On Saturday I read a book I had heard about a few places, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It did a great job of compelling me to read it; I had to buy it when it came time to leave the bookstore because I needed to be able to finish it as soon as possible (later Saturday evening). It's about a first contact expedition mounted by a group of Jesuits (plus some non-Jesuit crew members) to a planet in the Alpha Centauri system from which radio signals have been detected.

I'm about to talk spoilers, so leave now if you don't want to know. The gist is, I do have a problem with one aspect of the basic premise which renders the whole book less real to me than it could have been, but I still admire the story and think it's worth reading.

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ok. The problem is, the big final confrontation of the book is all about Sandoz, the survivor of the expedition, describing his captivity as a sex toy in the palace of a local aristocrat. There has been a huge buildup throughout the book of your curiosity as to some big thing that obviously happened that completely broke Sandoz's spirit and faith. This is revealed to be his rape by said aristocrat, and subsequent repeated rapes and torturings by him and his friends/poet-groupies. When the UN-sponsored crew arrives to rescue him, and he accidentally (as it turns out, that's been another built-up mystery through the book) kills the little girl alien who led them to him, they get this idea that he's a depraved evil vicious guy, working in a brothel, and I'm sorry but... what?

Why would they assume it was a brothel instead of a harem? Why would they think he was there of his own will, instead of kept a prisoner, especially considering the tortures he'd obviously suffered (would anyone think he'd WANTED his hands to be so disfigured)? Why wouldn't they be able to see that he'd been driven rather bonkers by all this? For them to have so little imagination or compassion or empathy is not believable, to me. And upon these assumptions of the UN team is based most of the pressure put on Sandoz when he gets home. I don't buy it.

Also, this big revelation, that he was raped, was kind of a letdown after all the suspense that had built up through the book, because it was not a surprise to me at all. That was it? That was the crisis of the book, this admission? From a perspective of Sandoz's psychological recovery, I respect its importance, but it did not live up to the scale of expectation that I felt the story had been building to.

The science problems didn't bother me as much, because they weren't the point of the book. No way are we going to be capable of sending a fitted-out asteroid, left over from asteroid mining, as a ship to Alpha Centauri in 2019. I'll be happy if we even make it to Mars by then. I don't know why Russell set the date so close to present, because it didn't feel that close. But the characters and story were the priorities. I can go with that.

I still think it's worth reading, because I liked the character interactions and was interested from a social science perspective in the alien planet and its cultures, as much as the exploring characters were. And it kept my interest riveted, as I said. The jumping-around-in-time method of telling the story worked very well to build curiosity, although it makes it hard to go back later and remember where to look for a particular part of the story. Apparently there's a sequel, Children of God, so I'll have to read it, to see what happens, even though it's said to be not as good.

copyright 2003 carrie lynn king.