(Book- of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Clarke, with just a dash of Edgar Rice Burroughs-and yet strikingly original, even so. A startling portrait of an alien culture and of the nature of God as well, since, in his utter humiliation and in the annihilation of his spirit, Sandoz is reborn in faith. There, he is raped repeatedly by the great poet who wrote the angelic songs that fetched the Jesuits in the first place.

The newborn are slain and eaten, as is the party from Earth, except for Sandoz, who is taken to the strange capitol city and sold into a brothel. It seems that the Jana'ata raise the Runa like rabbits. Then, inadvertently, the visitors improve the local diet, causing a surge in births among the Runa suddenly, another, fiercer race appears to put things right. Wells' The Time Machine, here called the runa. The mission began well: Rakhat was beautiful and bountiful, and the men and women from Earth lived peacefully alongside a gentle and dreamy race, rather like the eloi of H.G. But he is a broken man physically and spiritually. In the narrative beginning in 2059, therefore, the mission's only survivor, Sandoz himself, is only a decade older. The ship will reach the singing planet, called Rakhat, in four years of passenger time, even though 17 years will pass on Earth. In the latter, a linguist and Jesuit priest named Emilio Sandoz swiftly organizes a group of Jesuits and civilian specialists to turn an asteroid into a spaceship.

Russell lays down two narratives: One begins in 2059, in the aftermath of the mission the other in 2019, when a young astronomer intercepts a transmission of haunting songs from Alpha Centauri. Brilliant first novel about the discovery of extraterrestrial life and the voyage of a party of Jesuit missionaries to Alpha Centauri.

Mary doria russell's the sparrow