Children of God ~ Mary Doria Russell
This is the sequel to The Sparrow, which I read and discussed earlier this year. The Sparrow tells the harrowing tale of what happened to the Jesuit-sponsored mission to Rakhat, a newly-discovered planet in the Alpha Centauri system. In particular, The Sparrow revealed the awful physical and spiritual torment of the priest Emilio Sandoz, which came about because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the alien civilisation the expedition encountered. It’s a very dark, thought-provoking book.
The sequel offers a kind of redemption, as Sandoz, slowly recovering from his shattering experiences, is eventually forced by the Church authorities to return to Rakhat, bitterly against his will — he is, in fact, kidnapped and taken on board the spacecraft while unconscious. The trip to Rakhat is at a good percentage of the speed of light, lasting only six months for the travellers, but many years will pass on Earth — and on Rakhat — during the voyage.
Russell deals with this travel-time gap very intelligently and does not try to fudge its consequences. Because of this gap in time, Sandoz is torn permanently away from the loving relationship he had begun to establish with a divorced woman and her young daughter on Earth. The inter-personal conflicts with the others on the new expedition who have been complicit in Sandoz’ kidnapping are therefore very sharp and bitter.
When Sandoz arrives back on Rakhat, many years have passed there, too. What he discovers is that the earlier expedition triggered unforeseen, wide-ranging revolutionary consequences. The second expedition thus returns, essentially, to a different world. What has happened during their absence is slowly revealed in flash-backs through the viewpoint of a lone survivor of the first expedition (of whose survival Sandoz has been ignorant), and the viewpoints of a number of the alien species caught up in the changes brought about by the earlier expedition.
This bloody revolution, for which he is partially responsible, presents Sandoz with a new set of ethical dilemmas. Ultimately he finds himself needing to defend, with his life, the very species which had been the source of his torment on the first expedition. And in doing so, place himself against the fierce opposition of someone he once loved.
Like The Sparrow, the sequel is engrossing, unputdownable reading, and you complete it with a sigh, unable to get it out of your head for several days afterwards.
