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This is one of several classic novels about Jesuits in space.
The book takes place in two timelines. In the present, Father Emilio Sandoz has returned to Earth as the sole survivor of a trip to a newly discovered planet which went disastrously wrong. He is near death from malnutrition and general bad treatment, and has been tortured, gang raped, and horrifically mutilated by kangaroo-like aliens. He was discovered in this condition in an alien brothel, and literally everyone on Earth seems to believe that he just randomly decided that he'd like to be a whore for aliens.
People often do refuse to believe that any given survivor was actually raped and instead claim that the sex was consensual. But if there's ONE situation in which people are likely to believe that a rape happened, it's when the victim is the sole survivor of a massacre and is discovered starving, tortured, mutilated, injured by violent sex, and locked in a brothel.
So that entire storyline, which is an enormous part of the book, was one that I found impossible to believe. Especially since until near the end of the book, literally nobody even considers the possibility that Emilio – who, don't forget, was mutilated so he is literally unable to use his hands – had been raped rather than having consensually had incredibly brutal and violent sex with a bunch of aliens.
The other thing everyone blames him for is that he killed a child. We get no details on that until the end of the book, so I'll just say that once we learn the details, I had a big problem believing that blame too.
This book got an incredible amount of mainstream acclaim. Unsurprisingly, it has a number of the flaws common to science fiction written by writers who don't normally write it, and largely read by people who don't normally read it. It has genre tropes but not the underpinnings that make them make sense.
What it also has a lot of is whump. If it was written for Whumpfest for the prompt "Everybody blames character for being gang raped, mutilated, and nearly killed," I would say, "Excellent job!"
At least 50% of the entire book consists of Emilio being accused of terrible things, being so traumatized that he's unable to defend himself, having nightmares, having migraines, throwing up, not eating, doing agonizing physical therapy with painful prosthetics, etc. I felt like I was reading a Bucky Barnes fic circa 2018.
The second timeline is the story of the expedition to the alien planet Rakhat. It's discovered when a low-level tech working on SETI, Jimmy Quinn, hears aliens singing on radio waves. Jimmy, who is friends with Emilio and his group of friends, gets together with them one night. They decide it would be cool to visit the planet, and come up with the idea of making an asteroid into a spaceship. They present this to the Vatican, which is the only entity who cares enough to send a spaceship. It hires the entire friend group who came up with the idea to be the crew, plus a couple redshirts.
I cannot think of a less-qualified crew for a first contact mission. It consists of Emilio (linguist and priest), Sofia (another linguist), an elderly doctor, her husband the elderly engineer (all sorts of engineer, he does everything from mechanical engineering to nanoparticles), another priest, and Jimmy, the low ranking dude at SETI. None of them are qualified to go on an expedition to another planet! None of them are capable of designing a spaceship on the back of an envelope!
Once they get to the new planet, which is really under-described, they open the hatch and breathe the air. They test the local plants and animals for edibility by eating them. Didn't anyone think to bring some mice so they could feed the alien plants to something other than themselves to find out if it will kill them???
They meet the indigenous people, who do not appear to be the singers whose song was first heard by SETI, but who are friendly. This was by far my favorite part of the book, as they learn the new language and hang out with aliens. They do not do any investigation of anywhere but the small area they're in, or ask basically any of the questions you'd think they were there to answer. They do not ask about religion. They do not look for the singers, or draw any conclusions from their friends being terrified of singing.
They brought no medical imaging equipment, and although they knew the lander had only a tiny amount of fuel they waste it and then get stuck there permanently.
The shit hits the fan in an extremely rushed section in which everyone but Emilio dies off-page.
It turns out that there are actually two species on the planet. The species they've been hanging with is the prey. The other species eats them. The expedition grew gardens to supplement their own food, and they generously share it with the locals. It turns out that their breeding is tightly controlled by the predatory race, and the females only go into estrus when they get enough calories. So the prey starts breeding like mad, attracting the attention of the predators, who show up and kill them all.
Emilio, the lone survivor, is FED BABY MEAT. Then he's horribly mutilated. Then he's sold to a brothel where he's repeatedly raped by aliens. The rape aliens write pornographic songs about raping him.Then an earthquake makes the brothel fall on him and he's impaled on rebar. Then he gets cancer.
Eventually another expedition of humans arrives and asks about the first one. The alien child Emilio befriended leads the humans to the brothel, which I guess has extremely poor security. (I can't think why he didn't just walk out, if a child could walk in. Maybe she was only able to get in because there were humans with her?) Emilio, meanwhile, has decided he'll kill the next person who walks in the room, since nobody ever comes in the room except to rape him. The kid opens the door and Emilio slams her against the wall, killing her, before he realizes who she is.
The humans are horrified and send a message back to Earth that Emilio is a whore and a child murderer. This arrives twelve years before Emilio does, so he's a famous villain for years.
This makes NO SENSE. Everyone on Earth knows aliens killed the entire party, so would they really think an alien child deserves the same consideration as a human child? Would they find the distinction so meaningless that they don't even mention that she's an alien when they talk about her?
More importantly, it's incredibly obvious that Emilio had no intention of killing a child, but was so traumatized and freaked out that he jumped the first person who walked in and killed her accidentally, having no idea who she was. It even says the room was dark! If you walk into a room where the sole survivor of an expedition murdered by aliens is being held, tortured and mutilated and they jumped the first person walks in the room, this seems obviously an act of intended self-defense or at worst revenge gone wrong, not deliberate murder.
Religion is a huge part of the book but it's weirdly unmoored from the science fiction part. There's tons of discussion of Emilio's celibacy (the most boring aspect of being a priest IMO) but despite the Catholic Church funding the expedition and putting multiple priests on it, there's no discussion about the theological implications of aliens. Nobody even asks the aliens whether they have a religion!
Back on Earth, Emilio agonizes over how a benevolent God allowed the terrible events he experienced. This is a very understandable reaction, but there is an entire field of study devoted to that exact question. It's called theodicy and it ought to be something a priest would be aware of. Even if Emilio is too traumatized to think of it, the other priests ought to be bringing in actual theology when they talk to him about it, because THEY'RE ALL PRIESTS.
Also, nothing about Emilio's crisis of faith had to be science fictional. He'd be having the exact same crisis if he got caught up in a war on Earth where his friends were killed and he experienced the exact same trauma only done by humans.
The book takes place in two timelines. In the present, Father Emilio Sandoz has returned to Earth as the sole survivor of a trip to a newly discovered planet which went disastrously wrong. He is near death from malnutrition and general bad treatment, and has been tortured, gang raped, and horrifically mutilated by kangaroo-like aliens. He was discovered in this condition in an alien brothel, and literally everyone on Earth seems to believe that he just randomly decided that he'd like to be a whore for aliens.
People often do refuse to believe that any given survivor was actually raped and instead claim that the sex was consensual. But if there's ONE situation in which people are likely to believe that a rape happened, it's when the victim is the sole survivor of a massacre and is discovered starving, tortured, mutilated, injured by violent sex, and locked in a brothel.
So that entire storyline, which is an enormous part of the book, was one that I found impossible to believe. Especially since until near the end of the book, literally nobody even considers the possibility that Emilio – who, don't forget, was mutilated so he is literally unable to use his hands – had been raped rather than having consensually had incredibly brutal and violent sex with a bunch of aliens.
The other thing everyone blames him for is that he killed a child. We get no details on that until the end of the book, so I'll just say that once we learn the details, I had a big problem believing that blame too.
This book got an incredible amount of mainstream acclaim. Unsurprisingly, it has a number of the flaws common to science fiction written by writers who don't normally write it, and largely read by people who don't normally read it. It has genre tropes but not the underpinnings that make them make sense.
What it also has a lot of is whump. If it was written for Whumpfest for the prompt "Everybody blames character for being gang raped, mutilated, and nearly killed," I would say, "Excellent job!"
At least 50% of the entire book consists of Emilio being accused of terrible things, being so traumatized that he's unable to defend himself, having nightmares, having migraines, throwing up, not eating, doing agonizing physical therapy with painful prosthetics, etc. I felt like I was reading a Bucky Barnes fic circa 2018.
The second timeline is the story of the expedition to the alien planet Rakhat. It's discovered when a low-level tech working on SETI, Jimmy Quinn, hears aliens singing on radio waves. Jimmy, who is friends with Emilio and his group of friends, gets together with them one night. They decide it would be cool to visit the planet, and come up with the idea of making an asteroid into a spaceship. They present this to the Vatican, which is the only entity who cares enough to send a spaceship. It hires the entire friend group who came up with the idea to be the crew, plus a couple redshirts.
I cannot think of a less-qualified crew for a first contact mission. It consists of Emilio (linguist and priest), Sofia (another linguist), an elderly doctor, her husband the elderly engineer (all sorts of engineer, he does everything from mechanical engineering to nanoparticles), another priest, and Jimmy, the low ranking dude at SETI. None of them are qualified to go on an expedition to another planet! None of them are capable of designing a spaceship on the back of an envelope!
Once they get to the new planet, which is really under-described, they open the hatch and breathe the air. They test the local plants and animals for edibility by eating them. Didn't anyone think to bring some mice so they could feed the alien plants to something other than themselves to find out if it will kill them???
They meet the indigenous people, who do not appear to be the singers whose song was first heard by SETI, but who are friendly. This was by far my favorite part of the book, as they learn the new language and hang out with aliens. They do not do any investigation of anywhere but the small area they're in, or ask basically any of the questions you'd think they were there to answer. They do not ask about religion. They do not look for the singers, or draw any conclusions from their friends being terrified of singing.
They brought no medical imaging equipment, and although they knew the lander had only a tiny amount of fuel they waste it and then get stuck there permanently.
The shit hits the fan in an extremely rushed section in which everyone but Emilio dies off-page.
It turns out that there are actually two species on the planet. The species they've been hanging with is the prey. The other species eats them. The expedition grew gardens to supplement their own food, and they generously share it with the locals. It turns out that their breeding is tightly controlled by the predatory race, and the females only go into estrus when they get enough calories. So the prey starts breeding like mad, attracting the attention of the predators, who show up and kill them all.
Emilio, the lone survivor, is FED BABY MEAT. Then he's horribly mutilated. Then he's sold to a brothel where he's repeatedly raped by aliens. The rape aliens write pornographic songs about raping him.
Eventually another expedition of humans arrives and asks about the first one. The alien child Emilio befriended leads the humans to the brothel, which I guess has extremely poor security. (I can't think why he didn't just walk out, if a child could walk in. Maybe she was only able to get in because there were humans with her?) Emilio, meanwhile, has decided he'll kill the next person who walks in the room, since nobody ever comes in the room except to rape him. The kid opens the door and Emilio slams her against the wall, killing her, before he realizes who she is.
The humans are horrified and send a message back to Earth that Emilio is a whore and a child murderer. This arrives twelve years before Emilio does, so he's a famous villain for years.
This makes NO SENSE. Everyone on Earth knows aliens killed the entire party, so would they really think an alien child deserves the same consideration as a human child? Would they find the distinction so meaningless that they don't even mention that she's an alien when they talk about her?
More importantly, it's incredibly obvious that Emilio had no intention of killing a child, but was so traumatized and freaked out that he jumped the first person who walked in and killed her accidentally, having no idea who she was. It even says the room was dark! If you walk into a room where the sole survivor of an expedition murdered by aliens is being held, tortured and mutilated and they jumped the first person walks in the room, this seems obviously an act of intended self-defense or at worst revenge gone wrong, not deliberate murder.
Religion is a huge part of the book but it's weirdly unmoored from the science fiction part. There's tons of discussion of Emilio's celibacy (the most boring aspect of being a priest IMO) but despite the Catholic Church funding the expedition and putting multiple priests on it, there's no discussion about the theological implications of aliens. Nobody even asks the aliens whether they have a religion!
Back on Earth, Emilio agonizes over how a benevolent God allowed the terrible events he experienced. This is a very understandable reaction, but there is an entire field of study devoted to that exact question. It's called theodicy and it ought to be something a priest would be aware of. Even if Emilio is too traumatized to think of it, the other priests ought to be bringing in actual theology when they talk to him about it, because THEY'RE ALL PRIESTS.
Also, nothing about Emilio's crisis of faith had to be science fictional. He'd be having the exact same crisis if he got caught up in a war on Earth where his friends were killed and he experienced the exact same trauma only done by humans.
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It starts out about my eternal hope that Alan Furst will improve as a writer or plot and character someday, but then I got distracted.
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"There is no Status entry for RIP - but that is what this fine book is now doing. It met its demise at the hands of an overflowing pot of beans. It all started when my mother-in-law advised me to soak beans overnight with a bit of baking soda. When I forgot the overnight bit, I thought I'd be clever and just boil them for an hour with plenty of baking soda. Having slept through elementary science class, I had no idea that I was creating a volcanic eruption like none ever seen in a classroom, and off I went to do some laundry. My dog's frantic barking and a mysterious odor drew me to the kitchen where there it was. A flow of bean lava coming out of the pot, onto my counters, down the side of my cabinets and into my shoes, taking with it this book. The bean mush was thick, hot and bubbly and wound up everywhere. So ended A Thread of Grace."
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I liked much of A Thread of Grace, but did think it was cement truck levels of unnecessary to have the adolescent survivor of the partisan group be so damaged by her experiences that after her death in the twenty-first century, her adult children all conclude she was incapable of loving them, especially since at the time when I read the novel I had rather regular contact with a Holocaust survivor who was a mother and a grandmother and demonstrably loving of all generations of her family; I don't pretend that generational trauma isn't real, I know equally some people whose parents were survivors and terrible parents, but Russell's choice really felt like closing down any hope of resilience, which I never enjoy as either a narrative decision or a belief about survivorship of any kind.
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I think that was probably part of the reason it felt to me like a book very much about hopelessness and destruction. Which is fair enough if that's what you want but wasn't what the book was presented as. Obviously it is the case that some survivors become terrible parents and perpetuate their trauma on their children, but not all of them -- like you I have seen both outcomes. Whereas I do feel that Russell purposefully chose the worst outcome for her characters, even the survivors, not because it served the narrative but because it was satisfying to her as an author. As a reader, I felt that she enjoyed the pain a little too much.
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It did not feel as obvious to me that she enjoyed it as opposed to merely believing it the most authentic and inevitable outcome, but either way I didn't like it.
(It's also part of the problem with her coin-flip strategy of character survival: if she really implemented it as described, then the element of random chance had doomed nearly her entire main cast by the end of the novel, meaning that assigning a bitter ending to one of the very few characters not to have canonically snuffed it in wartime—and the only one to be tracked by the narrative into the present day—concentrates the sense of futility differently than if more of the characters had lived to represent a wider array of post-war options. I agree with you that it undermines the stated sentiment of celebrating the Italian partisans and underground. I think it might have been fine to flip the coin for the first draft, but keeping it as a final authority over the fates of her characters is one of the reasons the novel feels so well, that happened shapeless to me.)