Rating: 
Summary: Don't Expect Greatness - But Read It
Review: This is not a great book by any means. It is not particularly well-written. The science fiction elements are often clumsy. There is no suspense. Yet you can see by the many '10's, how impressed readers are with this book. I have objections, but even I give it an '8' out of 10. Why? Because it is interesting in the best sense of the word. No one element is superior, but there are so many interesting aspects of the story that when you are bored with one part, another interesting angle of the story presents itself. It is a worthy book. Now, I'll take my gloves off. This is no '10'. A ruthless editor could have cut a solid 150 pages from the book. As it is, the book runs out of energy well before it ends. The writing is weakest at the climax. After pages of wandering aimlessly, the final confict is glossed over. Again, the need for a strong editor is shown. The science fiction aspects of the story were amaturish. Many writers have written far better accounts of space travel. The subject is tired, and obviously the author's heart is not in the science fiction portion of the story. There are a couple of good-natured jabs at Star Trek in the dialogue, but the plot is often less realistic than the average Star Trek episode. An alien planet is perfectly hospitable to humans (a common Star Trek mistake!) A few untrained people are sent on the first mission to confront intelligent life because they happen to be on hand. What skills do they have? "Hey, I'm a secular humanist!" "I am an over-the-hill pilot, but I have a colorful accent!" People go UNARMED into an unknown ALIEN environment. Never. Not even Jesuits. Perhaps, especially not Jesuits. I understand the we-come-in-peace desire, but no mission leader could just purposely lead their people into a massacre. I'm not suggesting warlike behavior, but what if a dumb alien animal attacks, much less hostile sentients? The party didn't bring guns, but landed right on the planet! Talk about playing with fire. What right did the party have to alter the alien culture? The party also brough alien diseases which could have been responsible for genocide. The Conquistadors may not have been advanced enough to appreciate such dangers, but these explorers did. I think Fr. Sandoz and his part got off easy, no matter how sensational his sufferings were portrated. There is no suspense. It is obvious from the beginning that Sandoz was not a whore. And how could the intelligent officials on Earth have thought so. What was the logic? "Hey, I'm a celebate priest, but I just freaked out and decided I want to be an alien prostitute for no reason!" The obviousness of duress seemed to occur to noone. Also, we know from the beginning how the mission turns out. We know Sandoz is wrongly accused. We know the mission will fail. Suspense doesn't exist. I have concentrated on the negative because the above reviews have not, and to give a more balanced view of the book. However, I do agree with much of their praise.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-wrought, if not over-wrought . . .
Review: Dissapointed! All of the bad qualities of an Anne Rice novel without the juicy parts. I supposed if you'd never thought about 'why God allows bad things to happen to OK people,' this might help you begin that meditation. Otherwise, readers get to see interesting characters and their associated plot strings terminated, one by one. This simplifies the author's task but leaves her readers with little more than a thinly draped academic discussion of cruelty and death within the context of conventional notions of God.
Rating: 
Summary: The Sparrow searches for meaning in suffering.
Review: Mary Doria Russell uses science fiction to explore the concept of unearned suffering. Fr. Emilio Sandoz is one of a group of scientists and Jesuit priests who make first contact with the residents of the planet Rakhat. As sole survivor of the mission, Fr. Sandoz undergoes excruciating pain, physically, mentally, and even spiritually. The fact that his agony is, for the most part, inflicted by aliens, is unimportant compared to the unanswered question "Why?" A sequel might or might not be successful, but I'm hoping it is forthcoming.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent work that covers all the bases for SF fans
Review: I suppose that the last thing anyone needs is yet another addition to the chorus of praise for this book, but having just finished it yesterday, I want to do my part to spread the word. This book was truly amazing--astonishingly well-written, deeply emotional, and moral without being didactic. The characters, while sometimes a bit enigmatic for their own good (I mean, does EVERYONE have to have some tragic secret or unfulfilled longing in his or her past? Now that I think about it, though--maybe they do), definitely live and breathe in the text, more than compensating for the sometimes strained boundaries of plausibility (those same stretched boundaries, however, are what prevent me from giving the book a perfect score). Whether you have an interest in the scientific realm, the spiritual realm, or are just trying to find something in that "please give me a good book that won't insult my intelligence while it entertains me" realm, this is the one for you. Like one of the other reviewers below, I have decided to make this my "Christmas gift book"--soon, multiple copies will be winging toward various sure-to-be-delighted recipients. I heartily recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and provocative, the book needs an editor.
Review: What Dr. Russell does not need is yet another review extolling the virtues of her first work. Truly, it is wonderful: sensitive and especially provocative. I do not read science fiction: I read this and found it deeply moving. But (and every comment should have a "but") I'm not sure I believe the statement that Dr. Russell did not confer with any Jesuits before writing this work: she knows too many detail of Jesuits' daily lives. E.g., the habit of putting a handkerchief on the doorknob of one's room when one doesn't want to be disturbed. And Dr. Russell really needs an older Jesuit (one, that is, who still remembers his Latin) to go through the text: almost every Latin quote, of which there are several, is incorrect. Perhaps in later editions of the book these will be corrected. Wanna know how I know? I was a Jesuit for ten years in those days when we spoke Latin as the house language and our courses were taught in Latin. And that's not the dark ages, unless you think l953-l963 is dark.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This is by far one of the best books I have read in a long time. I am giving this book as Christmas gift to several of my friends because I don't want anyone to miss this one. I had a hard time putting this down at night. I hope all of you will enjoy this as much as I did!
Rating:
Summary: I really liked the combination of science fiction & religion
Review: I read this book based on the expert editor's review of it. I was not dissappointed. This was a can't put it down kind of book. The story is about a Jesuit priest who is the sole survivor of a mission to contact the inhabitants of another planet. The story starts out as Emilio, the priest, returns in shame and his superiors are trying to piece together what happened. The book keeps you in suspense as you try to figure it out while Emilio is telling the story. I would have given the book a 10, except for the ending, everything gets wrapped up very quickly at the end. But, this is a book that I have and will recommend to my friends as a great read!
Tana Reeve in Austin, Texas
Rating:
Summary: Dullsville
Review: Slow, laborious, predictable, derivative, and overlong, THE SPARROW reads like molasses, and with the same sickly aftertaste. A strong central character and initial set-up are completely wasted on a story that goes next to nowhere
Rating:
Summary: The Society of Jesus gets "Lost in Space"!
Review: When was the last time the Jesuits got top billing in any novel, let alone a work of "science" fiction? That fact alone made me pick up this book, but it was the wonderful characters and all sorts of thought-provoking subtleties that kept me reading "The Sparrow." After hearing haunting music from a distant planet (who says mathematics is the universal language!), the Society of Jesus sells off some thought-to-be priceless artwork to finance an interplanetary voyage to the newly discovered world to meet some other children of God.
After landing on the alien world (and subsequently marooning themselves there by, get this, running out of gas! DOH!) the book kicks into high gear: Russell gets to show off her anthropological background (although never bogging the reader down in jargon) by wonderfully describing the world we now know as Rakhat and the reader gets to witness one man's journey in faith. Giddy-up!
The book really only looses steam at the end.
After spending so much time getting us there, Russell seems to have tired and wrapped things up in a whirlwind of activity.
I also have some suggestions for casting, come the eventual movie:
Fr. Sandoz: Andy Garcia;
Mendes: Linda Fiorentino;
Anne: whoever played Bea Arthur's fiesty mother in "The Golden Girls;"
George: George Kennedy; Jimmy: Bill Walton in his movie debut;
and Anna Paquin as Askama!
.
Rating:
Summary: This book has characters that come alive as you read.
Review: I have become exceedingly cautious about new authors in recent years. There's too much crap in the science fiction shelves of bookstores for me to believe I can buy whatever comes to hand and subsequently feel I've gotten my money's worth. I bought this book after seeing several glowing reviews by persons whose opinions I trust in rec.arts.sf.written. The only thing I can say to those who haven't yet done so is, Read this book! It will make you laugh in places, and it just may make you cry in some others. You will find that Dr. Russell writes beautiful prose, but that's not the half of it: She also does very well, thank you, at plotting and characterization. I was so impressed that I have, to date, bought two additional copies as gifts. Anyone who has read much about the work of the Jesuits with the French expeditions in North America will know that there are aspects both fascinating and repellent to the process. Most of all, however, is that this is someone who can write lucidly and believably about moral issues. I have never seen any other work of fiction which dealt so well, or so compellingly, with theodicy, since this is most usually the issue upon which the religious beliefs of thinking persons stand or fall. I am anxious to see how (in the next book, which she currently expects to be in print by the end of this year) the Runa and the Jana'Ata react to exploitation by humans (which I expect to follow as inevitably on the heels of scientific and/or religious discovery as they did on the heels - or sometimes right alongside; vide Columbus himself - of the European voyages of discovery). As Heinlein was wont to observe (Dickson too), we're the meanest critters we've seen thus far. And Russell's aliens seem desperately overmatched by us, in technology, numbers and guile. The carnivores have a culture which may both seem and be desperately cruel to some individual members of
the prey species, but they have formalized rules which allow most of the prey species to live their lives out in a context of relative freedom.
Following is a QUOTE from Russell on the subject of the sequel: In the sequel, for example, the SF question is, "What happened on Rakhat as a result of the contact with humans?" But the religious question is, "What kinds of responses can you have when something irreversibly awful happens?" The only reason I did all this as SF was because a first contact novel was the only way I could put modern, well-educated, sophisticated, well-meaning people into a state of utter ignorance that parallels that experienced by the early European explorers and missionaries during the Age of Discovery.
End quote.
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