Product Description
"A NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT . . . Russell shows herself to be a skillful storyteller who subtly and expertly builds suspense."
--USA Today

"AN EXPERIENCE NOT TO BE MISSED . . . If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute-turned-computer-expert? That's who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results. . . . Vivid and engaging . . . An incredible novel."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"POWERFUL . . . Father Emilio Sandoz [is] the only survivor of a Jesuit mission to the planet Rakhat, 'a soul . . . looking for God.' We first meet him in Italy . . . sullen and bitter. . . . But he was not always this way, as we learn through flashbacks that tell the story of the ill-fated trip. . . . The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"SMOOTH STORYTELLING AND GORGEOUS CHARACTERIZATION . . . Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them."
--Entertainment Weekly

Amazon.com Review
In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 454 reviews)

wonderful

I have read thousands of books... This is THE best books I have ever read. I am not a religious person, I have no God, I have read the bible, the Koran and alot of other religious texts. This being said and stated above.
This is a story of love, discovery, and the search for faith in the most extreme and at the same time closest place...the human, and alien soul.
Bar none the best first contact story I have ever read... It is a violent scary, heartwarming tale of love, misunderstanding, hatred, and faith.
Enjoy.

September 29, 2008

Good book, good story

My cousin recommended this book to me a long time ago and I finally got around to reading it. The same day I finished it, I checked my local library for the sequel and now I'm 1/4 into the sequel. Both are excellent.

I don't usually like a book that switches from one time frame to another, but this one was done so well. The transition was smooth, it didn't make me upset to leave the characters in one time zone or the other when switching back and forth.

The characters were excellent, believable and as complex as we all are, regardless of position or belief.
September 25, 2008

Truly thought provoking

"It was predictable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed, jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration. . . . .
The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God's other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorum Dei Gloriam; for the greater glory of God.
They meant no harm."

The Sparrow is about a group sent by the Jesuits to make first contact with an alien race which has been discovered in Alpha Centauri. The book has been criticized for its lack of scientific detail and the illogic of the Jesuits in choosing these particular emissaries, but the moral questions it raises and the spiritual struggles endured by Emilio Sandoz are more the point of the book, in my opinion.

Sandoz returns to Earth, the only survivor of the first mission to Rakhat, a man broken in both body and spirit, return to Earth accused of several crimes, prostitution and murder among them. Sandoz is brought to Rome, where an inquiry into the mission begins. The story goes back and forth between the past -- the discovery of Rakhat and the mission itself -- and the present -- Sandoz' recovery and the inquiry. It's quite an effective structure. Even though we know how it all turns out in the end, Russell builds tension by allowing us to get to know her characters as Emilio does in a way that a simple remembrance of them wouldn't accomplish.

While the mission itself is fascinating, particularly for those of us who grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, it is the spiritual and theological questions the book raises that were far more interesting to me. Is God really "putting turtles on fenceposts?" and leading us along through our lives simply to get us to a certain point?

"For some of them, there had been a turning point that now seemed justified, no matter how painful the decision might have been. For Sofia Mendez, a way to make peace with what, even now, she could only think of as "the days before Jaubert." For Jimmy Quinn, the end of worry that he was wrong to leave his mother, and right to claim his life as his own.
For Marc Robichaux and Alan Pace, there was a sense that they had lived their lives the right way and confidence that God had recognized their artistry as the prayer they has always menat the work to be, and there was hope that He would let them serve Him now.
For Anne and George Edwards, for D.W. Yarbrough and Emilio Sandoz, this voyage had given meaning to random acts, and to all the points where they had done this and not that, chosen one thing and not another, to all their decisions, whether carefully thought out or ill conceived.
I would do it all again, each of them thought."

It's a very good book -- well written, thought provoking, and thoughtful as well. It left me with more questions than answers, but in this case, I think that's a good thing.
August 27, 2008

Loved the book all the way through - SPOILER ALERT!!

SPOILER ALERT IN REVIEW!!
I enjoyed this book from the first page to the last. The character development was perfect, though if there was any drawback, many of them were snuffed out too quickly, but most people don't die over 10 pages, anyways. Emilio Sandoz is a great character - the preacher who goes into one of the greatest challenges ever dealt to the human race (albeit in 2019) with complete unquestioning love of God and comes out of his first extraterrestrial experience with a very different view of the "man upstairs." Can't wait to read "Children of God" to continue with his adventures. Thank you, Ms. Russell, for this book.
August 11, 2008

Spellbound

Only two-thirds thru, I cannot wait to review it.

Normally I do not care for stories that jump constantly between timeframes, but in this instance, I am grateful for the relief. Starting at the far ends of the situation, the author builds to an intensity in one part of the story and then skillfully switches to the other end, usually just at the point I would have had to put the book down to take a breather from it. As it is, now I can hardly bear to put it down.

Another reviewer questioned, as I did, do I really want to expose myself to the horrors that destroyed the crew of this mission to a strange planet; I have reserved the fifth star for this review because of that, as I am still on the edge of wondering, do I go on or should I stop before I am simply to aghast to continue. The author, however, builds the suspense in such small increments, I hardly realize that I am becoming inured, and my need to know what happens next keeps drawing me farther.

I do know a couple of things about what is going to happen because I stumbled upon a couple of spoilers for this story in the review of its sequel, so anyone who really doesn't want to know more than the author intends, I suggest NOT checking out Children of God -- which I am still undecided whether to order, depending on how Sparrow unfolds.

But I am definitely adding the author to my list of favorite writers. I really do not care what genre a book is determined to be, or when or where the story takes place; the most important thing for me is character development. I have to like, or at least be able to relate to, the people in the story in order to give a darn what happens to them. I have put more than one book down halfway through it just because slogging through all those pages for people I don't care for is too big a waste of my time. No danger of that here; Russell writes people so clearly and so sympathetically that I want to meet them in real life.
July 21, 2008

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