About a year ago I ran across the title of a book called The Sparrow while searching for something new to read. It then took me about 5 book stores to track down a copy and a few places had never even heard of it. The wiki article states that Brad Pitt picked up the movie rights on this book, and on a side note I would love to see the film adaptation of this book. First of all, the reason I picked up this book is because it touches on a lot of the themes that interest me. The main theme though that drew me to purchasing this book, was the question of “What would it look like if a religious community was the first to make contact with another intelligent race?”. Russell tackles this question through the eyes of the main character Emilio Sandoz who is a Jesuit Priest who specializes in linguistics.
The story is told in a non-linear fashion which reveals the fate of the entire voyage first, and then unravels the pieces. Whatever your opinions on this form of story telling is, it works here. By going between 2060 on Earth after the events, and the past on the planet Rakhat, created a situation where I wanted to get back to each location while in other. This pushed me to read through large chunks to unravel what happened. Overall, I really enjoyed the book, as the themes of choice vs fate, love, forgiveness, Religion, and Science Fiction were all intertwined very well. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but if you are like me and think about questions like “Did God create other intelligent species?”, “What would first contact look like?”, “How would we treat a species who have completely different morals than us?” then this book is for you.
My main complaint is that the end of the book was sped up way too much. She spent 350 pages setting up this grand finale of an unveil to only really spend about 20 pages explaining the last of Emilio’s secrets. I know the enjoyment is in the journey and not the destination, but the ending seemed very rushed. The character of Anne, was also a bit too perfect. Russel seem to go out of her way to make Anne be this Saint Mother type who rarely made mistakes, and didn’t seem to struggle. The rest of the characters had problems from their life that formed who they were, and gave them depth. Although, these two things did not ruin the book, and I quite enjoyed it.
I give this book 8 vegetable gardens out of 10.
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