Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

This novel was very well received, and I was the only member of the group who wasn't impressed with it, so take my comments with a grain of salt. . . . I give Russell credit for trying to be ambitious, but in my view she's trying TOO HARD.

The structure of the book, designed I suppose to generate impact at the end, drove me up the friggin' wall.  Russell devotes 360 pages to foreshadowing the final 40 pages.  The chapters set in Naples - about half the book - warned me over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over that something awful was going to happen on the planet, until I just didn't care any more.  The portions of the book set on Earth, both before and after the journey, are bloated in the extreme.  This is a first contact novel, yet the aliens don't appear until over half the lengthy book is past.  In slogging through that first half of the book, you can find some powerful lines, but Russell ruins them by telling you she thinks they're powerful.  (For example, in discussing linguistics, one character observes that lullabies usually use the command form.  Russell is so pleased with this line, she has her protagonist suffer from nightmares about it.) Russell's characters are carefully drawn, but (a) I hate the clever-clever way they constantly talk; and (b) for supposedly brilliant minds, they are dumber than dirt (running out of gas on an alien planet?!).  This interstellar expedition is highly implausible - basically a group of friends saying, "Hey, who wants to go to another star system? I'll pack sandwiches!"

Finally, I don't find Russell's theological issues nearly as profound as she seems to believe.  There are a few interesting twists, including the title of the book, and I particularly liked how the discussion of the significance of celibacy set up the impact of the rape scenes later on.  But in the final analysis what you have is an obvious and tiresome study of a priest who's having a crisis of faith because God allows bad things to happen.