Opus 2024-201: Book Review: Introspection over Action

A new author and exploring his work.  It was a failure, at least on this book.  Paolinin writes well but this seemed to be more a touchy-feely examination of the thoughts and feelings of a group of social misfits that would never have been sent on the type of mission that was described.  I finished the book to see if it would ever go anywhere.  It didn’t.  I found myself skimming over large sections of memories and dreams of the main character as he searched for meaning in a lost love.

That being said it did have an interesting side.  Being different from most modern fiction there was one character that could have been identified as a somewhat orthodox Christian.  Being locked into the politically correct mind set of our time she was narrow minded and harsh.  What was interesting was the conversations between the religious character and her main antagonist.  What was interesting was not so much the actual discussion but the memories it invoked in me of similar discussions.

There are many questions involving our faith that come up in social contacts.  Some are easy, “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”  In case you never met a true Christian, the answer is “Yes.”  Others are harder but still important.  “How can one God be in three Persons?”  Or, “What kind of nonsense is this Trinity thing?”   Eventually you get into the speculative and philosophical which are fun if you like to debate but boring if you hate to be contradicted.  This book deals with some of those problems in the dialog between Talia, the believer, and Pushkin, the materialist.  One deals with whether beauty is a fuction of evolution or an “expression of the divine.”  Good question but it was not explored much further than name calling.

The one I found amusing was a question that is often asked, “What happens to those who never hear the gospel?”  In our every day world this involves people living in some deep jungle and can be a question worth discussing.  In the book, not so much.  You see, even though humanity had developed faster than light travel and a lot of other stuff of science fiction novels, in the book they had still found no indication of intelligent life anywhere in known space.  Microbes and bacteria types, yes, but nothing advanced.  That is a presupposition of the context and is important to the question.  What got the discussion going was a huge perfect hole drilled into the surface of this planet.  With no real evidence they began discussing if this was evidence of advanced intelligence and would the builders still be around.  They almost came to blows over discussing whether those creatures were doomed to hell or whether God had a plan for them.

This is what tickled my funny bone.  They had a dramatic argument over something that did not even exist.  Of course because Paolini followed the party line, Talia insisted that they were all doomed to hell.  Pushkin insisted that made God into a monster.  How often do we get into serious discussions about things that don’t exist.  Actually quite often.  I remember going to a museum for Anne of Green Gables.  I wanted to ask my enthralled young daughter, “How can you have a museum for someone who never existed?”  

Before you get to smug, ask yourself how many conversations you have had about the characters from movies and books.  Anyone out there ever say they wanted to marry Princess Lea?  Just as you can have entertaining conversations about whether a Death Star could actually be taken out by one X-wing fighter you can have deep examinations of what is the salvation status of creatures on an undiscovered planet.  Both are speculative and have the potential for mental challenge.  Neither makes any real difference on the real world.  

When you read dialogue in fiction books about religious issues, make sure that you have several grains of salt handy.  You will need them.  If you are ever in the discussion feel free to shake your head and say, “I don’t know.”  You might even add, “Yet.”

Since Paolini is a good writer I may try another of his books.  Maybe he does a better job of bringing closure to the confused protagonist in another context.

Paolini, Christopher.  Fractal Noise.  New York:  Tor Publishing Group, 2023.

homo unius libri