The Book of Strange New Things

July 21, 2014
Faber’s (The Crimson Petal and the White) novel could at first be mistaken for another period piece, as a Christian missionary named Peter bids farewell to his devoted wife, Beatrice, and departs on a mission in foreign lands. Only gradually does the reader discover that the book is set in the far future, where half of what survives is owned by a shadowy company called USIC and that it is not the inhabitants of a mere continent whose souls Peter aims to save, but those of a whole new planet, known as Oasis. He finds willing converts in the alien Oasans—they are eager to learn each new lesson from the Bible, which they call The Book of Strange New Things—but his relations with his fellow human colonists are far rockier. What’s worse, Beatrice writes to Peter with grim reports of life back on Earth, where a series of calamities seems to signal the coming apocalypse; more devastating is her confession that she is pregnant with their child in an environment suddenly less hospitable to life than Oasis. Peter will come to question both the finer points of Scripture and his faith as he chooses between the old world and the new. Faber’s story isn’t eventful enough to support its length, and Beatice and Peter’s correspondence grows tiresome. But the book wears its strong premise and mixture of Biblical and SF tropes extremely well.

September 1, 2014

This latest book from Faber (The Crimson Petal and the White) begins as a pedestrian story about a missionary and then gets really interesting. After an emotional leave-taking from his wife, Bea, protagonist Peter is strapped into a hyperspace vehicle bound for a distant planet. Under the auspices of USIC, a corporation secretly colonizing the planet Oases, Peter is tasked with serving the planet's indigenous population. A group of these cloaked humanoid beings has a hunger for the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, which they call "The Book of Strange New Things," and cultivating them is a priority because USIC needs the food they provide for a barren Earth. Peter rapidly goes native and bonds with the aliens, though at the expense of his long-distance relationship with Bea. He learns the secret behind the aliens' love of Jesus and nearly dies in the process. VERDICT The grim plight of these enigmatic beings' lives explains their attachment to the Christian message, which puts it in a different light. Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow meets the loneliness of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris; recommended for lovers of thought-provoking sf. [See Prepub Alert, 4/14/14.]--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA

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