Children Of God
Random House Audio, $24
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REVIEW BY DANICA JEFFERSON
First contact. It is perhaps the oldest theme in the genre of science fiction, and one that reveals something fundamental about the human spirit. We are a pioneering sort, after all. But you can be sure that no one before Mary Doria Russell put this kind of twist on meeting an otherworldy species: Russell's novels feature Jesuit priests in space. Her debut novel, the very popular The Sparrow, introduced readers to the crew of the Stella Maris, the first 21st-century spaceship to successfully complete the journey to another life-sustaining planet. Indeed, they do land safely, but tiny mitakes result in failure of near-mythic proportions. The Sparrow's sequel, Children of God, brings back the most charismatic priest in the bunch, Father Emilio Sandoz. Still not wholly recovered from his first mission, Sandoz is being pressured by the Jesuit Father General and the Pope to return to the planet Rakhat. Believing that Sandoz is beloved of God, His Holiness is certain that the only way the true purpose of contact with life on another planet will be realized is if this ship has Sandoz aboard. The guy doesn't want to go (he leaves the priesthood in attempt to avoid it), but whether he'll admit it or not, Sandoz is still searching for the meaning in God's plan. This time around, he may just discover it -- in a little boy born on the distant planet. To absorb the full impact of Russell's story, The Sparrow should not be skipped. What makes these tales so riveting are the characters that leave Earth in The Sparrow -- their lives, their deaths -- as they experience for the first time life so profoundly different from their own. The crew that heads to Rakhat in Children of God is also an interesting bunch, to be sure, but with a couple of human exceptions, it is members of the Jana'ata and the Runa, the Rakhat species left behind to deal with the consequences of human contact, that draw us in this time. Children of God is not as startling as its predecessor -- it couldn't be -- but this one, too, is near impossible to put down. The story Russell tells is not only incredibly entertaining and imaginative, but intellectually, morally provocative. The speculation of Children of God is painfully truthful, but also, strangely, filled with hope. At the story's end, the world will witness something of a miracle. As one of Russell's wise females (species irrelevant) says, "Know that if we are children of one God, we can make ourselves one family in time." Danica Jefferson is contributing editor of BookPage.
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