{"id":1153,"date":"1999-07-06T08:28:08","date_gmt":"1999-07-06T08:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2012-04-25T08:28:58","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T08:28:58","slug":"children-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1153","title":{"rendered":"Children of God"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Children of God<\/em> by Mary Doria             Russell<\/h3>\n<p>Six people participated in the discussion of             <em>Children of God<\/em>, which is a current Hugo             nominee. This book is the sequel to Russell&#8217;s Tiptree             Award-winning &#8220;Jesuits in space&#8221; first novel, <em>The             Sparrow<\/em>. The story starts as Father Emilio is             finally learning to enjoy life again after the             devastating first contact mission to Rakhat. Then the             Catholic Church decides to send a second mission to             Rakhat, and Emilio is forced to participate. When             Emilio and the rest of the mission team arrive, they             find that their first visit led to major changes on             Rakhat as well as on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>All of us found the story and Russell&#8217;s prose             compelling. One person had not read <em>The Sparrow<\/em>,             but he found the author did a good job of filling him             in on the necessary background. Emilio is a sympathetic             character, so we are pleased<!--more--> when he finds happiness             and devastated when the Pope yanks it away from him.             This book has a textured and layered structure more             ambitious than The Sparrow, and it&#8217;s pulled off             beautifully. We learn a lot more about the aliens, but             the author avoids making them too human. Various forms             of politics (within Earth&#8217;s government, the Catholic             Church, and two alien societies) are important plot             elements of this book. This book made us care about its             characters, and we laughed, worried, and cried about             them.<\/p>\n<p>The book had only minor problems. Emilio is less             central to the plot here than he was in <em>The             Sparrow<\/em>, which some may find disappointing. A             revelation near the end that&#8217;s supposed to provide a             big conceptual payoff only worked for about half of our             group, with the rest finding it a letdown.<\/p>\n<p>Overall half of our group said that the loved this             book, and the rest said they liked it a lot. We             recommend it to lovers of good fiction.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Children of God by Mary Doria Russell Six people participated in the discussion of Children of God, which is a current Hugo nominee. This book is the sequel to Russell&#8217;s Tiptree Award-winning &#8220;Jesuits in space&#8221; first novel, The Sparrow. The story starts as Father Emilio is finally learning to enjoy life again after the devastating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}