in one sitting. I especially loved Oa's point of view, how alien everything seemed to her, and how naturally the author managed to conceal an important secret and then reveal it bit by bit. I also loved the interplay of faith and science here, seen in the two main characters of Isabel and Oa. Isabel is a priest in a time when technology is crowding out faith. And Oa baffles everyone around her by giving religious answers to their scientifically based questions. Neither viewpoint is "correct", nor complete.
—Sylvia Sybil
The Child Goddess is what I consider to be futuristic Science Fiction. Isabelle, a Magdalene priest, is called to be the guardian of Oa, a child brought to Earth from a distant planet. Oa's home planet is small, with hardly any landmass, and the inhabitants, who live primitively, are thought to be the descendants of group of people who’d been lost after leaving earth 300 years before. There is conflict because a large corporation wants to take hydrogen fuel form Oa’s planet. Oa’s life on her home planet has been difficult. It is discovered that Oa and some others like her on her planet do not age. Why they do not and how to solve this problem, is taken on by Simon. Isabelle and Simon it seems have been romantically involved in the past event though she is a priest and he is married. So there is also some romantic tension in the story.This is a fairly peaceful story. There are not robot wars or anything like that. However, there are still some tense moments in the story.
—Kit
