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May. 3rd, 2008 12:18 pmOkay, so judging from my post on The Sparrow, you have all been waiting BREATHLESSLY to hear me weigh in on Children of God.
(What I mean by this is that like two of you expressed mild interest, whatever, allow me to feel self-important!)
Anyways. In some ways, I liked it as much or more as The Sparrow; first, and most importantly, the characters were a lot more . . . morally complex? - overall, or at least, I felt quite a lot less like I was being told what to like about them, and more like I was being invited to have my own opinions on the unfolding action. I liked the questions the book raised, and I liked that it didn't answer most of them in any kind of tidy fashion; the ending image was gorgeous, yes, but not enough to answer. (And I loved Ha'anala.)
However, I do think sometimes the ideas were a little too big for the book - the plot sort of felt as if it was scrambling to keep up, on occasion, and dragging the characters with it. It's very much a characters-driven-by-events kind of book, not events-driven-by-characters. Also . . . ( sort of spoilery nitpicks about alien cognition. )
Anyways, though - overall, for me, it was about on par with The Sparrow; they were both idea-fixated novels that had their strengths and weaknesses, but they were very different strengths and weaknesses. I am very interested to hear back from people who loved or hated it more than I did, though. Tell me why!
(What I mean by this is that like two of you expressed mild interest, whatever, allow me to feel self-important!)
Anyways. In some ways, I liked it as much or more as The Sparrow; first, and most importantly, the characters were a lot more . . . morally complex? - overall, or at least, I felt quite a lot less like I was being told what to like about them, and more like I was being invited to have my own opinions on the unfolding action. I liked the questions the book raised, and I liked that it didn't answer most of them in any kind of tidy fashion; the ending image was gorgeous, yes, but not enough to answer. (And I loved Ha'anala.)
However, I do think sometimes the ideas were a little too big for the book - the plot sort of felt as if it was scrambling to keep up, on occasion, and dragging the characters with it. It's very much a characters-driven-by-events kind of book, not events-driven-by-characters. Also . . . ( sort of spoilery nitpicks about alien cognition. )
Anyways, though - overall, for me, it was about on par with The Sparrow; they were both idea-fixated novels that had their strengths and weaknesses, but they were very different strengths and weaknesses. I am very interested to hear back from people who loved or hated it more than I did, though. Tell me why!
