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Okay, 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 . . . I guess the thing I missed most from the first book was the way that the alien culture was really alien. They had different concepts about things, and assumptions about the world, and Russell took care to express that. In this one - though I liked many of the Runa and Jana'ata as characters - they seemed far too close to human for comfort. I hardly ever felt like I saw a truly alien mentality coming through. I might have accepted this as a conscious choice on the part of the author if it had been only the characters who hung out with Sofia that thought and reacted in very human ways, but even the Jana'ata characters who had never met a human seemed basically like humans with fur and tails. Obviously, there were still cultural differences, but the cognitive differences were gone, and that seemed . . . sort of like a cheat, in order to tell the kind of story about revolution that Russell wanted. It was an interesting story, but it didn't feel like an alien one.
Also, I admit, I am kind of sad - I got really excited about Supaari, Ha'anala, Sofia and Isaac coming back to Earth, and so I was disappointed when that particular plot point fizzled and went nowhere. It would have been so interesting! But that is just me.
(Also I am a horrible person and could not help smiling a little at Sofia and Emilio's angst-off at the end of the book. "You can't understand how much it sucked, and therefore I am ethically right!" "No, let me tell you how much MY life sucked, and therefore I am ethically right!" I mean, I am sure it was cathartic . . .)
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 . . . I guess the thing I missed most from the first book was the way that the alien culture was really alien. They had different concepts about things, and assumptions about the world, and Russell took care to express that. In this one - though I liked many of the Runa and Jana'ata as characters - they seemed far too close to human for comfort. I hardly ever felt like I saw a truly alien mentality coming through. I might have accepted this as a conscious choice on the part of the author if it had been only the characters who hung out with Sofia that thought and reacted in very human ways, but even the Jana'ata characters who had never met a human seemed basically like humans with fur and tails. Obviously, there were still cultural differences, but the cognitive differences were gone, and that seemed . . . sort of like a cheat, in order to tell the kind of story about revolution that Russell wanted. It was an interesting story, but it didn't feel like an alien one.
Also, I admit, I am kind of sad - I got really excited about Supaari, Ha'anala, Sofia and Isaac coming back to Earth, and so I was disappointed when that particular plot point fizzled and went nowhere. It would have been so interesting! But that is just me.
(Also I am a horrible person and could not help smiling a little at Sofia and Emilio's angst-off at the end of the book. "You can't understand how much it sucked, and therefore I am ethically right!" "No, let me tell you how much MY life sucked, and therefore I am ethically right!" I mean, I am sure it was cathartic . . .)
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!
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I'm impressed that she actually wrote the book at all. Given where The Sparrow ended, I was like: "Whoa, really? You're actually going to try it?" And the fact that she did as well as she did left me very impressed, even if it does stumble a few times on the way.
I don't remember the details well enough now to debate with you, sadly, but what you're saying does ring true with what I do remember. Particularly that the aliens did seem a little too accessible in Children, but on the other hand, that she didn't hesitate to let her characters get smacked around hard by the harshness of what was happening to them.
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*grins* I think also my thought processes were definitely impacted by thinking of them as a pair from the beginning; if I'd read The Sparrow and then found out there was to be a sequel, I would have taken the whole thing in a very different way. (Though I don't know whether I would have liked it less or more!)
Yes - what I liked best was how her characters would fall on different sides of an ethical line due to their experiences and different needs. Moral ambiguity makes me happy!
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I found the idea that the whole of the Sparrow AND this book was brought about so that Sofia's son could compose a song about the mingled DNA strands of humans and aliens to be very stupid and kind of wtf?
I think I would have minded that less if the aliens had continued to be very alien. But in an effort to bring more to the story, as you mentioned above, she kind of got too far into their heads and made them too much like us, and so then all the oomph OF that undercurrent similarity/counterpoint got . . . lost.
And that sucks.
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I can definitely see your point - I think I would have been more irritated by that if I felt like the book was completely forcing the idea on me that that was the whole point, as opposed to leaving it open as a question of faith for the people who needed it. (Which, maybe the book was forcing that interpretation on us, but I was too busy squinting at what was actually going down on the planet to feel bombarded by it. Genocide > songs however pretty and deep.) But yes, it would have been so much cooler if the aliens had actually stayed alien and it was difference-harmony, as opposed to 'we're all kind of the same anyways, yay!' Because that's not just missing the point, it's implausible.
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Because it's not . . . it's really not on the same page as what both books were about.
(Also maybe I wanted there to be some kind of purpose, or something that felt like it actually addressed some of the issues raised. Thing.)
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(Which issues did you want resolved in particular? *curious* Because some of them - I mean, there is no real resolution to some of them, at least that is how I felt. So trying to pull one out of a hat would not have worked, for me, but that is me.)
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(Not resolved, not at all. But if the final image, the final scene, had been more related to the central conflicts as they had been presented--like the last scene of the Sparrow addressed the whole premise of the book, in a way that, you know, made sense--that would've been better for me. I cannot tell if that actually makes sense outside my own head.)
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(That totally makes sense. There are a lot of pressure on endings, especially in novels of ideas to do that - although technically the last image is Emilio meeting his daughter. Which also does not really relate to the conflicts of the story arc as a whole either, but is nice for Emilio!)