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Children of God
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
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Very Bad... why all the good reviews?
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By: Davis Ashura
Publisher's summary
In Children of God, Mary Doria Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining, and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.
The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.
Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.
Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Chil-dren of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic.
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- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The powerful city-state of Saraykeht is a bastion of peace and culture, a major center of commerce and trade. Its economy depends on the power of the captive spirit Seedless, an and at bound to the poet-sorcerer Heshai for life. Enter the Galts, an empire committed to laying waste to all lands with their ferocious army. Saraykeht has always been too strong for the Galts to attack, but now they see an opportunity.
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REALLY Hard to Rate!
- By Trip Williams on 04-27-15
By: Daniel Abraham
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Across the Nightingale Floor
- Tales of the Otori, Book One
- By: Lian Hearn
- Narrated by: Kevin Gray, Aiko Nakasone
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
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A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated Tales of the Otori trilogy.
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Wonderful epic story
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By: Lian Hearn
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Royal Exile
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- Narrated by: James Adams
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From out of the East they came, riding like a merciless plague - destroying kingdom after kingdom and the sovereigns who had previously mocked the warlord Loethar and his barbarian horde. Now only one land remains unconquered... the largest, richest, and most powerful realm of the Denova Set: Penraven. > The Valisar royals of Penraven face certain death, for the savage tyrant Loethar covets what they alone possess: the fabled Valisar Enchantment....
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Poorly Written Female Characters
- By A. Christiano on 05-02-13
By: Fiona McIntosh
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The Memory of Earth
- Homecoming, Volume 1
- By: Orson Scott Card
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
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High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet, to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats...to protect them, most of all, from themselves.
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I keep hoping, but, alas, ...
- By Old Hippy on 02-22-10
By: Orson Scott Card
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Great & Secret Show
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Chet Williamson
- Length: 22 hrs and 24 mins
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In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times best-seller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.
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Horrific Dark Fantasy
- By Michael on 09-05-16
By: Clive Barker
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Finnikin of the Rock
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- By: Melina Marchetta
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Cummings
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
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At the age of nine, Finnikin is warned by the gods that he must sacrifice a pound of flesh to save his kingdom. He stands on the rock of the three wonders with his friend Prince Balthazar and Balthazar’s cousin, Lucian, and together they mix their blood to safeguard Lumatere. But all safety is shattered during the five days of the unspeakable, when the king and queen and their children are brutally murdered in the palace.
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Finnikin of the Rocks in the Head
- By Skipper on 09-11-15
By: Melina Marchetta
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Daughter of the Forest
- Sevenwaters, Book 1
- By: Juliet Marillier
- Narrated by: Terry Donnelly
- Length: 26 hrs and 45 mins
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Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives and they are determined that she know only contentment. But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift - by staying silent.
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Compelling story--but only at 1.5x
- By barefoot rabbit on 09-09-13
By: Juliet Marillier
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The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination
- Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius
- By: John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Mary Robinette Kowal, Justine Eyre
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
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Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.
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HAND DANCING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-30-15
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Empress
- Godspeaker, Book 1
- By: Karen Miller
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her God, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak. This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.
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depressing and left me feeling empty
- By Bonnie on 09-16-09
By: Karen Miller
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The Nay-Sayers are Wrong.
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The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity. Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor.
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Slow Start, Strong Finish
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Children of Time
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
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A very pleasant surprise
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What listeners say about Children of God
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- MBook
- 03-17-19
Great story great themes
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Very thoughtful with good narrative and dialogue. The performance was decent, but I find women doing men's voices are sometimes awkward.
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- Maryellen
- 12-11-12
Amazing read!
What a stunning story! The twists in the plots keep you on your toes. Terrific narrator, too. I have made three other family members listen/read this book.
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- Chrysanthemum
- 04-30-17
Continuation of The Sparrow
This was a welcomed conclusion to the tale begun in Sparrow. I wanted to know what happened to Emilio after his return and Children of God did not disappoint. While the complexities of each character, old and new, often challenged my interpretation of their interactions, without these complexities the context would have had to "work" much harder to keep the tale moving forward. The narrator did her best creating a speaking voice for each character. So many characters, different ages, different genders, different species.
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- Aaron Bray
- 11-29-17
Resolves the story
Really puts some closure to everything. Long prose that explores some aspects more than others and skips over some others.
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- Frances
- 06-28-19
Beautiful ending to the sparrow
it was an adjustment from the man reading the sparrow to this reader, but she got me hooked same as him with time. the book is a beautiful ending to the sparrow, and I'll gladly read/listen again.
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- Mark Patterson
- 02-28-18
God's Quiet Comeback
Ms. Russell continuing exploration of faith and family and suffering rang true to me. Ms. Fields' narration was solid, if different from the Book 1 narrator (except her South African accent, but that's a tough one).
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- Adam Shields
- 05-30-18
A meditation on the book of Job
There is no way to fully discussion Children of God without spoilers. So this review is not really going to discuss the plot. The first book in the series, The Sparrow, was a devastating book. The Sparrow started at the end, knowing that Emilio Sandoz was the only survivor of the first mission to Rakhat. But it takes that whole book to really understand Sandoz’s role in the trip and why he is so devastated.
Children of God starts soon after the end and the two books really need to be thought of as a whole. I spent nearly two years between the two books because I was so impacted by the first that I was not sure I was ready to read the second. I should have read them closer together because, apart from length, they probably should have been published together. (And there are a ton of characters and reading them together would have helped in keeping the characters in order in my head.)
It was not until the end of the book that I realized that in many ways this is a meditation on the book of Job. Mary Doria Russell is Jewish. Although most of the characters of the books are Jesuit priests, there is one Jewish woman in the original mission to Rakhat, but regardless, both faiths include the book of Job and theologically grapple with the problems of evil.
The problem of evil, simply is the discussion of how there can be evil in the world if God is good and omnipotent. The problem of evil can be formulated in a number of ways, but it is a problem that cannot be solved finally because, as in the book of Job, we are not God. We are finite and we can only see ‘darkly’ as Paul hints at in the New Testament.
I am someone that has a good life. I have my struggles and sin, but I cannot point to great tragedy personally. I have come to my own equilibrium with the problem of evil. It cannot be solved neatly. But knowing I do not have great tragedy in my life, I have not had to grapple with it in the way that others have and I anticipate that my current equilibrium will be challenged in the future.
Part of what I love about reading, and blogging about books, is that I have come to ‘know’ authors. These are all virtual relationships, I have some interaction with a number of authors. In the past week, three authors that I know have all faced tragedies of one sort or another. One was literally hit by a bus and suffered multiple broken bones, including her pelvis, and a collapsed lung. She has a lot of healing to do yet, but will be heading home from the hospital today. Another was diagnosed with cancer last August and was scheduled for exploratory surgery yesterday to develop the next stage of the treatment plan, but the surgery was postponed because of someone else’s cancer surgery was more pressing. A third author, in a freak accident with a water balloon and a whiffle ball bat is going into surgery this morning after having lost a tooth and broken four bones in her face and jaw. And for all three of these authors, these most recent tragedies are probably not the great tragedies of their lives.
I think we as Christians, especially for those of us that have not directly faced a lot of tragedy, need to read fiction books directly grappling with the problem of evil in order to abstractly think through pain and suffering. Because at some point, we likely will have our own pain and suffering.
I am not going to discuss the ending of Children of God. But broadly there are two types of discussions of the problem of evil in fiction. One ends badly and one types ends neatly. Books like Silence or The Power and the Glory end with death or tragedy. The evil was not redeemed or made nice. Other books like Absolute Truths trace the evil and even if you cannot see why God allowed the evil, you can see the good that came of the evil.
The redeemed problem of evil books are the ones that we tend to like to read. And I think we should read those books. We can trace how God works and we can see that God does work. But the first type are just as important. Even though the book of Job does give resolution to Job’s suffering, God would have still been God even if Job had died in the middle of his torments. We cannot expect to see God’s hand in every movement. So while I am for the redeemed problem of evil books, I think the unredeemed problem of evil books are more essential to grapple with.
I am nearly finished with Alan Jacobs’ Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life. Part of the discussion of the book is about how we naturally as humans seek patterns in our lives. We want to see God working. There is a tendency to follow communal patterns in our testimonies, regardless of the variances that are in our lives. But it is still an essential part of Christian faith to see God working, even if some of that understanding of the working is tentative. Jacobs is pushing back a bit against Narrative Theology that tends to focus on communal stories of God. Jacobs is not diminishing the need to see how God works communally, but is suggesting that we cannot forget the individual aspects within the communal story.
All of this is part of Children of God. There are communal and individual stories of God. There is tragedy and unmitigated, and mitigated, pain. And there is loss, loss that cannot be made up for regardless of whether God is working there or not. And we should be asking why God allows that type of pain. It is essential, not to find a pat answer, but to grapple with the reality that people around us are in pain. If our Christian faith cannot speak to and hear about actual pain, then it is not much of a faith.
One note on format. I originally picked this up on sale as an audiobook. There is some real content warnings, discussions of sex and rape, violence, war and a fair amount of bad language. Because I often have audiobooks running in the background while I work, and while my kids are nearby, I wanted to move to print. I checked the kindle version out of the library and predominately read the rest of the book, although I did listen to parts of it. The audio is fine. There is nothing wrong with it. But both because the structure of the story moves back and forth in time and because it includes a number of alien names and a lot of characters overall, I think print makes the book easier to read and follow.
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-17-19
Love It
Really enjoyed this book lots of sadness and happiness and the sense that life goes on.
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- Lisa
- 04-22-16
Beautifully written study of human condition
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would highly recommend this book to all friends who are interested in exploring human nature, our desire to be a part of something greater than ourselves. It is beautiful, brutal and eloquent on subjects most find difficult to put to words.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Of course Emilio Sandoz is my favorite character as he is central to the story. But I also have a strong connection with Ha'anala, who boldly strikes out to form her own society of Jana'ata who refuse to eat the Runa, seeing that there is a way the two societies can live in peace and equality.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
As with the previous book, The Sparrow, I cried multiple times while listening to this book. There were also moments of joy & laughter as well as moments of clarity.
Any additional comments?
I'm so glad I listened to this immediately following The Sparrow. While this book contained additional heartbreak for Emilio Sandoz, it also contained such joy & beauty. Both books are beautifully written explorations of the human soul, religion, goodwill, and the consequences of actions taken by those who mean well. I believe I will return to these books again and again in the future, and feel like I will take away different things with each reading.
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- Jbudd
- 02-10-15
Great conclusion
Great conclusion very satisfying, enjoyed the 2nd book better than the 1st. The new characters and the evolution of the cultures brought the story to a satisfying conclusion
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1 person found this helpful