The Sparrow

Religious people of all faiths eventually ask one (or both) of the following questions: “What is God's plan?” and “Why does God allow suffering?” And religious or not, I'd wager that more people than we would ever imagine have been faced with a personal existential crisis at some point in their lives and wondered whether life was truly worth living. Add to this some ancillary questions about what are the things that give meaning to a life and how does one reconcile morality with duty and you have pretty much summed up the personal themes this wonderful novel explores.

But it doesn't just work on the personal level. No, this is also a book about The Other – the strange, the unknown, the (pardon the pun) alien – that confronts us and makes us question our beliefs, preconceptions, standards and expectations. Institutionally, societally and again personally, the cast of this story are forced repeatedly to confront what they think they know, and to fill in the gaps of their ignorance; and repeatedly, what they find is not clarity but confusion. In its simplest terms, then, this is a book about the consequences of failing to learn.

Exploration and curiosity are hard-wired in the human brain. We are a race of explorers, and the archaeological record bears this out. With no new terrestrial lands to conquer we have turned skyward, and even as I write this, plans are underway for missions to Mars. We also listen in the remote hope that we will hear the telltale signal that confirms the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. And though, frankly, I'm not sure what we'll do if we ever receive it, this novel posits an expedition, led by the Vatican, to visit The Other in a replay of the 15th and 16th century missions to the New World. We know from our history books how those turned out, and a few dozen kilometres from where I now sit is the Martyr's Shrine dedicated to the Canadian Martyrs, so I wasn't completely surprised that the mission in this novel would turn out the way it did. It's no great spoiler to say that it goes terribly, horribly wrong. It's the reasons why it went wrong that make the novel so compelling. But let me warn you: as compelling and readable as it is, it's bleak. It bares the very souls of its characters and exposes them to the pain, terror and torture of learning the wrong lessons, like the spectator who goes to a public hanging expecting it to be a physics lecture. The reason for their failure? The usual suspects in tragedy: hamartia brought about by hubris and willful blindness.

The joys and horrors of the story are revealed incrementally (echoing a common refrain in the story) even as the characters (primarily Sandoz) are gradually stripped of their humanity. The climax, when it comes, brings the shattering truth that the shattered protagonist, his identity so thoroughly destroyed that he's no longer sure what language he speaks, must choose between impossible alternatives. In agony and permanently scarred (spiritually and physically); and dependent on literal and metaphorical prosthetics, he comes to the only conclusion possible for a man of faith who finds himself struggling to reconcile his belief in a Divine plan and the reality of profound suffering.

I've deliberately avoided mention of all the sci-fi stuff, i.e. the world building, the alien culture, the technology, for the simple reason that they are all McGuffins. This could just as easily have been set in 1647 during the fur trade but the author, Mary Doria Russell, for reasons of her own, decided on this setting in time, place and space. Really, it doesn't matter. Russell's focus is on how faith, certitude, and clarity of purpose, despite good intentions, can lead us to ruin. But to be clear, she's not indicting faith as the culprit. Rather she's attempting to show that faith alone is insufficient, and we must also use our brains, experience, and shared history to avoid replaying the same old tapes.

My favourite kind of sci-fi is the kind that finds ways to get the real world sneak up on you, before your own prejudice can get in the way. This book does that beautifully with wonderfully drawn, likeable characters and a grounded compelling story. It's slow but fascinating, challenging and certainly worthwhile.

This is a good alien contact series. I liked how the Rakhat society has been explained. The assumptions and their effects on various characters, humans and aliens, are gradually revealed.

The only part I did not really enjoy was how solidly christianity (or at least a branch of it) is a part of this. Coming from a non christian background, a lot of the nuanaces went totally over my head, and even the ones I vaguely caught did not really create a great impact. So I guess what I am saying is that it may be a bit difficult to really appreciate all aspects of this series if you have
1. Not much interest in religion.
2. Not much exposure to christianity and its scriptures.

Otherwise a thought provoking series.

I gave this book a fair shot (stopped at 127) and up until I decided to stop, I thought the narrative was decent and the character portrayals if not ground-breaking interesting enough to make me want to keep reading. If this book was just about the characters, I would have continued without a doubt. What finally made me decide on not continuing was the sci-fi aspect. It wasn't supremely technical, I could follow along well enough though the physics flew over my head. The approach was just so dry that the book really dragged whenever a scientific explanation was called upon to get a better grasp on how this space voyage was going to happen. I can surmise that more of that type of writing gets more prevalent as the impending voyage looms closer so I finally had to put the book down because it was just so boring. While I did enjoy reading about the characters (as characters are usually the primary draw for me), I didn't care about them enough to suffer through more “science” when it's more the writing's fault than the actual science itself.

Slow, somewhat difficult exposition but builds to a deeply moving climax. Unlike anything I have read before in the way it works out thorny theological questions through a deeply character-driven science fiction novel. Well worth reading.

Insane how something written so masterfully, so beautifully, with such care and thought could leave me with so so so much psychic damage.

I'm in pain and it was horrifying and made me so sick I near cried. But like 5 stars I guess, fuck. The characters are fantastic and charming and all so lovable, which is exactly why they were able to devastate me so.

I'd write the trigger warnings but you can easily look those up. If I were given the trigger warnings upfront I don't know if I would have proceeded. (That's a lie, I totally would have on the merit of the writing and characters alone.)

To be clear, I'm agnostic, I believe in God but not religion. I don't think a single religion on Earth is right about God, and that's where I stood and still stand on the matter.

This story has been told before(Contact). A signal detected from another world and then the mad race to get there and find paradise because, in this case, we are all gods children. But, low and behold, what starts out as a fun time had by all, soon turns into a nightmare of epic proportions with only one survivor from a crew of seven.

For the most part it was a wonderful reading experience, beautiful in it's world building , full of mad ideas and interesting characters. however, it does get a bit bogged down a little bit in the middle with long discussions about faith and morality which I found a little bit boring.

The ending though., so brilliantly at odds with the rest of the book, brutal, horrific and shocking, and I really wasn't expecting it. Of course, non of what comes out in those final scenes will ever be made public becauase.... The Church.

I read this novel for the first time more than 20 years ago, but I didn't really get the deep and challenging exploration of the essential theological question of why does God allow suffering? As an older and wiser man, I understand and resonate much more now with this struggle. The novel is structured with a mystery at it's heart-what happened on a distant planet to cause to entire crew to perish and why is the lone survivor physically and spiritually shattered? The answers unfold as the story proceeds to a gripping and gut-wrenching resolution of the mystery. I listened to the expertly read audiobook and it greatly enhanced my experience of the story. Be warned that the narrator of the sequel - "Children of God" isn't the same person - and is one I found so difficult to listen to that I immediately turned it off and picked up the book to read rather then to listen to it.

It felt like it took way too long to get to anything interesting, with it being more than 200 pages before there's even contact. Somehow it seemed like there was in-proper(?) world building and it isn't until you understand the story structure that it flows a tad bit better. The prose is actually beautifully written, but with unnecessary turns of phrase, description, or sidebar. The science and religious themes are extremely clear throughout, but the conclusions and reveals could be a letdown after 80% of the book is arguably a run-of-the-mill story about discovering and inhabiting an undiscovered culture.

A book of two halves. Was it worth working through the first half to get to the second? For me, I'm not sure it was. I was looking for something different, something more ubiquitously dark. It got there in the end, and that is by far the best section of the book. I think it was a matter of expectations: I thought I was about to get Endo's Silence in space, but I was surprised to find half of the crew weren't even Jesuits, and those that were made no attempt to proselytise. It made for an odd, forced dynamic between the crew that didn't play out realistically. For all that, MDR is clearly a skilled writer, and I can't fault the prose.

Smart story, strong characters, slow philosophical SF that keeps you interested

Intense, compelling, a cleverly-constructed gut-punch of a book that will leave you thinking about it for days afterward. I'm debating between four and five stars because while everything about the book is five-star, the feelings I experienced while reading it, and afterward, were mostly things like sadness and hopelessness. And I do think that was also the point, and the ambiguity around the ending was the point, but: oof. (Maybe this says more about my own faith than the book, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation.)

This book has made it onto my Favorites shelf, even though the first time I tried reading it I had to stop because it exacerbated my incipient depression too badly. The second attempt, several years later, went better, and although it does not have a “happy ending” at all, there is enough hope to see one through.

I spent much of the book wanting to yell at Fr. Emilio for his lousy, Dollar Store theology and puerile theodicy. I was happy to see his growth (and glad to find out that the author knew what she was talking about after all!). Even though this was one of the most painful books I've been able to read, with its merciless exploration of pain in all its forms, I recommend it to anyone who is trying to figure out how to make sense of it all.

The Sparrow by Doria Maria Russell and the Problem of Suffering

One of the reasons to read science fiction - apart from not getting any dates in High School - is that it is a genre that allows the author to explore the great issues of the human condition in a fairly direct manner. By confronting their characters with some nonhuman civilization, science fiction authors can often talk about what makes us human, and what it means to be human. It has been this way since Gulliver's Travels.

Based on an off-hand quote about Jesuits in science fiction, Orrin Judd [who obviously knows his s.f.] recommended the Arthur C. Clarke Award winning book The Sparrow by Doria Maria Russell. The Sparrow appears to be a “first contact”story, which pits different cultures against each other. In this case, the cultures are a group largely composed of Catholic Jesuits who travel to Alpha Centauri lured by the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] reception of songs from that source. The story is set twenty and sixty years into the future, as it brackets, with due concern for time dilation caused by travel at close to the speed of light, the parties' experience on the extraterrestrial planet of Rakhat.

Apart from one character, every other character is either a Catholic or a lapsed Catholic. The main character is Father Emilio Sandoz who as a gifted linguist is a logical selection for an expedition to an extraterrestrial planet. Sandoz himself returns maimed by the alien and an emotional wreck because of his stint in an alien brothel, the death of his exploration comrades, and his seemingly pointless murder of an alien child. The circumstances behind Sandoz' conduct are not cleared up until the last twenty pages.

Normally, in books of this kind, the focus is on the alien culture. The culture, its worldview and limitations are developed in the context of the clash of cultures. C. J. Cherryh - is a master of this form, particularly the Faded Sun Trilogy.. Russell, though, doesn't appear very interested in the culture of her aliens. The reader does learn some tantalizingly interesting facts - there are two sentient species on the planet, one a predator species, the other its traditional prey - but the implications of these details are not developed, and they seem to be tossed out for shock value.

Russell is a gifted writer. Her characters were interesting and largely sympathetic. She also seemed sympathetic to the Jesuits. But the intent of her book was unclear until the end. I had thought it was about first contact. It wasn't. In fact, the book was about the meaning of meaningless suffering. This is clear at two places. The first is when a party member simply dies. The agnostic doctor asks why God gets the credit for good things that happen, but not the blame for the end.

The second place is the end of the book when we learn that Sandoz' spiritual collapse - he clearly blames God for treating him as a cosmic joke - is due to the fact that all of his friends on the exploration team are dead, he has been brutalized, and he has killed an innocent, and to his way of thinking there was no meaning for any of it. The author interview at the end makes it clear that Russell's intent was to communicate that message. Russell herself is a convert from Catholicism to Judaism and she explains that in selecting Judaism one knows two things: first, being Jewish can get you killed, and, second, God won't rescue you. She also describes Sandoz' experience as a kind of holocaust. One may therefore assume that she views suffering as a meaningless experience, explained in some way by a story told by one of her Jesuit characters about a Jewish story that in order to make creation God had to remove himself from that part of the universe, so something other than himself could exist. Sandoz felt abandoned by God on Rakhat because he was.

It is here that I have my criticism of the Sparrow. Russell's avowed intent was to write a Black Robe among the stars. The Jesuits who suffered in the New World didn't share Sandoz' view. They felt that their sufferings had some meaning. There has been some discussion among various blogs about the problem of suffering. As John DaFiesole at Disputations points out the Catholic tradition ascribes evil to an absence of goodness, or an attraction to that which is not good, and that God may be the author of suffering that is intended to punish. The New Gasparian notes the tradition of suffering as causing growth by learning not to be attached to the temporal. Heart, Mind & Strength - Blog Admin Panel emphasizes the disciplinary function of suffering; suffering is like a leg brace. These answers all seem to be in line with the traditional understanding of the significance of suffering set forth in Salvifici Doloris aka The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. In Savifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II acknowledges suffering as a mystery with dimensions in justice, growth, love and charity. On that last, he writes:

The parable of the Good Samaritan belongs to the Gospel of suffering. For it indicates what the relationship of each of us must be towards our suffering neighbor. We are not allowed to “pass by on the other side” indifferently; we must “stop” beside him. Everyone who stops beside the suffering of another person, whatever form it may take, is a Good Samaritan. This stopping does not mean curiosity but availability.


Religion is important because we are all going to suffer. Even if we never suffer material or psychological deprivation, we suffer when we contemplate our finite existence in this world. Religion offers a meaning for that existence, and thereby lessens that suffering. Father Sandoz' had a deep tradition to understand his suffering. He could have viewed his suffering as punishment for the sin of pride - heading out four light years, then landing on an alien planet without reconnoitering at the very least implicates the sin of pride, if not stupidity. He could have viewed his suffering as a form of love and sacrifice. He could have looked at it as charity in bringing Christ to an alien planet. However he viewed the experience, viewing himself as abandoned was not part of that tradition. Even if Sandoz reached a point of nihilistic desperation, it seems that he should have known something about this rich understanding of the meaning of suffering.

And that's the criticism. If Russell wanted to write a book where the main character was a Jesuit, it just seems reasonable for her to acknowledge the philosophy which that group shares. It seems that she was as uninterested in developing the Jesuit culture as she was in developing the Rhakat culture.

This is a really hard book for me to rate.

One one hand it was a real page turner once it got going, and I was excited to see what would happen next. I also enjoy the two storyline format (one in 2016 and one in 2060). The characters were well developed and the world was well built.

On the other hand, I felt that the end of the book was rushed. The first 80% of the book was great and I would have rated it 5 stars. The final 20% felt like the author went “I've got to wrap up all these story lines and I'm already up over 400 pages”.

I've marked this review as SPOILERS but just in case SPOILERS AHEAD

The final 20% was cringey to read and hits suddenly and without warning. Many things are not fully explained. I understand Supaari's motivations for selling Emilio, so he can become a Founder of a lineage, but I don't understand the hand mutilation, especially when none of the other slaves had their hands mutilated. And the character he was sold to was basically not described at all before he's literally forced into the story, he's just a horny alien ready to cause havoc. And then Askama coming to open the door to Emilio's cell? It just doesn't make sense - why wouldn't there be a guard escorting them down? It was just another way for the author to shoehorn in some more tragedy. It all felt really forced in order to get us to a final moral quandary about God.

Even with the massive tragedy this book became, had the author chosen to split it up over two books and really flesh out some more of the final 20% I probably would have given it 4 or 5 stars, but as it stands the best I can do is 3 stars, and I would not recommend it to a friend. I had planned to read the second book (Children of God, which has Emilio returning to Rakhat) but at this point I don't think it will be worth it - I don't want to be betrayed again by the author.

I liked it a lot. It's a strange beast though: definitely a scifi story, with an intriguing handful of “science inventions”, it is nonetheless not a story about those. Maybe that's what makes it a really good scifi story; it's really about the people, not the science.

You can read the rest of this review on my blog at
https://renatoram.ch/p/the-sparrow-by-mary-doria-russell/

This book has been on my list for a long time, and I'm surprised how long it took me to get around to it, because “Jesuits in space” was a premise that really excited me. What a disappointment.

The novel really started to fall apart for me when I realized that the makeup of the mission was to be a bizarre, effortfully diverse mishmash bordering on caricature. In addition to the protagonist, you have the folksy Texan fighter pilot (“yee haw!”), the demure Quebecois naturalist (“mon dieu”), and the stern lady scientist (“...”). I was eager to forgive the book's hokey setup, assuming that it would be in service of some greater philosophical parable. It wasn't.

While the premise of the book is novel, it merely serves as a veneer for a pretty unoriginal and uninspiring reflection on God and suffering. The existence of sentient, extraterrestrial life poses some really fun and funky theological questions, and Russell leaves every single one of them unasked and unanswered. The aliens have no bearing on the plot; this book could have taken place in Florida.

The portions I enjoyed the most were those taking place in the retreat house after the protagonist has returned to Earth. In these chapters, a friendship is forged between him and some of his fellow Jesuits as he struggles to cope with his trauma and tell his tale. Given the fact that his tale is so unremarkable, however, these sections do little to alleviate the drudgery that is reading The Sparrow.

4.5 stars


Mary Doria Russell, is an excellent writer. This book was intense, brilliant, complex and the synonyms, go on. At this point, I don't think I can take the intensity of the follow up novel. However, I will read in the future.

I can't decide on a star rating for this book. I loved and empathized with the main character, Emilio, from the beginning. Because of the book's structure of showing the aftermath of the mission in alternating chapters with the mission happening, I had some idea of what had occurred all along, as well as some good guesses; still, the plot twists surprised me, and I was riveted from about the halfway point to the end. Best of all, it's a really thought-provoking book that asks very good questions and doesn't provide answers. So, I enjoyed it immensely and I'll probably read the sequel soon. I can also understand why it's such an acclaimed book. However, I always interpret other people's 5-star ratings as enthusiastic approval, and I don't really feel that way. I'll just leave the rating blank.

A lot about this book reminded me of the pop-anthropology talk that crops up on the internet sometimes: that women and men have immutable characteristics which define their personalities, and that happy hetero marriages are the best way for humans to live, because of biological truths. Additionally, biological truths completely define the aliens' behavior; the frustrated desire for reproduction is the two main villains' (if you can call them villains) motivation, and biology in general is the ultimate reason for all the horrible things that happen.. I'm sure other people have phrased this much more clearly than I will, but I believe that sentience itself means that there will always be variation in how we live our lives and how we find happiness. The aliens, though, don't really vary from what biology says they should do or be.

In general I didn't like all the unrequited love between the humans, especially the feelings of the book's sole gay character, which seemed like a clear example of the old-fashioned “gay = miserable” trope. But I also wonder if those subplots were meant to point to the central relationship in the book: Emilio's relationship with God. Is Emilio's love for God unrequited? As an atheist I don't feel qualified to answer the question, but I'm pretty sure the book is asking it.

It's quite a heavy book and I'm glad I read it. I wish I could read it as part of a book club or class, because it would definitely inspire some interesting discussions. I listened to the audiobook and I don't recommend it; the narrator was too fast for me. I kept wishing I had the text in front of me, but it's expensive, especially considering it's over 20 years old.

... [T]he novel does not play a simple binary between belief and disbelief. Instead, it chooses to offer a more nuanced take on the subject by positing that belief is not without its risks. To believe in a higher power means accepting that said higher power has control over what happens to the self and to humanity as a whole, but this then leads to the question: If this higher power is as good and as wonderful as its proponents make it out to be, why does not it not do something about all the evils in the world? And that, right there, is the conflict at the heart of this novel: not the question about aliens and where they will fit in religion, but about what it means to believe in a higher power when caught up in harrowing events.

Full review here: https://wp.me/p21txV-FJ

I liked the writing in this book but it felt a bit long - I feel like the middle could have been shortened some. The last 30% of the book flew by and it seemed like it to forever to get there and then everything happened so quickly. I enjoyed the characters, their relationships and the sociological aspects of life on Raktar. Haven't yet decided if I will read the sequel.

Slow at the beginning, but really picked up as it sped to the ominous end foretold in the “current day” chapters. Not my favorite by a long shot but glad to have read this modern classic. Plenty to ponder with regard to religion, society, and compassion.

3-3.5 stars. Interesting, frustrating, tragic, dense.

A post on my second reading:
Summary: A group mostly made up of Jesuits discovers that another world with intelligent creatures exists and secretly decides to visit it; tragedy ensues.

I previously read The Sparrow about six years ago. In my ongoing reading about Discernment, it was a fiction book that was suggested to me as one that looks at discernment, so I put it back on my list to reread, but a Holy Post discussion about The Sparrow made me decide to pick it up when I did.

As I have been reading various ways to think about Discernment, I keep coming up against the tension between those who see discernment primarily as Christian decision-making, those who see it as a set of tools or a process that includes decision-making, and those who see it primarily as seeking after God. I am definitely in the latter camp. I know these are not mutually exclusive ways to think about discernment, but I do tend to think of them as the three modes where one is prioritized.

I started a book on discernment a couple of weeks ago, and I could not make it through the first chapter because it approached discernment as a tool that was more similar to an incantation to control God or to get God to reveal himself more than a method to help us understand who God is. This problem is part of why I have been reading about discernment, to help figure out where it seems to go wrong. Discernment is often invoked in discussions of spiritual warfare, and people who regularly talk about spiritual warfare seem more likely to believe in various conspiracy theories. The very nature of belief in conspiracy theories makes me distrust your perception of discernment.

Skye and Kaitlyn's podcast discussion of the Sparrow took the standard approach of considering it primarily a discussion of the problem of evil or a meditation on the Book of Job. That is an aspect of the book, but Skye said that he did not think it involved discernment much at all. That is why I picked up the book right now. I was reading it to see why it was both recommended to me because I was looking for fiction about discernment, and Skye said that it didn't really discuss discernment.

As I read it, I thought two things were going on. First, many people do not have a background in Ignatius' Rules of Discernment. The Sparrow, even though it is primarily about Jesuits, never explicitly invokes the rules of discernment. And I think this is what Skye meant. For a book about Jesuits, written by an author who grew up Catholic, I thought there should have been a more explicit discussion of the rules.

That being said, I think discernment is in the background of The Sparrow but not explicitly invoked. I think I am going to say that while it is not, not about the Problem of Evil, I think the more nuanced take is that it is interested in the problem of evil regarding the process of discernment, especially when you are no longer sure of the validity of your discernment.

Because of the story structure, with the book starting at the end and then telling the story in flashback, it is not a spoiler to say that the main character has a crisis of faith because he was attempting to follow God but had all of his mission members die, except for himself. I continue to come across the concept of Betrayal Trauma in religious settings. David Swanson's interview with Dr Glen Bracey about Bracey and Emerson's book,The Religion of Whiteness, again touched on Betrayal Trauma and especially the problem of Christians who are racial minorities who feel a call toward racial reconciliation and then feel rejected in that process, and who feel a type of betrayal trauma as a result. They identify a call, attempt to live out that call, feel rejected or unsuccessful in the calling, and they end up having to reject part of themselves (either their culture or background or calling), causing a trauma response.

The main character in The Sparrow, Emilio Sandoz, is having a trauma response. He is medically broken but also psychologically and spiritually broken as well. It is a spoiler to discuss why Betrayal Trauma might be a good way to discuss Emilio's pain. If you do not want spoilers, you should stop reading here. I don't love the way that sexual violence, rape, and prostitution are used in The Sparrow to evoke trauma and pain, and I do want to give a warning about that.

Last night, I started the second book, Children of God. It picks up immediately after the end of The Sparrow, and in the prologue, it summarizes the ending of The Sparrow this way:

“Do you know what I thought, just before I was used the first time? I am in God's hands,” Emilio had said, when his resistance finally shattered on a golden August afternoon. “I loved God and I trusted in His love. Amusing, isn't it. I laid down all my defenses. I had nothing between me and what happened but the love of God. And I was raped. I was naked before God and I was raped.” [and then just a few lines later another character thinks] “Emilio Sandoz was not sinless; indeed, he held himself guilty of a great deal, and yet ... “If I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God's will too and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness,” Sandoz had told them. “But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances, is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”

Note: I drafted this whole post immediately after reading The Sparrow, but because of travel and work, I did not post until I finished the second book, The Children of God. These are intended to be read as a single story in two parts. I do not think at this point in my post about The Sparrow that it is a spoiler to say that, in large part, The Children of God explains what was misunderstood in The Sparrow. While I gave spoilers in this discussion, I tried to write my post on The Children of God with as few spoilers as possible. 

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primele 400 de pagini: 1/5. Personaje caricaturale, exagerate, lipsite de credibilitate și de-a dreptul enervante. Lungeală și plictiseală maximă: 400 de pagini de nimic, ceva fițe pseudo-flozofice, trăncăneală fără rost, și iar nimic. Doar scriitura e bună, fluentă.
Ultimele 200 de pagini: 3/5. singurul personaj bine construit, Supaari, descrierea unei societăți funcționale, câteva evenimente interesante. Dar personajele umane acționează în mod repetat ridicol, de parcă ar fi retardați, iar planeta/fauna/civilizația nu sunt deloc descrise/conturate.
În medie, iese 2/5, dar îi mai scad un punct pentru că m-a înfuriat prin terism/umansism, sau cum am putea numi rasismul dacă-l extindem la umanitate. Pentru autoare, chiar și când după 400 de pagini ajunge în sfârșit pe altă planetă, Celălalt e irelevant: orice fiță a Marelui Explorator Civilizat Alb (om, deși dcă mă gîndesc personajele chiar sunt 100% albi) e mai importantă decât o civilizație întreagă, care nu e băgată în seamă și are doar rolul de a sublinia cât de cool sunt Sandoz (cică un dur din favele, dar care se poartă ca o muiere văicăritoare) și Anne (doamne, ce babă falsă și fâsâită!). Extratereștrii, la ei acasă, sunt la fel de caricaturali precum negrii și amerindienii din westernurile proaste: sunt acolo doar ca să zâmbească tâmp pe lângă John Wayne (de altfel imitat aici de-un personaj texan JW).
Nerecomandabil, apropae la fel de proastă precum Connie Willis (pe care o iau ca etalon de 0/5).