Search - The Sparrow

This was an unsettling book. You know within the first several chapters that something very bad has happened but you don't know what or why or how. I found myself speed-reading trying to find out, and even worse, I felt anxious! I really enjoyed it though. The plot is interesting and unusual and the ending causes you to examine your spiritual beliefs very carefully. Without being preachy, the author presents her belief that although there is an all-powerful God out there, He is under no obligation to protect and preserve those who love Him. I'm now looking for the sequel to this, called Children of God. I can't wait to read it!

I finished this book the other night and am still a bit baffled by it. The character development and first half of the book was so slow and drawn out, a few times I wondered if I should give up (I have only done this once in my life) on it. The 2nd half of the story seemed very rushed to me. So much ground seemed to be glazed over in a dash to the ending. I didn't care for the writers style, not enough "flow" for me but the story is definately different. All in all, an interesting read but not sure I'll be picking up any more books by this author.

This book is amazing. The basic plot is that in 2019 we detect radio signals from a nearby system. The Jesuits decide to mount a private expedition. In 2060, one survivor returns. The question is then: what happened? The author manages to interweave two narratives - the past and the present - seamlessly. She builds suspense, dropping tiny hints about what happened, slowly revealing the horror they experienced. Along the way we must deal with heavy philosophical problems: what is God's will? What is our purpose? How do we deal with an entirely alien civilization? What if our actions have unforeseeable consequences?

This books was very thoughtful and interesting. It raises many questions and makes you think about the nature of things in the universe.

The prologue to this book is what hooked me in. "The Jesuit scientists went so that they might come to know and love God's other children…they meant no harm." An intriguing premise, members of the Society of Jesus travel to an alien planet and ultimately cause something horrific to happen.

Sadly, this book never got to the place I wanted it to go. The writing is great when it came to descriptions of people and their hopes, desires, struggles, thoughts, personalities. Russell could really paint a scene when it came to describing places or a mood; she has a vast vocabulary. Yet the dialogue was close to unbearable for me. The characters are extremely different personalities yet they all speak in the same sarcastic, cheesy way, with stupid jokes constantly. It was to the point that any character, including the aliens, could be saying any piece of dialogue. There were pointless scenes that went on for pages. The ending was rushed and inconsistent for sure.

The Society of Jesus priests didn't matter. They didn't matter because what happened on the alien planet, to the natives and to the earthlings, had nothing to do with religion. Beliefs and faith and religion of God or Jesus didn't cause the harmful things that happened (which I had been planning on) on the alien planet so they might have all been atheists. The book was more of less about one man's relationship with God.