Mary Doria Russell

A priest named Emilio Sandoz embarks on a quest to demystify God's providence that leads him to question the possibility of faith

A Novel

Children of God

“Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.… And when the metaphors fail, we think it’s God who’s failed us!”

, and when I realized that there was a sequel I had to know what happened to Emilio Sandoz after he finally purged himself of his own story. How did he process everything he had experienced? What happened on Rahkat after he was finally able to return home? 

 delivered those answers and more. However, I found it more difficult to engage with than its predecessor. 

 was the pacing. While an undeniably compelling story, it moved incredibly slowly. That was doubly true of 

. It was even slower-paced. Weirdly so. Things were happening, but the pacing felt like wading through molasses. I was tempted multiple times to just put it down and see if I could find answers through SparkNotes or something. I wanted to know how things turned out, but I really struggled to get there. 

The writing was still excellent. There were so many profound, thought-provoking passages that there was no way to save them all without highlighting entire pages of text. But this philosophical bent, mixed with the maddeningly slow pacing, resulted in me reading this almost more along the lines of a religious set than a novel, which was a disservice to the story being told. There were still compelling characters and a fascinating world and high stakes here, but I didn’t connect with any of these aspects as deeply as I would have liked.

After finally muscling my way through the story, I found myself oddly unsatisfied with the conclusion. While I think it wrapped up well, it lacked the emotional impact and payoff that I craved after having witnessed so much trauma and occasional outright cruelty suffered by the characters. That much pain felt as if it justified a more profound and impactful resolution.

While I might have focussed the majority of this review on my problems with the book, I did still find the reading of it a mostly positive experience. I struggled, but I’m still very glad that I read it. The answers I sought were here, even if I had to wade through even more suffering to find them. I love the questions raised about God in this duology, and the fact that we’re not fed any specific view or answers. If you’re looking for something astoundingly thought-provoking and you don’t mind reading the incredibly traumatic and slow-paced, 

Celeste Richardson

“Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.… And when the metaphors fail, we think it’s God who’s failed us!”

I was profoundly moved by The Sparrow, and when I realized that there was a sequel I had to know what happened to Emilio Sandoz after he finally purged himself of his own story. How did he process everything he had experienced? What happened on Rahkat after he was finally able to return home? Children of God delivered those answers and more. However, I found it more difficult to engage with than its predecessor. 

My biggest complaint about The Sparrow was the pacing. While an undeniably compelling story, it moved incredibly slowly. That was doubly true of Children of God. It was even slower-paced. Weirdly so. Things were happening, but the pacing felt like wading through molasses. I was tempted multiple times to just put it down and see if I could find answers through SparkNotes or something. I wanted to know how things turned out, but I really struggled to get there. 

The writing was still excellent. There were so many profound, thought-provoking passages that there was no way to save them all without highlighting entire pages of text. But this philosophical bent, mixed with the maddeningly slow pacing, resulted in me reading this almost more along the lines of a religious set than a novel, which was a disservice to the story being told. There were still compelling characters and a fascinating world and high stakes here, but I didn’t connect with any of these aspects as deeply as I would have liked.

After finally muscling my way through the story, I found myself oddly unsatisfied with the conclusion. While I think it wrapped up well, it lacked the emotional impact and payoff that I craved after having witnessed so much trauma and occasional outright cruelty suffered by the characters. That much pain felt as if it justified a more profound and impactful resolution.

While I might have focussed the majority of this review on my problems with the book, I did still find the reading of it a mostly positive experience. I struggled, but I’m still very glad that I read it. The answers I sought were here, even if I had to wade through even more suffering to find them. I love the questions raised about God in this duology, and the fact that we’re not fed any specific view or answers. If you’re looking for something astoundingly thought-provoking and you don’t mind reading the incredibly traumatic and slow-paced, The Sparrow and its sequel are worth checking out.

A.L.L.

People I hold in positive regard warned me against reading this. They said I probably shouldn't read it because once read, it could not be unread, and if the taste of the last book was golden honey on tongue the taste of this book could wash that all away. 

They weren't wrong. 

I don't regret reading this book, but I was somewhat disappointed by this book. Mainly I just find it really distasteful that the take home message for destroying beyond repair an entire planet's culture and nearly extincting an entire race that they knew next to nothing about was "It's okay because we got a pretty piece of music from it, plus, they ate the wrong kind of meat. You should only eat meat that can't hold a conversation with you." and also "Our way of F*ing things up is the model every planet should follow". Which seemed like a cheap stance to take when you don't want to address all the kinds of meat humans eat that causes arguably equal or way more trauma and damage than Jana'ata eating Runa, and simultaneously want to avoid dealing with the colossal implications and damage the characters from the first book did to the planet in the first book. It was a unapologetically anthropocentric and I kind of hated that. There were so many interesting and exciting ideas and concepts in the first book that could have been explored, and instead we got the cheap road frequently taken. 

To add insult to injury, I was highly unsatisfied by the resolutions of the characters I cared most about. Supaari and Kitheri, despite being the key players of major plot events, seem more like afterthoughts in Children of God. Written about because she has too but almost begrudgingly and without emphasis. Sofia's entire life was just sort of unsatisfying and tragic- which is fine I guess, I'm okay with characters not getting happy endings, but the pedestal Sandoz was put on in comparison to everyone else just got tired real fast. 

So, I guess I won't tell you not to read it - but I will warn you that you'll probably be disappointed, unless you really dig all that anthropocentric sh*t.

cygnoir

Because I loved  The Sparrow so much, I was more disappointed than if I had just read this sequel on its own merits. While this book followed the relevant plot lines to their inevitable conclusion, the methods were a bit contrived, and some of the dramatic points were sucker-punches. All in all, it relied less on character development than the first book, which made it less compelling to read.

Children of God A Novel