Children of God (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

There are political crises on earth, including a crisis in the church, and there seems to be an urgent need for yet another expedition to Rakhat. In the interim, there have been several attempted journeys, all of which have failed. The church hierarchy decides that the only 'successful' trip was that of Father Emilio, and thus decides (largely without his consent) to send him off again.

At the same time, Rakhat has undergone a dramatic change, brought about in part by the arrival of the strangers, but also due to the political schemings of members of the dominant race, the Jana'ata. The Runa, always larger in population, begin to realise their oppressive situation, aided by renegade Jana'ata, and a civil war breaks loose. Into this situation the human expedition re-enters the scene on Rakhat.

This story completes many of the unfinished details from `The Sparrow'. By filling in the blanks while also carrying the narrative forward, Russell's rather dark picture of the nature of God in the universe (as enacted by the creatures on earth and elsewhere) becomes a little lighter, a little more just, a little less doomed. There is, however, no answer to the personal injustices, to Father Emilio's abuse both at the hands of the Jana'ata and the Jesuit order.

Russell's development of the characters, both human and alien, deepens and broadens in this second novel; her imaginative history of the alien cultures is quite stunning, and her treatment of the strengths and weakness in human character insightful.

Read `The Sparrow' and `Children of God' back-to-back if at all possible.

Once more I found myself irresistibly drawn to Ms. Russell's full-bodied characters. Emilio Sandoz, the Jesuit priest who has been through a myriad number of events that would test anyone's faith, in this book begins to find a way to believe that life is still worth living, that he can still be of benefit to the people around him. Sophia Mendez, the quiet, withdrawn, abused, and highly intellectual lady finds a reason to return to the faith of her parents when she finds herself marooned on Rakhat, surrounded by enslaved Runa. New characters of Giardano Bruno and his bodyguard Nico prove that Russell can portray many kinds of people in a very believable manner.

Perhaps the reason these characters are so fascinating is that each of them has their own outlook on life, their own problems, their own ways of coping with life's vagaries. When placed within the Runa/ Jana'Ata society, each person's attempts to influence that society becomes magnified, each action leading to consequences both foreseen and totally unexpected. Which brings to the fore the focus of this book, which is much more about cross-cultural relations and impacts than religion, though the original questions of The Sparrow are not slighted here. Within the events that humans arrival on Rakhat have provoked, there is a deep delving into the ethics of the 'the end justifies the means', played on a canvas where a species survival is the end stake.

There are some areas where I was not quite as pleased. The characterization of the aliens was just a little too human, even though such characterization does much to highlight the fact that the ethical problems of this book apply just as equally here on Earth. In some ways, the cultural parallels between the Jana'Ata and the American Indians were just a little too obvious. And once again, the story is not told in a totally linear fashion, with occasional flash-forwards to various later periods that then fill in the back-story of the history of the world after the main events of the book. While this type of structure worked very well in The Sparrow, here I thought it led to a little disjointedness to the story continuity and too much a lessening of suspense. Once again, there are some aspects of the portrayed science here that do not ring true. These are all minor quibbles, not seriously hurting the engrossing wholeness, the feeling of not only that this is how it could be, but the why of seemingly random and sometimes-cruel events.

There are very few works that approach these two books in terms of thematic depth and both intellectual and emotional reader involvement. Nominated for the 1999 Hugo Award, this book fully deserved that honor.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)