Unlock The Secrets Of The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) Planned By Mary Doria Russell File Format Publication Copy

vastly different first contact novel, Russells book is intelligent, feminine, and moving, While other first contact novels might focus on technology, science, and action, Russell focuses on relationships, religion, and inner conflict.
Its a graceful examination of faith, the search for God and the attempt to understand a God who allows tragedy.
Its also an adept science fiction tale, tackling interstellar travel, time dilation, and a fully realized and original alien culture.


The plot follows Father Emilio Sandoz a Jesuit priest, who we learn in Chapter one, is the sole survivor of a manned mission to an inhabited planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.
The story carefully alternates between three timeframes, before the mission, the aftermath of Sandozs return to Earth, and the first contact itself.
Russell slowly exposes bits and pieces of the first contact, creating intrigue and anticipation, until its fully revealed in the final third.


In the first third of the novel, Mary Doria Russells writing exhibits a strong grasp of religion, European culture, and history.
There is so much character backstory, she almost lost me, However, the quality of the writing and the hints of interplanetary exploration pulled me through, Ultimately, the intricate investment in character development pays off,

Without revealing too much, Ill say that the first contact portion was imaginative and unique, Russell considers aspects of alien culture rarely addressed, such as their commerce, music, and multiple languages, but more importantly their relationships and social structures.
While theres enough similarities to humanity to mirror our own failings the planet, its ecosystem, and its intelligent inhabitants feel genuinely alien.
I'll also drop a warning that the conclusion includes some violent and horrific events that are not for the faint of heart.


A tragic and powerful tale of exploration, of both interstellar first contact and the internal search for meaning.
If I wanted to read about sexual slavery, rape, gang rape, and gang rape with an audience, I'd just read the news everyday.
Actually, I do read the news every day, This kind of stuff is rampant, It always blows my mind that SFF authors who can write about ANYTHING, no limits often choose to return to stuff like sexual slavery.


This is not entertainment for me, It is real life, it is every day, and it is NOT what I seek out in my fiction.


Russell is a great writer this onestar is not a reflection of her writing, Her character development is also excellent, which makes it that much worse when a character we love, a wonderful man, gets brutally raped over and over and over and over ad nauseam.


They also slaughter and eat infants and children,

No matter how good the writing is I cannot get on board with this, Call it a personal hangup, If I knew sexual slavery and gang rape were the punchline to this novel, I'd never have read it.
I had wanted to read The Sparrow since its release back in/, I had seen a review of it and loved the basic idea of future Jesuits being the first “missionaries” to make contact with the first sentient alien species discovered.
But I lost that review and was never able to figure out the name of the book or the author.
I tried to discover it everywhere I went, and all those I asked were oblivious, I really thought I would have no trouble tracking it down, but I couldnt, so after a while I gave up.


Now, over ten years later, I discovered Mary Doria Russells masterpiece and am disappointed that I didnt read it sooner.


I feared many times over while reading The Sparrow that my disappointment would be complete,

The Sparrow is so good, you see, that as I moved from moment to moment, following Father Emilio Sandozs broken narrative, I was sure that there was no way Russell could deliver on the promise of her writing.
It was so good it was great, and I worried that it was too good to maintain its level throughout.
Experience with much literary disappointment was steeling me for a let down,

Creating Suspense One of the things Russell did was to create suspense in the story with all the skill and technique of Alfred Hitchcock.


Hitchcock provided an example of how to craft suspense in an interview many years ago, relating this scenario: show the audience a bomb being planted under the seat in the witness stand, then bring the witness in and have him take a seat.
The man goes on answering questions, going through the action we expect of him, totally oblivious to what is coming, thus letting the audience worry about the bomb.
The audience wonders when the bomb will go off, Who will the bomb injure Is there a chance for the man to be saved How will he be saved How will he die And the audiences tension rises for every minute that ticks by without a resolution.


Its a cinematic version of dramatic irony, and Russell is a master of her own prose version.
We the audience are positioned as the tribunal of Jesuits, listening to Father Sandozs history of the mission to Rakhat, but we are given droplets of information ahead of our brethren that none but Sandoz and Father General Guiliani have access to.
These droplets set up Russells entire narrative structure, making the story compulsively readable by piquing our need to know more, our need to understand how these terrible things we know must happen actually happened.


Complete Characters But this need to turn pages, this desire Russell kindled in me to know it all and know it all as quickly as possible, was steadily tempered by my desire to stay with the characters she crafted.
I didnt want to leave Emilio Sandoz to his torment I wanted to prolong my stay in his presence.
I wanted to remain with Anne and George, D, W. , Marc Robichaux, Sophia, Jimmy, Father Behr, Father Candotti, Father Reyes, Father General Guiliani and even Father Voelker and the Janaata trader Supaari.
I wanted to stay with them so much that I found myself slowing down my reading, setting the book aside even while another part of my mind tugged me back to turn the pages.


The reason was how deeply Russell made me feel her people, They were real for me in a way that few characters have been really, . . its only my favourite books that have achieved what Russell achieved, character being more important to me than anything.
Their decisions made sense, their love for one another made sense, their desires and cares, their anger and frustration, their actions and reactions.
They were real and true, And I felt them as though they were real people in my world,

Morality Then there was The Sparrow's struggle with morality, I am not a moral person but I am an highly ethical one, and Russells management of the big moral questions moved me.


Contemporary or futuristic moral struggles in literature often bore me, or even anger me with their preachiness or closed minded simplicity, but not the struggles of the priests in The Sparrow.
These men were struggling with their morality and their God in passionate, energetic, complex and vital ways, And the heart of the struggle was Emilio Sandoz, the man who loved his God the deepest and had his faith and love shattered in the worst possible ways.


He described the struggle best when he said: “, . . That: is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, the rest of it was Gods will too, and that gentlemen is cause for bitterness.
But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesnt it.
”

This meditation on responsibility is pivotal for all of the characters morality, not just the Jesuits, but this pivot is most emotionally raw for Father Sandoz, and his position as our narrator makes his struggle, to some extent, our own.


Disappointment I expected that all this excellence was too good to be true, I expected Russell to lose her nerve in the end, to take the easy route of evil, thereby absolving all of the missionaries from their own responsibilities based on the scapegoating of the VaRakhati more specifically the Janaata.
And for one moment, during one act of Janaata brutality, I thought she had done what I feared, but Russell stood fast and said what needed to be said through Sandoz: “There are no beggars on Rakhat.
There is no unemployment. There is no overcrowding. No starvation. No environmental degradation. There is no genetic disease, The elderly do not suffer decline, Those with terminal illness do not linger, They pay a terrible price for this system, but we too pay, . . and the coin we use is the suffering of children, How many kids starved to death this afternoon, while we sat here Just because their corpses arent eaten doesnt make our species any more moral!”

This moment is an act of true authorial bravery, solidifying The Sparrow's place in my pantheon of books while ensuring that no disappointment could taint Russell's fine work.


There are quibblous moments in the book that stroked my fur backwards, such as Russells tendency to focus on her characters joyous moments of laughter and rejoicing Ive never seen people laugh so much or so easily as the Jesuit missionaries and their party, except in a Guy Gavriel Kay novel or the veneration of Anne by every being she met, but these are meaningless when faced with the triumphs of The Sparrow.


I could go on discussing linguistics, the clear link between sitelinkMary Doria Russell and the great sitelinkUrsula LeGuin, the subtly handled science, the concepts of culture and race, the manifestations of violence, rape, prostitution, art, love and scent but all of that would be superfluous.
As is most of what I have written,

Suffice to say that The Sparrow is a masterpiece that Russell will likely never better, I wish I had written her words, And I hope to meet her one day so I can thank her properly for the experience, .