Emilio Sandoz is a Jesuit priest. He has just arrived back to Earth after having been on a journey to another planet to make contact with aliens. He is a broken man. The things he has been through have left him shaken to his core, and they have shaken his faith in God. We find out these things gradually. The story is told backwards in that it starts with the return of Sandoz to Earth. Only later, as Sandoz himself starts to come to terms […]
FINALLY posting my Children of God Review.
Last year, I read The Sparrow for CBR7, and it totally wrecked me. I’m not even kidding, I finished the book huddled up in bed, surrounded by Kleenex. It was beautiful and damaging and raw all at once. I had heard there was a sequel, but just did not feel quite up to it at the time. Thanks to faintingviolet’s cheerleading, I decided I would be ready to read the sequel in 2016. And I am glad that I read it this year. Faintingviolet’s and […]
Mary Doria Russell Always Makes Me THINK
I read The Sparrow last year and was absolutely gutted by the story of Father Emilio Sandoz and the crew of the first mission to Rakhat. Having decided to work my way through Mary Doria Russell’s works, I knew that I would eventually read its sequel, Children of God. However, I knew very little about it, other than that it continued Emilio’s story. Bonnie also read The Sparrow for Cannonball Read 7, and we had talked about reading Children of Men together this year. In […]
A crushing crisis of faith.
There are points in a person’s life when a book crushes her very core, and she is left reeling. There are moments when a book’s impact is felt too-closely based on an event or circumstance in a person’s life. In my life, The Book Thief fits that former category, a book that left me curled up in fetal position around a box of Kleenex, sobbing until I couldn’t breathe. The latter kind of book is The Fault in Our Stars, which I read for CBR5 […]