Dysmorphia reviewed The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow, #1)
Review of "The Sparrow: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)" on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
While the main characters were fairly interesting, the world building was weak. For all the time the characters spent thinking about theology, they sure didn't think through the ethics of their actions very much. As an example, they land on a new planet and decide to eat the food. The first thing they eat is an animal. Here they are on a planet that they know has at least on sentient species and they risk killing and eating an animal. Maybe that's realistic of the sort of stupidity Jesuits in Space might engage in but I didn't see a hint that the author and/or speaker found their actions even a little bit problematic either.
Nothing could have lived up to my expectation of Jesuits in Spaaaaace I suppose.
I'm generally pretty interested in theology, but this was all the boring kind of how do we know there is a God …
While the main characters were fairly interesting, the world building was weak. For all the time the characters spent thinking about theology, they sure didn't think through the ethics of their actions very much. As an example, they land on a new planet and decide to eat the food. The first thing they eat is an animal. Here they are on a planet that they know has at least on sentient species and they risk killing and eating an animal. Maybe that's realistic of the sort of stupidity Jesuits in Space might engage in but I didn't see a hint that the author and/or speaker found their actions even a little bit problematic either.
Nothing could have lived up to my expectation of Jesuits in Spaaaaace I suppose.
I'm generally pretty interested in theology, but this was all the boring kind of how do we know there is a God and is he watching and does he love us and what about the problem of natural evil. I had mistakenly believed that ethics would be discussed along with theology but it was absent. So was the possibly rich field of dealing with the Other in the form of aliens with a totally different approach to ethics.
Maybe I'm made of stone, but the prolonged deaths, mutilations, cannibalism and rape didn't make me cry or even make me cringe. I find it hard to believe that Jesuits who send dudes alone to scary parts of the world had no experience with rape victims. Or that they would assume someone stuck in an alien brothel with his hands gruesomely mutilated had somehow chosen to be there? I get that this is something that someone who hasn't actually met any Jesuits might think they would do, but it doesn't ring true to me.
I don't even know if I would recommend this book. It's not that it's so bad, but it's not that good, and it is sort of gruesome, and sort of whiny, and life is short and there's a lot more stuff you could read instead.
Read this if you're a fast reader or really into shallow theology. Like if you liked the theology in Prometheus this will seem really cool and deep by comparison.
