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A review by ruzgofdi
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
2.0
You see the words "a religious group sends a mission to an alien world" and you may get the wrong idea of what's going to happen. I'll admit that this was my case. I was expecting more proselytizing than actually happened. The story actually felt more like what I would imagine a first contact mission organized by a government or scientific organization to be like. Although those two groups would probably have better procedures in place with regards to testing if a person is able to survive exposure to an alien environment. The focus is on alien biology, anthropology, and linguistics more than on exposing new people to any of our theology. The religious angle of the story just seems more like a way to add some extra complications to portions of the characters' lives.
My big issues are that it was a very slow boil of a story that boiled over too quickly. You will pass the half way point of the book before the characters see their first intelligent alien. Part of this is because the book switches off between events that happened leading up to and during the mission and events occurring around the only person to return from that mission now that he is back on Earth. So you know something bad is coming at some point. And then, when it does, it's almost glossed over. In one sentence, the author gives all the explanation of what happens to half the cast. I don't necessarily want all the gory details, but if you've spent so much time at the beginning establishing these characters for the reader, they deserve a little more info about how things happened than just the order it happened in.
I didn't have high expectations going in, so I wasn't disappointed by the book. But it also didn't really do anything to exceed those same expectations.
My big issues are that it was a very slow boil of a story that boiled over too quickly. You will pass the half way point of the book before the characters see their first intelligent alien. Part of this is because the book switches off between events that happened leading up to and during the mission and events occurring around the only person to return from that mission now that he is back on Earth. So you know something bad is coming at some point. And then, when it does, it's almost glossed over. In one sentence, the author gives all the explanation of what happens to half the cast. I don't necessarily want all the gory details, but if you've spent so much time at the beginning establishing these characters for the reader, they deserve a little more info about how things happened than just the order it happened in.
I didn't have high expectations going in, so I wasn't disappointed by the book. But it also didn't really do anything to exceed those same expectations.