Book: Children of God
Aug. 30th, 2009 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Mary Doria Russell
Details: (c) 1998 Mary Doria Russell; Pub 1999 Ballantine Books Fawcett imprint; ISBN 0-449-00483-X
Verdict: Children of God is original and readable, if a bit pulpy.
Reasons for reading it: I was sufficiently intrigued by The Sparrow, in spite of its major problems, that I was inclined to read the sequel.
How it came into my hands: I sawjack reading it and asked to borrow it after he'd finished.
Children of God is in many ways a good bad novel. It's a pacy and emotive story, with literary and philosophical pretensions. It fits right into the genre that tends to include the most popular bestsellers, though it's also SF in the sense that it's about exploring an alien planet. It's also a genre that has to be really exceptional for me to be bothered with it, and CoG is good enough to keep me reading, but not quite good enough to overcome my prejudice against this sort of novel.
A lot of the things I complained about in The Sparrow are fixed in this sequel. The prose is slightly bland but non-annoying, and I cared rather more about the characters than in the original. There is still a bit of ethnic stereotyping, with the passionate yet corrupt Italians, the aloof, mysterious Native American, the brogue-speaking, impulsive Irish guy, and so on, but it's a lot less marked and these stereotyped characters have individual personalities too. I should probably be grateful for the fact that it includes an autistic character and an intellectually disabled character, who at least have some personality and are not just objects of pity by the good guys or cruelty by the bad guys, and they're at least no worse stereotyped than the neurotypical characters, just in a different way. I was also less tooth-grindingly annoyed by the portrayal of Judaism and Jewish history here; it's merely superficial and slightly inaccurate, rather than stereotyped and exoticized. The problem is that the sequel contains few of the moments of brilliance that made some people really passionate about The Sparrow, and allowed more cynical readers to at least overlook its much worse technical flaws.
It sort of reads a bit like a contrived problem in philosophy and theodicy, sugared with characters and story. The characters and story are not too bad; Russell seems to have got over being too much in love with her main characters and indifferent to her one-dimensional secondary characters. For this reason the story held my interest and provided plenty of excitement, even if most of the events seemed to happen mainly in order to illustrate sophomoric questions. The question about why God allows suffering, and if religious faith is a valid response to such suffering, is a continuation of the theme of The Sparrow. CoG is also dealing with perhaps more interesting question about colonialism, apartheid and the value of civilization. The Jana'ata are perhaps too carefully constructed an example of a civilization that produces great works of art, but is thoroughly decadent, misogynist and dependent on slavery, while the Runa rebellion seems justified but of course leads to great violence and the near-genocide of the former oppressors, as well as disruption of the planet's delicately balanced ecosystem. The problem is that the book isn't really tackling this kind of question face-on, it doesn't ever acknowledge the fact that the ability of the human characters to send a mission to Rakhat also represents a civilization built on slavery and oppression. And it doesn't even slightly question the right of the human delegation to interfere in this political situation, because of course they come from The Future and are filled with nothing but wisdom about how to run society. Sofia converting people to monotheism (!) and inspiring them to rebel, as well as the others introducing superior technology without regard for the consequences, setting up trade deals very favourable to earth society and passing judgement on oppressors and rebels alike are all extremely colonialist, and the book doesn't seem to notice this!
I can definitely see how this book would be popular with an audience either starved of accessible discussion of the big questions, or with people who had already thought deeply about these questions and were able to read their own intelligent conclusions onto the slightly sparse, but emotionally compelling framework provided by the narrative. Russell's answer seems to be that truly beautiful music justifies a lot of suffering, and also that as long as people can somehow continue falling in love and having children, they can retain their faith no matter what happens to them. That's either completely facile or the only possible answer to major moral questions, I'm not sure. As with The Sparrow, there is a slight tendency to ignore the fact that good people get raped and betrayed, and innocent people get killed in wars, all the time, it's not something unique to this artificial scenario.
On the SF level, there's some interesting exploration of Ruanja and Jana'ata societies (note the plural, there are regional and individual variations within these groups, they're not just monolithic species). But there's nothing that really stands out compared to the best of SF, and it is too often subservient to presenting the two groups as symbols of the moral problem. With the more extended development, the aliens start to seem more like people with fur and tails, and less like really alien aliens, which is a bit unfortunate, but still enjoyable to read in a general fantasy-style imaginary pre-industrial society way. Probably the most powerful scene was the early part of the book, with Sandoz' gradual ascent back to normality after trauma, the little love story and the brutality of his kidnap, but the rest of the book doesn't quite live up to this scene setting.
Overall I think The Sparrow and Children of God work better as a pair than individually, but even complementing eachother, they don't quite achieve the brilliance they're aiming for.
Details: (c) 1998 Mary Doria Russell; Pub 1999 Ballantine Books Fawcett imprint; ISBN 0-449-00483-X
Verdict: Children of God is original and readable, if a bit pulpy.
Reasons for reading it: I was sufficiently intrigued by The Sparrow, in spite of its major problems, that I was inclined to read the sequel.
How it came into my hands: I saw
jack reading it and asked to borrow it after he'd finished.Children of God is in many ways a good bad novel. It's a pacy and emotive story, with literary and philosophical pretensions. It fits right into the genre that tends to include the most popular bestsellers, though it's also SF in the sense that it's about exploring an alien planet. It's also a genre that has to be really exceptional for me to be bothered with it, and CoG is good enough to keep me reading, but not quite good enough to overcome my prejudice against this sort of novel.
A lot of the things I complained about in The Sparrow are fixed in this sequel. The prose is slightly bland but non-annoying, and I cared rather more about the characters than in the original. There is still a bit of ethnic stereotyping, with the passionate yet corrupt Italians, the aloof, mysterious Native American, the brogue-speaking, impulsive Irish guy, and so on, but it's a lot less marked and these stereotyped characters have individual personalities too. I should probably be grateful for the fact that it includes an autistic character and an intellectually disabled character, who at least have some personality and are not just objects of pity by the good guys or cruelty by the bad guys, and they're at least no worse stereotyped than the neurotypical characters, just in a different way. I was also less tooth-grindingly annoyed by the portrayal of Judaism and Jewish history here; it's merely superficial and slightly inaccurate, rather than stereotyped and exoticized. The problem is that the sequel contains few of the moments of brilliance that made some people really passionate about The Sparrow, and allowed more cynical readers to at least overlook its much worse technical flaws.
It sort of reads a bit like a contrived problem in philosophy and theodicy, sugared with characters and story. The characters and story are not too bad; Russell seems to have got over being too much in love with her main characters and indifferent to her one-dimensional secondary characters. For this reason the story held my interest and provided plenty of excitement, even if most of the events seemed to happen mainly in order to illustrate sophomoric questions. The question about why God allows suffering, and if religious faith is a valid response to such suffering, is a continuation of the theme of The Sparrow. CoG is also dealing with perhaps more interesting question about colonialism, apartheid and the value of civilization. The Jana'ata are perhaps too carefully constructed an example of a civilization that produces great works of art, but is thoroughly decadent, misogynist and dependent on slavery, while the Runa rebellion seems justified but of course leads to great violence and the near-genocide of the former oppressors, as well as disruption of the planet's delicately balanced ecosystem. The problem is that the book isn't really tackling this kind of question face-on, it doesn't ever acknowledge the fact that the ability of the human characters to send a mission to Rakhat also represents a civilization built on slavery and oppression. And it doesn't even slightly question the right of the human delegation to interfere in this political situation, because of course they come from The Future and are filled with nothing but wisdom about how to run society. Sofia converting people to monotheism (!) and inspiring them to rebel, as well as the others introducing superior technology without regard for the consequences, setting up trade deals very favourable to earth society and passing judgement on oppressors and rebels alike are all extremely colonialist, and the book doesn't seem to notice this!
I can definitely see how this book would be popular with an audience either starved of accessible discussion of the big questions, or with people who had already thought deeply about these questions and were able to read their own intelligent conclusions onto the slightly sparse, but emotionally compelling framework provided by the narrative. Russell's answer seems to be that truly beautiful music justifies a lot of suffering, and also that as long as people can somehow continue falling in love and having children, they can retain their faith no matter what happens to them. That's either completely facile or the only possible answer to major moral questions, I'm not sure. As with The Sparrow, there is a slight tendency to ignore the fact that good people get raped and betrayed, and innocent people get killed in wars, all the time, it's not something unique to this artificial scenario.
On the SF level, there's some interesting exploration of Ruanja and Jana'ata societies (note the plural, there are regional and individual variations within these groups, they're not just monolithic species). But there's nothing that really stands out compared to the best of SF, and it is too often subservient to presenting the two groups as symbols of the moral problem. With the more extended development, the aliens start to seem more like people with fur and tails, and less like really alien aliens, which is a bit unfortunate, but still enjoyable to read in a general fantasy-style imaginary pre-industrial society way. Probably the most powerful scene was the early part of the book, with Sandoz' gradual ascent back to normality after trauma, the little love story and the brutality of his kidnap, but the rest of the book doesn't quite live up to this scene setting.
Overall I think The Sparrow and Children of God work better as a pair than individually, but even complementing eachother, they don't quite achieve the brilliance they're aiming for.
