I really loved The Sparrow, but the sequel left me cold. I'd say the errors were threefold. First were the characters; Emilio Sandoz and the crew of the first expedition were friends and then family; the sense of love that pervaded the whole book made the losses bearable, and amplified the horror of the expedition's failure. The cast of the sequel (Sandoz included) are mostly Righteous Bastards. There's little love and little entertainment. The second failure was in the plotting, which was crystalline but flawed. There was no reason for Sandoz to return to Rahkat, and the ploy used would be acceptable in say, a hard-boiled noir, but in a book that prides itself on decisions and consequences, felt cheap. Finally, on a practical level the twin revolutions on Rahkat just don't make sense. One side are tradition-bound scheming predators dependent on a potentially hostile species for every bit of logistics and technology. The other one has access to satellite reconnaissance and the entire library of human technology. Rahkat's tech level is unstated, but the Jana'ata don't seem to have ranged weapons, so why don't you set up a factory for AK-47s and Katyushas and conquer the planet as fast as your armies can walk? For all the time we spend with the Jana'ata and the Runao, we still don't have a clear picture of their society, technology, or the course of the genocidal war set in motion by Sofia Mendez. (And don't even get me started on Isaac, or anything he does!) The theology is okay, even for a non-believer, but that's about the highpoint.

Not bad on its own, but a disappointing ending to the story.