Children of God (Russell) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Brilliant...Powerful...An outstanding natural storyteller.
San Francisco Chronicle

Immensely satisfying...engages readers with Russell's provocative themes because it is a fine novel, with a compelling plot, intriguingly complex characters and enough poetry in the writing to convey the heartbreaking tragedy that even the best-intended actions can cause.
Cleveland Plain Dealer


Mary Doria Russell continues the story she began in The Sparrow, her first novel about the arduous spiritual journey of Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest.... The brooding Emilio lost his friends and his faith on a strange planet that he thought at first was very close to God.... When he arrives back on Rakhat a generation later, against his will, everything has changed. The world is in political turmoil, and the events set in motion on his previous visit are playing out in ways he never could have anticipated.
USA Today


A gem...seeping, operatic...Russell's gift for dialogue and the novel's questioning of our very souls at the dawn of a new millennium give Children of God a quality that transcends genre.
Globe and Mail (Canada)


Russell follows her speculative first novel, The Sparrow, with a sequel that will please even readers new to her interplanetary missionaries. Having returned from a disastrous, 21st-century expedition to the planet Rakhat, Jesuit Father Emilio Sandoz, the sole survivor of the mission, faces public rage over the order's part in the war between the gentle Runa and the predatory Jana'ata—fury more than matched by the priest's own self-hatred and religious disillusionment. In the sequel, he is forced to return to Rakhat with a new expedition more interested in profits than prophets. When they discover the planet in turmoil and the Runa precariously in power, the temptation to interfere is more than they can withstand. As in her first book, Russell uses the entertaining plot to explore sociological, spiritual, religious, scientific and historical questions. Misunderstandings between cultures and people are at the heart of her story. It is, however, the complex figure of Father Sandoz around which a diverse interplanetary cast orbits, and it is the intelligent, emotional and very personal feud between Father Sandoz and his God that provides energy for both books.
Publishers Weekly


Emilio Sandoz is a priest and brilliant linguist who was crippled and sexually assaulted during a mission to Rakhat, a planet inhabited by two intelligent life forms, the Runa and the Jana'ata. Vowing never to return, Emilio quits the priesthood and finds peace, even love. He is kidnapped, however, and sent on a return mission, where he finds that the servant Runi are rebelling against the Jana'ata and the planet is consumed by unrest and savagery. Intertwined are other stories, including that of Sophia, a previously unknown survivor from the first mission, and Supaari, a Jana'ata who risks everything to protect his daughter who, in accordance with Jana'ata policy, should have been killed. Compelling and chilling, set in the not-too-distant 2060, Russell's novel immediately pulls the listener in and delivers. —Susan McCaffrey, Sturgis Middle School, Michigan.
Library Journal


Sequel to The Sparrow, Russell's account of a 21st-century Jesuit-led expedition to planet Rakhat with its two intelligent, kangaroo-like alien races, the carnivorous Jana'ata and their prey, the enslaved Runa. Broken, beset by terrible nightmares, Emilio Sandoz—the expedition's sole survivor—has returned to Earth, where he rejects the Jesuits and the priesthood and falls in love with Gina Giuliani and her four-year-old daughter Celestina. Still, for a variety of reasons the Jesuits (as well as the Pope) pressure Sandoz toward agreeing to return to Rakhat. But even when Sandoz discovers that another expedition member, Sofia Mendes, also survived, he refuses to go. On Rakhat, meanwhile, changes continue. The merchant Supaari, who broke Sandoz and sold him, rejects the Jana'ata lifestyle and takes his supposedly deformed daughter into the forest. Jana'ata poet Hlavin Kitheri, who bought Sandoz in order to rape him, slaughters all his relatives, blames Supaari, and tries to build a society based on ability, not inherited rank. Sofia Mendes, hiding in the forest with the Runa she incited to rebel, gives birth to Isaac, an autistic child with an uncanny musical talent, and supplies the Runa with advanced technology so that they can continue the revolt against their Jana'ata overlords. On Earth, Sandoz is shanghaied aboard the Jesuits' new ship (thanks to relativistic effects, he will never see Gina again), which arrives at Rakhat just in time to prevent the extermination of the Jana'ata by the Sofia-led Runa. Finally, Sandoz will return to Earth, free at last of his nightmares, to meet the daughter he never knew he had. A brutal and deliberate tale, its characters rathertoo forgiving to be wholly human, that will challenge and sometimes shred the reader's preconceptions.
Kirkus Reviews