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The Sparrow

The Sparrow is an outstanding first contact novel. It takes place in the early and mid 21st century, when humans detect radio signals from the Alpha Centauri system. While the world is trying to decide what to do about it, the Society of Jesuits assembles a mission and sends it out to make contact.

The novel is told simultaneously in two time frames: The book opens with the sole survivor of the mission, Father Emilio Sandoz, recovering from what soon are revealed to have been horrible experiences during his four years on Rakhat. Second, an equally weighty flashback sequence details the background of Sandoz and his companions, and their voyage to the planet Rakhat. This split narrative style actually works quite well: The Sandoz sequences start out crushingly depressing and gradually become easier to experience as Sandoz physical and mental state improves; meanwhile, the flashbacks begin on a relatively cheerful note, and gradually devolve as the characters travel to and live on Rakhat. Everything comes to a head as the quasi-inquisition that his fellow Jesuits are subjecting him to culminates in Sandoz detailing the worst of his experiences on Rakhat: His hands are horribly mutilated, and when he is the final survivor of his mission he is enslaved as a sex object to a Rakhati noble, and is repeatedly raped.

The Sparrow tackles three large issues in its pages: It builds a set of realistic and intricately involved characters, all of whom have different philosophies and quite disparate personalities, but who generally each have their own ways of living and enjoying life. Most of the flashbacks are thus a sort of grand affirmation of life: Fulfilling dreams, setting goals, and enjoying things even as sometimes-critical errors are made.

Second, the crucial element of the book is a test of faith. I perhaps am unable to pick up on all the nuances given to Sandoz' experiences, as my background in Christianity is slim, but Sandoz clearly believes that he is being called to Rakhat; he helped discover the planet, his order sent a mission there with him in it, and as a linguist he has the skills to make first contact meaningful. It seems like a directive from God to him. But when the mission results in the deaths of his friends and comrades and his own mutilation and rape, he runs into a real barrier to his faith. Many people wonder how a caring god can allow much of the misery existing on Earth; Sandoz is given reason to doubt because of the horrors that are inflicted upon him, personally. And even to a militant agnostic such as myself, this crushing blow seemed convincing because of the humanistic and down-to-earth approach Russell employed in demonstrating and describing Sandoz' faith during the early part of the story.

Finally, the story explores the recovery of Sandoz from his ordeal, and how the human psyche can be rebuilt from such an experience. It's unclear how Sandoz will fare in the future, but he does confront his demons and is accepted to some degree back into his community in the Jesuits, which is a start.

The Sparrow also presents an interesting science fictional concept: Rakhat has developed two sentient species, the carnivorous Jana'ata, and the herbivorous Runa. Although the Runa have their own culture and language, trade with the Jana'ata, and make up 95% of the population, they are relatively docile - both by nature and through deliberate breeding - and subservient to the Jana'ata, who despite their sentience still breed the Runa for food. Naturally, this detail repulses the human visitors. The culture of the Rakhati is left somewhat vague beyond this, although there are signs that the humans have taught the Runa the notion of standing up for their lives, and this vagueness is frustrating in some ways.

The Sparrow contains a few other nagging problems - the semiprofessional members of the mission, the woeful lack of redundancy in equipment which results in the team being stranded on Rakhat - but these are mostly mechanical issues and are easily overshadowed by the characters and larger issues in the novel.

There's a lot more about The Sparrow which could be discussed - individual characters, some of the background about the situation on Earth circa 2020, and so forth. And Russell's humor is often gut-achingly funny (among others, she thanks Molly Ivins for helping her get her Texan character down right). But suffice to say that The Sparrow is a moving, powerful, and tragic novel which I recommended extremely highly.

Children of God

WARNING: This review contains spoilers of major elements of Children of God. It's not really possible to review the book without them.

The Sparrow is a tough act to follow (even when it was your own act in the first place), and unfortunately the sequel, Children of God, doesn't live up to its predecessor. It's not possible to meaningfully discuss the book without some major spoilers, so be aware.

Children of God is about two elements which grow out of The Sparrow: Emilio Sandoz taking the next step in his life and going beyond confronting his trauma to coming to terms with it, and the changes that occur on the planet Rakhat as a result of the Terrans' visit. The overall thrust of Sandoz' story is fairly obvious: He's going to return to Rakhat. The developments on Rakhat take an unexpected turn from the outset.

In the Sparrow, Sandoz believes that everyone who accompanies him to Rakhat was killed or eventually died. In Children we learn that this is not true: Sofia Mendes a scientist who was on the journey, married another member of the party, and was pregnant when she was supposedly killed, in fact survived the massacre that claimed several of her companions. I found this development to be tremendously disappointing, as it not only undercuts some of the emotional impact of The Sparrow, but it undercuts what I felt was one of Russell's bravest moves in the first book, of actually killing a pregnant woman. (I was so amazed when that happened that I almost didn't believe it. More than almost anything else, it lent a feeling of weight and authenticity to the story and Sandoz' moral crisis.)

Mendes' presence on Rakhat is what helps push everything over the edge: The vegetarian Runa (one of the two sentient species on the planet) organize and stand up to the carnivorous Jana'ata and refuse to be enslaved and treated like cattle, engaging in a highly successful revolt that pushes the Jana'ata to the edge of extinction. Mendes' son Isaac is born borderline-autistic with a passion for Jana'ata music. He is befriended by a Jana'ata girl, Ha'anala, and they end up setting up a camp where many of the surviving Jana'ata live, endeavoring to turn their carnivorous natures to non-sentient prey.

Sandoz' story, for its part, involves him leaving the priesthood, planning to get married, and being abducted to go on the Jesuits' return voyage to Rakhat. He has to deal with returning to the one place in all of creation he doesn't want to go to, and with the betrayal of those he considered friends (or at least somewhat trustworthy).

If The Sparrow was fundamentally about a crisis of faith in a man who seemed touched by God, Children of God is mainly a book of redemption in the face of hard truths and great changes: How Sandoz can adjust his view of Rakhat and the Jana'ata, and how the Runa and Jana'ata can live side-by-side on their world.

The book ultimately is not as rich as The Sparrow in large part because the characters are not as well fleshed-out or as deep. Most of the characters have particular roles to play in the plot and their personas are largely dictated by that. Sandoz, his fiancee Gina, and Father John Candiotti are the main exceptions, since their words and actions are more bound up in who they are rather than what they're doing. But Mendes, the other humans, and the various Rakhatians are largely defined by what they do.

The ongoing struggle on Rakhat never quite seems as deep as it should - perhaps because it's complicated enough that a whole book could easily be devoted to just that thread. And Children employs a peculiar story structure which uses the fact that Mendes' adventures occur over a span of 40 years, while Sandoz' are compressed into only a couple of years due to relativistic time dilation. The jumping around is curious in a sense, but not nearly as successful as the starkly contrasting parallel threads in The Sparrow; I wonder if Children would have been better off with a straightforward story structure: Sandoz on Earth and en route, Mendes on Rakhat, and finally Sandoz arriving on Rakhat.

In the end, Children never grabbed me like The Sparrow did. It's still a worthwhile book, but it never stands up and whacks the reader over the head as The Sparrow did with Sandoz' crisis of faith (something which Russell's superb writing drove home even to an agnostic such as myself). It does end relatively happily, although it left me wondering what exactly it was all for, whether Sandoz was able to grow as a person or whether it was all a waste. (I was also a little disappointed that Sandoz didn't get together with Gina's daughter Celestina when he returned to Earth - an event that seemed foreshadowed earlier when Celestina had announced as a child that she would someday marry Sandoz.)

There's a lot of worthwhile stuff in here, but it doesn't match its predecessor, which burned with fire from start to finish.