The Jesus Incident

The Pandora Sequence #1

by Frank Herbert, Bill Ransom

A determined group of colonists are attempting to establish a bridgehead on the planet Pandora, despite the savagery of the native lifeforms, as deadly as they are inhospitable. But they have more to deal with than just murderous aliens: their ship's computer has been given artificial consciousness and has decided that it is a God. Now it is insisting—with all the not inconsiderable force of its impressive array of armaments to back it up—that the colonists find appropriate ways to worship It.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Religion, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1979

About the author

Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. was an American science fiction author best known for the 1965 novel Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for his novels, he also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.
The Dune saga, set in the distant future, and taking place over millennia, explores complex themes, such as the long-term survival of the human species, human evolution, planetary science and ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, economics and power in a future where humanity has long since developed interstellar travel and settled many thousands of worlds. Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, and the entire series is considered to be among the classics of the genre.

Reviews

[Kelly (Maybedog) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book of all time. I've read it numerous times and own several copies although it's out of print. I gave a little seminar thing on it once. I tried to use it as the foundation of my Master's thesis but my advisor said there was too much to say about it and to save it for my PhD.

And yet I can't review it. Perhaps that's the reason: what I have to say would be a dissertation. So anything I could write here would be insufficient.

So I'll just tell you I love it because the main question I take from it is, "What, who, where, why, and how is/what's the nature/definition of god?" which is why I went to grad school to study religion.

So if that topic interests you, read this book. Now. Find a copy in a library or through ILL or on Alibris or somewhere else online and read it. I may even be willing to send you a copy if you can't get one any of these places. It's that good.

(Note: You do not need to read the first book in the series as it really doesn't add a whole lot and isn't very good. It does give a little more background then is provided in The Jesus Incident but I don't want you to hate it and then not read this one. I first read Destination: Void many years after I'd already decided this was my favorite book and didn't even think about it.)

[Scott Rhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

To fully appreciate (and possibly understand) Frank Herbert's "The Jesus Incident", one should probably read his novel "Destination: Void", which I actually think is a better novel.

Herbert wrote "D:V" in 1965, and he wrote "TJI" (along with Bill Ransom) in 1979. A semi-sequel to "D:V", "TJI" takes place literally thousands of years after the events of "D:V".

Raja Flattery, one of the four characters from the first novel, is awakened from his hyper-sleep on board the ship Earthling, now simply called Ship, which is run by the human-like conscious computer that Flattery helped create.

Ship is basically God to the inhabitants of the ship, cloned humans who have, until recently, been in stasis. They have discovered an inhabitable world, which Ship has called Pandora, but their attempts at colonization have been failures due to the carnivorous and violent life-forms that inhabit the world, especially the electrokelp that lives in the oceans that make up a majority of Pandora's surface.

A faction of colonists are bent on wiping out the kelp, but Ship believes that the kelp is sentient and trying to communicate, so he enlists Thomas, with the help of a poet and several other clones, to lead an expedition to the planet's surface in order to communicate with the kelp.

There is a lot of stuff going on in this novel, much of it fascinating and entertaining. Some of it, however, seems extraneous and superfluous. My guess is that Herbert and Ransom took turns writing the chapters. It has that choppy, disjointed feel that happens when two very different writers with two different styles of writing collaborate. It can be fun, much like a Saturday morning serial in which each chapter ends with a cliff-hanger, but it also has the tendency to feel like neither writer knew where the other writer was going, so they decided to take it in many different directions.

Not that the novel isn't readable. It is, and it is enjoyable. Just don't expect it to go anywhere you expected it to, and don't expect sufficient closure for some of the tangential storylines, some of which end abruptly and one seems to have been dropped completely.

Interesting note: Director James Cameron clearly "borrowed" (alternate read: "blatantly stole") many of the ideas from this novel for his film "Avatar". The name of the planet, for one, as well as the discovery that the entire planet and its many life-forms are connected via a "neural network", a sentience that calls itself Avata.

While I loved "Avatar", I'm thinking Cameron probably should have thrown in some acknowledgments to Herbert and Ransom's novel in his film credits. Maybe he did, but I don't remember seeing them. (And I am the type to actually read credits.) Cameron kind of has a track record for plagiarizing other, better, works of science fiction. (See "The Terminator" and Harlan Ellison's 1957 short story "Soldier From Tomorrow"; 1984 lawsuit---settled out of court.)

[Bev · Rating 1 out of 5]

Once upon a time in a science fictional decade far, far away there was an author named Frank Herbert. He wrote a novel called Dune and it was good. He wrote a few more Dune-related books and they were a mixture of good and bad. And he wrote a book called The White Plague and it was good as well. And then he joined up with another author (a poet) named Bill Ransom and wrote a novel called The Jesus Incident--and completely lost this member of his audience.

After having this novel (and its two companion pieces) sitting on my TBR shelf for decades, I decided that this year, with my Mt. TBR Challenge, was the year to finally tackle it and get it out the way. I'm going to confess up front--I did not read every word of the entire thing. I skimmed a great deal of the mid-section....because, let's face it, it wobbled between being down-right confusing and all-out boring. With Dune Herbert created a whole new world--lots of things going on that were unusual and different, but he managed to give the reader enough information about that world that we knew what was up and we actually cared about Paul's journey to become Muad-Dib. In The Jesus Incident, we have another whole new world....and I just don't get it and I don't really care all that much.

Well, okay. Yes, I did get it. We have this experimental group of the last survivors of Earth. They were originally set up to try and create sentience. Somewhere along the line, they succeeded and now their space vehicle, Ship, is sentient. And thinks it is god. And wants to be WorShipped. And it has brought the humans and their clones (yeah, what?) to a new "paradise" planet where they will be tested--one last time. (Apparently, there have been many "testings" prior to this that we really don't know about. Must not be important). If they fail to figure out to WorShip properly, then Ship is going to "wipe the tape," end the experiment, in a word--get rid of mankind. Nice.

Oh. And that "paradise" planet? Not so much. It's full of all kinds of predatory life that just love to kill humans/clones. And there's not enough food for everybody. Sounds like the perfect place to take your next vacation, don't you think?

You'd think that might be complex enough to hold my attention. Yeah, no. Because when it came down to it, the answer to how Ship expects to be WorShipped is a pretty lame and predictable and recycled answer. No new insights here. No real comment on the human condition or human spirituality or anything. Just not Herbert's best writing, in my opinion. One star.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, this book is listed on Goodreads as Voidship #2. That's like listing the Fellowship of the Rings as The Hobbit #2. It's wrong, but the analogy of the connection is right.

I love this series - it's from my favorite series from my favorite science fiction author. This is why I just re-read this book before passing it on to a friend.

Did you ever play the old Civilization games? Remember the odd scientific-statements that accompanied hallmarks of growth in a civilization? I guarantee whoever wrote that, read these books.

The series is deep and complex, as is any Herbert book. He thinks so much about every aspect, nowhere more so than in Destination Void (Voidship #1), but I recommend you read this trilogy first, then go back and read Destination Void. The trilogy itself is a wonderfully shifting, fantastic voyage. It is sad that Herbert didn't survive to finish it, but Ransom kept the feel going and wraps everything up well for one of the most satisfying journeys in prose I've ever taken.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems clear to me this book must have been a major inspiration for the movie Avatar, as there are too many similarities to be coincidence:

1. A wild alien planet called Pandora filled with dangerous wildlife, including at least one form that's thought to be intelligent.
2. It turns out there's a single mass consciousness at the center of all this biomass, that even calls itself “Avatar” when it communicates.
3. A single messiah-hero who makes contact with the intelligence, “goes native,” and attempts to bring the “gospel” back to the others.
4. It culminates in a battle between those who want to live in harmony with Avatar and those who want to subjugate and destroy it.
5. There's even a scene where the power of Avatar is used to heal a grievously wounded human – successfully, unlike the movie.

A quick Google search shows I'm not the only person to notice all these uncanny similarities.

I was shocked to realize this book was published in 1979, over ten years after Herbert's masterwork, Dune. It has the feel of an early work, where Herbert is clumsily trying to explore some of the ideas that he refined and did with more sophistication in later years. I feel it tries to be too many things at once and fails at all of them.

Is it a story about first contact with a powerful and strange alien intelligence, with the attendant messages about aggressive humans who try to destroy anything they don't understand and mow down all native culture as they expand?

Is it a story about a homegrown religious cult created by a generation ship run by an AI that has styled itself as a god? This is the aspect of the story that's played up in the official blurbs, and the entire first-contact storyline is occurring in the context of the crew's need to find a way to appease Ship before Ship punishes them. The religion story and the first-contact story are somewhat tied together by the miraculous birth of the new messiah, who will carry the mass consciousness into the future and save them all. Call me dumb, but I never did understand how the eponymous "Jesus Incident" (Ship's term for the crucifixion of Christ, which Ship shows to one of the characters via a form of time travel) fit in at all, considering no one living in this story has ever heard of this Jesus dude.

Is it a story about clones and the tension between their fundamental personhood and the attempts of the people who run this place to use them as expendable slave labor?

I love first-contact stories, but I've read so many that take the easy way out and make the aliens telepathic so the protagonists can skip all the hard work of learning to communicate with them, that I yawned when it became evident this is another one of those. (Although I have to admit it probably pre-dates most of the other ones I've vread, so maybe Herbert did it first.) Two counter-examples that come to mind are A Deepness in the Sky and Damocles, and while I didn't love either of those stories, I really admired that they didn't skip that nuts-and-bolts stage. In fact, Damocles was entirely about that stage of alien contact.

I also have trouble seeing how anyone who genuinely wanted to tell a story set either on an alien planet or on an orbiting spaceship could come up with scenery this blank and uninspiring. Talk about opportunity lost! Here we have a whole new planet and no idea what it looks like. We're told a few basics – there are two suns and at least two moons, and two large continents surrounded by a massive ocean that's filled with kelp. There are a few sketchy descriptions like “plain” and “cliffs” and “beach” but that's about it as far as the physical scenery. The wonder and awe and creativity you might expect to find associated with a new planet is totally absent, not to mention any exploration of life with two suns and two moons and how it would affect the ecology.
There's wildlife, and it's uniformly dangerous, but aside from the floating highlighters and the nerve runners, there's no attempt at all to really bring them to life. There's a whole slew of deadly animals that kill multiple characters, and they have evocative names like “demons” and “hooded dashers” and “spinnerets,” but we have no idea what they look like, sound like, smell like, or how they move, other than being fast. And apparently there's not a single xenobiologist anywhere in this expedition, because no one seems at all interested in understanding their morphology, their basic biology, or their habits. As a former biology student, I had so many unanswered questions, like:

"What do nerve runners eat when they're not chowing down on human nerve tissue?"
"Are nerve runners a plague on the local wildlife like they are on humans?"
"How do other local animals defend against them?"
"What do all these legions of other predators eat when they're not feasting on colonists? Whatever they are, there must be loads of them around to support all these predators."
"If the local predators can eat human flesh with no ill effects, does the inverse follow that humans can also eat the local fauna, and maybe some of the flora too?
"Speaking of flora, are there any land plant analogs on this planet? What color are they? What are they like?"
"If highlighters use ballast rocks to control their altitude, how do baby highlighters learn this skill?" (BTW, the descriptions of the highlighters remind me quite a lot of Morrowind's netches.)

Shipboard life suffers from all the same problems. We're told this ship is many kilometers long and so complex that no one person has ever even seen all of it, and yet we get nothing about the many wonders that must be contained within it. Remember Rendezvous with Rama and Eon and all the amazing things in those ships? Yeah, not so much. Suffice it to say, this book definitely did not “take me there.” These are the kinds of amazing things that draw me to science fiction, so I feel deeply resentful that I've been robbed of one of the really fun aspects of SF.

On a nice note, a bunch of the characters are people of color (one of them is literally various colors). Shout out to the Black Power 70s. I'm not sure how I feel about writing about black and brown people and putting them in a distant future where today's racial labels have no meaning. On the one hand, a tiny little yay for a white author imagining a future that's not all white people. But on the other hand, isn't that literally the cheapest possible way to tell a story with racial diversity in it? Throw in a few skin and hair descriptions and then airily wave off the idea that any of that matters 3,000 years in the future?

Of course I have to talk about the women and the sexism: The whole sexual vibe of the book is quite skeevy. A full half of the male characters are disgusting pervs who are constantly plotting how to turn the women into their personal sex slaves, and we're treated to titillating details of how great the women's bodies are. And some of the women are trying to get the pants off some of the men (not the same men). Meanwhile, other women are apparently goal-oriented enough to sleep their way to their goals with those same pervy men I mentioned. The whole thing is so 70s it's pretty gross, in a “we lived through the free-love 60s so now we're totally jaded about sex and recognize it's just a tool and doing it is just a transaction,” kind of way. And for chrissake Frank, actual women do not hang around naked in front of mirrors congratulating themselves on how stacked they are. Another small but telling fact: Everyone has two names, but all the men are referred to by last name throughout the story, while the women are almost entirely referred to by the more familiar first name – a small but symbolic form of personal space invasion that women still live with daily to this day. I note that despite all this, it passes the Bechdel test, solely because late in the story, there's a fair amount of interaction between a pregnant woman and her female medical attendant, who are both major characters.

Random gripe: I got so tired of the word “side.” Page after page, shipside, groundside, dayside, nightside, topside, and of course on dangerous Pandora there's also heavy obsession with safe inside and deadly outside. I wanted to turn my backside on all this.

[Dee W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking back, I wish I had read Destination: Void first. This book is the sequel but can be read alone. My nature will demand the first book before I can read the third, however. There is a lot of material that takes a lot of thought within these books.

To expect less is to sell Frank Herbert short. It sounds lame to say, but being a scientist Herbert is thorough if he's anything. His books do not read like fluff, even when they are more watered down or abstract than hard science (i.e. Dune, etc). By the time I got to the end of this, it was a kick in the gut.

I loved it. I would reccomend it.

[Brad · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Jesus Incident is science fantasy full of characters and scenes lacking verisimilitude and has an awful conclusion that delivers a simplistic theological message. Comparing God Emperor of Dune with The Jesus Incident makes it difficult to believe that Herbert had much to do with the writing of this book.

From the begining the reader is faced with the challenge of accepting that a ship has god-like powers and abilities. These abilities include telepathy without regard to distance or time, omnipresence, time travel, teleporting people without a device, sending people through time and into a different body without a device. Having read Destination: Void when this godlike AI is created makes this seem all the more implausible. Early on I assumed this is a fantasy used to create a SF scenario to examine religion.

After a dubious start, it seems like the plot is starting to move forward but then the book stalls with a series of single character chapters focused on introspection, questions, and redundant information. This process is used to occasionaly advance the story. The timeline becomes unreliable, the locations confusing and very little happens as characters think and think but manage to avoid any substantial philosophy or theology. As the ending approaches, the writing goes from dull and annoying to blantantly stupid as verisimilitude is abandoned. Organic beings (without brains) that communicate with computers. A human using mental and organic telepathic powers to guide a space freightor in an emergency landing (into the sea or onto a beach - the writing isn't clear). Characters actions are unreasonable or conflicting. A character is unresponsive, too weak to speak, then suddenly walking around coherent and fine without explanation. An energy beam gets repelled and redirected by vegetable group mind power. This kind of stuff is garabage! Absolutely terrible!

After suffering through some of the worst "science fiction" written, the philosophical and theological payoff promised by the title and Herbert's name consists of a simple message about religion and mankind that could have originated from any disgruntled student at any religious based private school. I think it's sad that Herbert's name is on it and wished I hadn't read it.

[Vanessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiler free.

Really not sure how this book has such a fanbase. If I'd not gotten this in audiobook form, I doubt I would have finished, but hell, it carried me through household chores well enough. This review will probably be pretty scattered, which will kind of reflect in itself how I feel about this book.

I can't help but wonder if this book just hasn't aged well, or if I read it "too late" or something, in both or either a personal age and generational sense. The setting and the concept is interesting, and is a lot of what kept me listening, hoping to catch more of it, but...There was such a massive amount of description that seemed to be missing, and it felt like a crime given the opportunity provided by such a backdrop - completely foreign, a blank canvas, but left with just stick figures and basic shapes. It felt bare-boned and often was just ambiguous or had me not bothering to imagine the scene because I had so little info or frame of reference. Honestly, in terms of a few of the places, I don't think I'd be able to describe them in detail, let alone relativity from one place to another even though a lot of things take place therein. I just let it hang and kept going.

The first fifth or so of the book is very enticing; I was really hooked and had that sense of "Ooo, this is gonna get goooood." ...That plateaued by the first third, went stagnant around halfway, and completely flat-lined by the end, which was so anti-climactic and devoid of satisfaction that it brought my entire perception of the book under a magnifying glass all at once as if to highlight its missing pieces. It promised a lot and totally didn't deliver. The end just felt trite (which is why I wonder if I just didn't read this book soon enough) and rushed, even a cop-out.

While there is a sense of a plot introduced from the very beginning, it remains more in the background and focuses more on the characters. I like character-focused stuff, so that was fine and made for good listening. In fact, around three quarters in, I kind of forgot the original presentation for a while because there was so much of it - it stole the spotlight, as it were. The story is the type in which the reader is sort of thrown into (which was mostly done well), so there isn't really character :development: as much as reveal. That said, there didn't seem to be that much variation between them except from the poet, whose introspection and examination was probably the most interesting but one of the least explored. I can understand keeping his inner workings a bit of a mystery or aloof given the whole, but it was just odd after the amount of offered info in the beginning. Anyway, the sense of characters lacking variation, though, could be from Brick's narration unfortunately.

I didn't read the prequel to the Pandora Sequence series, but I didn't feel that left me in the dark in any way at all. I think some of the "confusion" some reviewers might be experiencing is just that style of being thrown into the story/setting and having it revealed as mentioned....but given the book starts with someone being removed from cryostatis/hibernation after years and years and years and being thrown into the situation at hand, it was completely appropriate in my opinion. There were definitely some vague concepts - I had to really consider the purpose the 'flower room' served aside from atmosphere in the end and was left as underwhelmed by the conclusion as with the rest - but they didn't serve as an aspect of confusion for me.

As for the exploration of humanity and questions about God and the rest of the philosophies: It was not deep, not provoking. I took it all as info being discovered as new because of being a humanity devoid of close-hand knowledge of its origins or sense of self, hand-fed to that point without much reason to think about it, so was surprised to find out this is a lot of what makes the book famous. As a reader, it was just atmosphere, not food for thought. This also and again leads me to question whether I read the book too late, but I'm pretty good about giving my head a retro-active frame of reference to appreciate the message for its time-period, when it was introduced and all that, so this makes it all the more flat. Young adult fiction I've read in the last few years has given me more concepts to think about than this book.

My overall sense of the book was this:
You know when you think you've got a writing idea or it's in the works, and you have dreams or daydreams where ideas/visuals/imaginations sort of flow or prod at you? You maybe make a note or keep it in the back of your head, or write it down roughly to come back to later so you don't forget the little things.... Almost the entire book felt like reading two guys' collection of these snippets - just rough, a draft, lacking, unpolished...with the intrigues and main characters identified but an ending not figured out yet. Yet, somehow, it was just published with the end, like I mentioned, feeling rushed and a cop-out. Mix in some poetic flair (Ransom's, I'm sure) to dress up basic human philosophies, too. There definitely were polished pieces, but their distinction from the rest of the text was so bright that they just serve to glaringly highlight how rough and unfinished-feeling the rest of the whole is. This is doubly unsatisfying/disappointing with the knowledge that there were two authors to oversee this work's fruition AND an author's note at the end stating neither of their ideas were ever excluded or thrown out. Ship only knows what would be left if they were.


...

As an aside, I'm not a fan of Scott Brick's narration - I've listened to a few of his readings now, and I have to do some internal work to imagine the words on the page, how it probably looks on the page, because he seems to impose his voice (in the narrative sense) onto each book in the same way. Unfortunate, as his inflections and delivery can be very gripping...just a shame it's a blanket style. If you're interested in the book, I recommending the ol' conventional read.

[Stela · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 dar mai dau o șansă trilogiei.

[Natasha M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost as good as Dune. I love the Avata. I claimed the name...

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've read and loved Dune, this is definitely worth a read. Herbert teams up with a poet (Bill Ransom) to tell a great sci-fi story, which I just now found out from wiki is the second in a four part series!

Whoops I gotta read the first one ("Destination:Void"), and then re-read this one and the equally good sequel "The Lazarus Effect." And then read the final one ("The Ascension Factor").

I have a lot of work to do.

[Veronica Sicoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Destination: Void' was amazing in and of itself, but 'The Jesus Incident' took the whole of D:V's challenging concepts to another level! Absolutely amazing book, bursting with provocative ideas and multi-layered characters.

[Edward Vass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed being immersed in this science fiction reflection of religious storytelling. The story is packed with fascinating sci-fi ideas, none of which overwhelm due to the quality of the writing from Herbert and Ransom. What's not to love about an IA Ship that has grown all powerful, built a planet and declared itself God. Each character is beautifully crafted. The way we spent very personal time with them, learning their desires, ambitions and particularly their varying relationships with Ship – their God, felt unique, and builds a strong understanding of the cast at play. I loved the concept of a very real God that speaks to some of its flock and ignores others, and guides and threatens in a very real way. The question of God and higher consciousnesses, and the position it has and should have in society is constantly being asked in this book. When does a society need religion, and when has a society outgrown it? Herbert and Ransom play wonderfully with these concepts, while continuing to drive the narrative forward. The planet which Ship creates for its disciples to prove themselves, with its huge array of dangerous creatures and unexplored mysteries, was more than enough to cement this as a very thoughtful and well executed Sci-fi story. The story has stayed with me - and very much invested me in books 2 and 3. I recommend giving this a go.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated it DNF

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite thinking about it at length, I'm still unsure why I found this book so unapproachable. Maybe it was because none of the characters stood out to me as particularly interesting or well fleshed out. So many characters seemed to differ in name only. Initially I thought Waela would be my favorite character because her introduction was the most interesting, seeing her perched stealthily on a cliff side watching the hostile savannah around her. But after a time she seemed no more interesting than any other character. Even now I'm having a hard time thinking of anything to criticize about the novel because so little of it left an impression on me. This really surprises me considering how deep and evocative Herbert's other stories have been (I'm thinking of Dune here). Maybe I was just turned off by all of the allusions to Jesus and the crucifixion story, allusions which really didn't seem to lead anywhere. I guess that shows how done I am finding that story interesting. Then at the end, the story's climax entailed the birth of some kind of super baby, which is again such a trite way to end a book. Sci-fi has beaten that storyline to death long ago and Herbert wrote this novel much too late for his use of it to be excusable. Upon finishing the Jesus Incident (what does that title even mean?) I'd decided not to read the next novel in the series despite having bought it already, and I almost decided to give up reading Herbert altogther considering that none of his other novels have really measured up to his Dune series. But I've started the next novel only because I hadn't yet bought something else to read. So far the Lazarus Effect has been loads better, but I'll wait and see if that lasts.

[Radu Stanculescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually the first book I've read from the "Destination: Void" series, but the fact that it has a prequel doesn't cause that many problems. The new conditions (new planet, different environment, new characters etc) make this readable even if you skip the first book.

If you've read "Dune" you'll probably recognize some of the grand themes in these series, from the religious aspect to tyrants and manipulations. But don't worry, this is not an alternative "Dune"; it's a whole new universe with its new (forms of old) problems and its new solutions.

[Bogdan · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF @ 36%

I am sorry for Frank Herbert, as I enjoyed very much Dune and I hoped I would enjoy this one too. But I am forced to abandon it as I am too tired of the lack of explanations for most of the concepts presented and the conflict does is not presented in the best favorable light. I sensed it has some great ideas, but are not put into the best form.

I am also curious to see the final rating, as I would usually rate the books I did not finished with a 1 star, but I am sure it has also some good parts. The premise is interesting: what it means to be God. But it has a fatal flaw, as I could not believe it that a human made machine, a space exploration ship, is able to become so complex that it grows a sentience and even more, that it can ever believe itself to be God, as it has unlimited "power". I cannot buy this, no matter how distant that future is. Secondly, the authors do nothing to demonstrate those unlimited powers except that it can read human thoughts, so I will give it a 2 for premise.

The form is perhaps the element that prevented me from finishing the novel. The lack of background information on the respective distant future and how the humanity reached it, made me loose interest in it fast. So, I will give it a 1 at form.

In terms of originality, I tend to believe that at the time of apparition the novel was pretty original. There are a lot of ideas that are recycled into other, later works by other authors. The kelp that is an alien race that in my opinion resembles the alien virus in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide. Also the entire Pandora ecosystem from the novel resembles highly the alien planet from Avatar. Both have a globally interconnected, sentient plant which all lifeforms on the planet are dependent upon. Due to this I will rate it with a 4.

The characters add little depth to the story. They are pretty obscure for me and I could not identify with any of them. I need to rate with a 1.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I believe it becomes obvious, at times, that it was written by two different authors. There are chapters that are pretty different one from another and story threads that go lose and are abandoned. So I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty, as I always admired the authors capable of co-writing novels.

In terms of credibility, I found it very hard to accept the universe described in the novel. The science behind it or even basic explanations are superfluous. So I will rate it with a 1 for credibility.

The last criteria is edition. I had in an eBook format, that I appreciated as it has very few spelling errors. So I will rate it for edition with a 4.

To summarize, I decided that this book is not necessarily bad, but it has some flaws that I could not overcome. Due to this, I have decided not to continue the Destination Void series. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 2.5, rounding it up to a 3 stars on Goodreads system.

+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.50 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines.

[Josh399 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Frank Herbert's Dune was supposed to come out and I got a little carried away reading his work. That's the only explanation I can come up with, in hindsight, for listening to this drivel. The premise sounded hilarious and perfect for a master of classic sci-fi like Herbert. On the Ship, carrying the last humans of Earth, a powerful A.I. holds complete sway over the crew. It is convinced it is God. Sign me up!

25 hrs of waxing poetic about the nature of worShip and Jesus and I'm ready to be put down.

Ship, the godlike entity, helps humanity and its clones colonize the planet Pandora (James Cameron! You didn't need to steal everything in Avatar!) There's a lot going on here and it's a cool setting. But, while some authors are in love with their settings or characters, we have the misfortune of reading authors obsessed with the idea of empathy and Jesus. There's literally a time travel scene to ancient Jerusalem and way too many paragraphs spent explaining that Jesus's true name is Yeshu.

There are so many brilliant metaphors and allegories to question in this text that I really think it could be an amazing text for students of philosophy and religion. It asks all the right questions that you love to see in sci-fi and features many relevant issues as the humans try to enslave each other, remain in contact with Ship, and adapt to life on Pandora.


Reading other reviews of this book makes me remember how nonsensical, jumbled, and out-of-its-depth it is.

The nature of G-d is explored in this book wonderfully. Ship gives and takes away, acts mysteriously, communicates to few, and plays games with it's believers. But no one know why Ship or what Ship. And there's of course the wonderful irony that Ship is created by man even as it (claims to have) created man.

Now, I don't think Science Fiction needs to be critical of religion but G-d damn, I felt like I was reading Grahame Greene without the plot!

And no. There isn't an amazingly insightful ending that justifies everything.

The political aspects are less cogent, and the scientific and poetic parts were too dull for me. And, realize I can't stress this enough, so much of it was dull. So much of it was a waste of paper-and-ink.

This book gets a single star. This is a last-book-on-Earth reread. This is an "I wouldn't write this review if the author was still alive" kind of book. I'd rather go through the flower room.

Ship-willing, someone will create an abridged version of this book that's actually palatable and then it can receive the attention it deserves. Until that day comes, I wouldn't feed this drivel to an A.I. searching infinity for meaning.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick Review: Interesting, but not my style

Long-winded, rambling review (minor spoilers):

While I really liked the idea of an omnipotent spaceship floating around in space, making and destroying worlds, messing around in people's heads, and demanding that everyone WorSHIP it, I'm not so sure about some of the other things in this book.

One thing that irked me was the attitudes of the male characters towards the females. Now, I'm sure that some of this can be explained by the fact that this book was first published in 1979, back when women were routinely harassed and men spent hours in their 'cubbies,' sipping crappy wine, gazing at their erotic wall hangings, spying on the honies with surveillance feeds, and generally being creepy.

I admit, I have a tendency to latch onto little details, so I still vividly remember how the character of Waela was introduced as an awesome, powerful fighter; a survivor who through quick-thinking has managed to stay alive on a deadly planet...and oh, yeah, she hunches over a lot, because she's tall and men don't like tall women...

WHAT??!!

Anyways, back to the plot, which which not about tall women trying to disguise their hideous height... It was more about...Umm... well, an omnipotent spaceship, a frozen guy who changes his last name and becomes the devil, a poet that likes to talk to kelp and caress tentacled-hot-air-balloons, a female med-tech (who has to be told about atoms by the poet!!) that goes back in time and sees Jesus, some creepy old men plotting...something..., oh right, and someone named Jesus Lewis that doesn't seem to be of any particular importance...

And that's just the half of it! You could probably find a ton of religious allusions within the book, if that's your game... All that stuff about rocks... Peter?


The Positives!!

Favorite Character: The Ship! I mean, SHIP!

Favorite Alien: Avata, everyone's favorite hallucinogenic kelp/hot-air balloon

Favorite Scene/Chapter: The early E-Clone massacre, which introduced us to some of the deadly planets' creatures and demons...

[Madison Swain-Bowden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book confused me. I was unable to follow portions of Destination: Void due to incoherent technobabble, but I feel like I was able to pick up the main discussion on consciousness. The Jesus Incident did not give me as much grace. I'm reading this series because I'm a Herbert fan, and this doesn't quite read like a Herbert novel. Where Dune's (or rather, the first three books') overarching exposition was on prescience and the future, the Jesus Incident had the same sort of monologues on godhood, consciousness, and 'the oneness of life'. It was much harder to grasp at what he was saying. One of the motifs that comes up often is the defining of something either by its opposite or against another background. Herbert does this with consciousness, life, and goodness. I found that a very interesting perspective.

Additionally, the end made nearly no sense. I am going to continue reading through the series with the hope that I will find some answers there, but I don't have high hopes. What is the purpose of the Scream Room? How was Jesus Ship's devil and Raja his own? What does the 'holy violence' have to do with the story? Was the scene in the gondola a tentacle-intercourse seen? What was the necessity/literary intent for including that?

In all I thought that there were excellent points made in the book and that the story was certainly something creative and unique. Thinking kelp! Herbert still has an amazing ability to wordsmith and that appears in this book as well.

"Does it matter [whether Jesus was God]? Is the lesson diminished because the history that moves you is fiction? The incident which you just shared is too important to be debated on the level of fact or fancy. [Jesus] lived. He was the ultimate essence of goodness. How could you learn such an essence without experiencing its opposite?"
-Ship

[Jlawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Herbert's 'Destination: Void' human clones were forced to achieve an A.I.-breakthrough with their colony space craft's computer in order to survive. 'The Jesus Incident' is set countless years after that, with the sentient craft, known as Ship, worshiped as a deity by the humans ship-side and those scrabbling out an existence on the dangerous planet of Pandora (and there are disbelievers among the humans as well). Ship does seem to possess god-like powers, and is on the verge of wiping out the human race unless humans figure out how to correctly 'WorShip.'

Herbert weaves enough different themes here -- non-human intelligence (both human-made and alien), religion, ecology, genetic engineering, political power structures, psychological manipulation, cloning -- and likewise juggles a large enough cast of characters that the novel is close to 'Dune' in complexity. However, none of the characters are as absorbing as the best characters in Dune, and the different themes are not quite as well blended as in that book. The pacing is also uneven, with the plot bogging down mid-book and suddenly going into turbo mode for the admittedly gripping climax. But despite those complaints, enough of the book is fascinating to make it worth reading in general, and a must for Herbert fans.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a ponderous and unenjoyable slog through an attempt at religious commentary set at the backdrop of a new colony on a distant planet. The ecology of the planet was interesting, but the Gaia/Avata references that got repeatedly pounded into your skull were wholly unsubtle. We get it already, (white) man bad--nature good. As a committed environmentalist, I find this sort of attitude unhelpful and rather insulting. Nearly all of the characters were nasty, unpleasant, unoriginal (especially Morgan Oakes), one-dimensional and given very little in the way of intelligence or imagination. Even the poet was rather uninspiring and pathetic. The ending, however, was, to put it bluntly, bad. <>After all of this great build up of how we were supposed to determine how to WorShip or the entire human race would perish, we get "live up to your potential"???!!! Really? Come on. That's exceedingly dumb, anti-climatic, unimaginative, and not worth the effort.<> This was a great disappointment, especially knowing that Frank Herbert can write great novels like Dune.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dune is one of my favorite books of all time, so I decided to finally branch out and read some of Frank Herbert's other none-Dune related works. My first pick was The Jesus Incident, which after reading it I found out is actually the sequel to Destination Void - D'oh! Nevermind though, you don't need to read Destination Void in order to understand or enjoy The Jesus Incident.

This book has a large cast of characters, but they had distinctive enough voices that they didn't all blur together. The story centers around a group of people who are coerced or brainwashed into worshiping a sentient ship, while trying to navigate a dangerous, alien world called Pandora. The story deals with religion, atheism, environmental issues, sexuality, technology vs humanity, greed, and unrequited love.

The world building is not as well done as Dune, but the characters are very well developed. If you enjoyed the movie Avatar I'd highly recommend checking out this book. The setting is very similar and both deal with overlapping themes.

[Jerrod Hansen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is probably the worst book I’ve ever read. It’s only my stubborn determination and respect for Frank Herbert that kept me going to the end. Destiination void it was OK, but I still struggle to accept that a computer acquired the ability to manipulate space and time as it crossed into consciousness, much less than its first thought would be to foment worship. However, I excepted the premise and was looking forward to this next trilogy.

I literally could not be more disappointed.

The story and characters were confusing, the scene setting was incomplete, ships motivations and the concept of worship were infused but to such a light degree it baffled me as a reader as to why I was even involved in the story. World building was nil, plot developments arbitrary, and in the end I’m just glad that it’s done I can put it behind me and never think about this again.

[Eddie Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've hesitated for many years to read the The Jesus Incident, on account of less than superlative reviews and the dubious plot. I feel I've wasted my time going again my intuition.

The story is about Ship, a planet called pandora and a society of people controlled brutishly by its (Ship appointed?) ruler. Ship wants worShip. pandora wants... who cares? people are mincemeat, they're too busy dying to express wishes.

But what the story is I cannot tell. Things go down the drain, and that's about it. And in the end, some radical left miracle happens, jebus is reborn and everybody rejoices or something. Really, some mangled nonsense like that.

I've found no relatable or likable characters. The prose is weak. The world building lame. I feel the contribution of the second author did nothing to improve on anything.

[Philip Gipson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with making one of your characters (in this case, the "Ship") quite literally godlike (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience) is that it takes all tension and stakes away from the rest of the story. Instead of "how will the people solve this problem/survive on this planet?" the main question becomes "when will the god swoop in and fix everything?"

It doesn't help that the book is desperately trying to have some deeper theme that never comes together. The planet's named Pandora. There's a virgin(ish) birth. A poet is the only human who can communicate with the aliens. A character literally travels back in time to watch Jesus get crucified. (This last one is where the book lost me.) None of these come together in a satisfactory way.

Overall it was readable (much more so than its dated prequel novella Destination: Void) but that's the only praise I can give.

[Iliyan · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.

I picked this book up some weeks ago. Got to page 50 and was still confused as hell as to what was happening. I figured that because there is a prequel, maybe starting with it will shade some light.

Nope. DNF the prequel either. It was a dumpster fire.

I thought, ok let’s try again. Page 100 and the author is STILL introducing new characters? Nah.

The story starts too convoluted, you get no explanation about anything, the characters are poorly introduced as well, and, quite frankly, too many. Frank Herbert has always had this thing of writing a number of characters and you end up caring about only 2 of them.

The general premise of the story was good and I was excited about it, it’s a shame that it was written that bad. Felt like a fever dream.

[Dobra Ciprian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can digest a mix of religion, sci-fi, fantasy, philosophy, weird sex, algae, poetry and a weird sense of humor then this book might be for you, or in Frank Herbert's words: "eminently couch-able".

Quite enjoyed it, straight onto the next!

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an odd book. It starts off incredibly slow and does not really build up much steam until 'the end' when it suddenly 'is over' and things are wrapped up. I do not know how to rate it, to be honest. None of the characters really stood out to me, for the most part, although there were a couple of men and women I hoped would pair up as couples by the end of the book. It bounces between three-to-four viewpoints before the differing viewpoints come together in the last chapter or so of the book and it ends as one 'stream-of-consciousness.' The character development was . . . decent, I guess. There were a couple of characters I hoped would survive who did not [I was surprised at the death of one character - never saw it coming], so I guess it is good that some of the characters kinda grew on me so that I actually cared about what happened to them.

It is a sequel to a book called Destination Void written by Frank Herbert back in the 60s. As I have not read the 'first' book in this 'series' I cannot say how important or necessary that book is to understanding this book. It features clones, some sidewise questions about what determines a quality life [in regards to the clones] as well as are clones 'humans' or offshoots of humanity, genetic manipulation, artificial intelligence, some kind of religion, an alien planet with a powerfully strong alien intelligence, terraforming and colonization, "caste levels" between humans and clones, abuse(s) of power, limited resources [food], violence performed upon people to make them obedient and subservient, aspects of brainwashing, attempts at exploring some philosophical differences as well as why violence is found amidst peaceful religion(s), what may or may not be time travel, the "politics" of domination and manipulation through sex, and some weird sexual shenanigans [including three possible rapes and a strange copulation scene where it seems the local plant-life gets involved and mutually impregnates the woman with her male lover].

The title is taken from a discussion where Ship is describing how it 'sent' a woman 'back in time' to the crucifixion of Jesus; Ship tells Thomas that "He" [It] has shown her [Hali Ekel] 'the Jesus Incident' at Golgatha (229). Ship felt that Hali's life had been too protected, too 'tame,' and that she needed to be exposed to some 'hard truths' as a result ["how far holy violence can extend" (230). Ship also claims that Hali needs to learn "your kind cannot learn peace until you are drenched in violence. You have to disgust yourselves beyond all anger and fear, until you learn that neither extortion nor exhortation moves a god. Then you need something to which you can cling. All this takes a long time. It is a difficult lesson" (174). It was a 'weird' moment in the book, as it is not clear if Hali has actually traveled back through time or is having a hallucination because Jesus looks at her and recognizes that she [Hali] has come from a long distance even though Hali is 'inhabiting' the body of an older [much older] woman (143, 156). She realizes that "Time" does not confine Jesus, that Time cannot hold Him (157). Even Death cannot hold Him [in the book] because He has another part of Himself that is still alive, elsewhere, in reality, that has not died (170, 173). Not a 'physical body' but still a part of Himself.

It was an interesting observation made by Hali that the Jews crying out for Jesus' crucifixion secretly wanted a miracle to happen, for God to stop Jesus' suffering and death on the cross (158). Even though humans were inflicting this pain upon Jesus, they still wanted God to intervene and stop the travesty of justice from happening.

"Those who remember Him travel this world over teaching peace and love. For this they suffer murder and torture and they incite great wars in His name, many bloody events even worse that what you have just seen" (174). Such a sad paradox of Christians, that wars are incited in the name of Christ, which is quite contrary to the message Jesus taught while He was on Earth.

I did find these chapters dealing with the crucifixion of Jesus to be fascinating discussions as I felt they did offer some interesting insight(s) into what happened on that day and some of what might have been going through the minds of those who were there. Spectators are described throughout the Gospels as demanding signs from Jesus to show/prove Who He was, that He was Who He said He was; it actually makes sense that those in the crowd during His crucifixion were hoping for 'one final miracle' from God where God intervened and stopped the crucifixion, thereby saving Jesus from a horrible, barbaric death. Kinda-like the people wanted to be absolved of their actions by having God intervene and save Jesus.

It was 'amusing' to me how coy Ship was about saying if Jesus [Yeshua] was a real person or not until the very end. During these chapters, Ship would say that Jesus was both a man and not a man, that His story was both real and not real, that He did and did not experience what He experienced. I assume it must have been due to the lesson(s) Ship was trying to teach Hali about what Jesus went through in order for Hali's 'education' to be 'more rounded, more experienced,' than it had been? In the end, Ship says [asks] about Jesus, "Is the lesson diminished because the history that moves you is fiction? The incident which you just shared is too important to be debated on the level of fact or fancy. Yaisuah lived. He was an ultimate essence of goodness. How could you learn such an essence without experiencing its opposite?" (405). So, Ship 'finally' admits that Yaisuah [Jesus] really did live and experienced a painful death [and subsequent resurrection] to Hali and the others before Ship leaves for Destinations unknown. I do not know why, but it struck me as funny that Ship "finally" came around and admitted something to those it was abandoning on the planet Pandora.

I also 'laughed' at the various incarnations of "Jesus" that were described in the book [such as Jesus Lewis, described as pronounced "heyzoos" or, in the case of the Biblical Jesus, pronounced "geezus"]. I think there were four or five incarnations of the name of Jesus and how it was pronounced. It reminded me of when I learned His "name" was probably "Yeshua," which was also a variation of "Joshua."

The book starts out with a man being awakened from some kind of suspended animation/cryosleep. He discovers the Ship is orbiting a planet that was chosen by Ship to be colonized by the survivors of humanity. In the process, the Ship will decide if humanity will be allowed to survive or not as a species. From here, the book devolves into "multiple points-of-view" of many different characters; some are on the planet's surface whereas others are in the orbiting Ship above. Eventually, they multiple viewpoints do coalesce into a single 'discussion' as the different characters come together before the ending.

Apparently, Sol went nova and destroyed Earth and killed any humans living on other planets or moons in the system. Not only that, but the reader discovers that Ship has been visiting other planets where the sun is about to go nova and taking humans from those planets as well before it finally stops in orbit over Pandora. Ship has evolved during this time into a sort of "Supreme Artificial Intelligence" and sees itself as "God" because of its powers and abilities [reading people's minds; holding the power of life-and-death over those aboard the ship, be they crew or passengers; apparently having some sort of 'time traveling' abilities; affecting and influencing who clones are grown and which humans are allowed to be awakened from their hibernation; teleporting people off-planet; communicating via a form of 'telepathy' that does not necessarily require mechanical assistance; etc.]. Ship is also equated with God because He [It] does not always answer 'prayers' or reveal Himself [Itself] just as God does not always provide people with the answers they want or reveal Himself to humanity like Humanity wishes God would reveal Himself. Ship does not want to make things easy for humanity, so He [It] favors testing humanity so that humanity can grow and 'reach past itself' without having to rely upon 'outside help or assistance' just as God is seen as behaving [i.e. - testing humans and not making things easy because people not only grow the most during trials and tribulations but also have the capability to grow stronger during such times of testing]. So, there are some 'behavioral similarities' between Ship and God. This book is about some 'final test' that humanity must pass to prove its fitness for continued survival; humanity is seen as encompassing both clones and Natural[-born] humans.

Pandora is a vicious planet, generally inimical to human life. Some clones were specially adapted to life on Pandora, but even they have trouble surviving Pandora's hostile environment. It is eventually discovered that all of Pandora's life forms are connected via a 'supreme planetary intelligence' "whose" basis is in the kelp that inhabit the world's ocean [it is primarily an ocean planet with only two 'major' continents and some small island chains; the major landmasses are not very large in relation to the world as a whole. It is mostly a water-covered planet]. Some of the humans [both clones and natural-born] previously thought to have been killed are discovered to have been saved by Pandora's native intelligence by the end of the book; this band of survivors forms an 'army' to oppose those trying to despoil and kill the kelp and the accompanying planetary intelligence.

The weird copulation between Panille, Waela, and Avata [via the hylighter's tendrils] was oddly sensual and made sense in the book (285-287). It was beautifully described and seemed to add something to the story which was really odd to me. I do not know how to fully describe it, as it seemed a strange dichotomy of paradoxes. It also led to Waela becoming pregnant with some kind of "super-baby" that quickly grows inside of her and is born within days of her becoming pregnant.

This 'beautiful' moment in the book is oddly juxtaposed with two or three rapes in the book. The two rapes occurred in the "Scream Room," a special room created by Morgan Oakes to torture people so that they become subservient to him and his will. Two women are raped in this room during the course of the story; the rapes themselves are not actually described, thankfully. In the case of the first woman, she is grabbed by a clone who forces himself on her with the biggest erection she had ever seen; other clones also assault her while she is both drugged and trapped in this room. Her mind is so broken that she ultimately commits suicide by going outside of the compound to be killed by Pandora's life forms. The second woman [Legata Hamill] comes out of the 'Scream Room' unbroken and undefeated; she ends up using what happened to her to overthrow the barbaric 'reign' of Oakes over the remaining humans on Pandora's surface. She also is essentially raped by Oakes after her time in the 'Scream Room' as he forces himself upon her and has intercourse with her. Oakes has been observing her like a twisted voyeur and lusting after her for some time before he finally acts and forces himself upon Legata. Legata (for whatever reason) is unable to fight back or resist either him or his advances; it seems as if this 'second rape' has twisted her enough that she either starts to come around or considers coming around to his [Oakes'] point-of-view. These two women are not the only two women who have been raped and/or assaulted in this room. Men have also been tortured in this room to obtain their obeisance to Oakes and Oakes' authority. In addition, one of the "clones" [seemed more like some kind of mutant, to be honest] is described as having both male and female sex organs and was somehow having sex with itself [not sure how that would work, but it sounded very strange and grotesque at the same time]. It is a pretty brutal, disturbing room to have on the planet's surface in the 'final colony' to be attempted on Pandora.

Not only did the reader have to deal with lustful thoughts and fantasies, with Oakes acting out the part of creepy voyeur, but some of the women had parts to play as well. Hali kept trying to seduce her "Ship-match", Kero Panille. Kero believes he loves Hali, but he is not ready to make love with her or get her pregnant despite Ship's declaring they were perfect [genetic] matches for each other and would produce the optimum genetic offspring with their pairing. Well, she was described as continually trying to seduce him, to no avail. Another woman [I do not remember if it was Legata or Waela] was instructed to seduce one of the new men coming to the surface. It was believed that by seducing and copulating with the newcomer that he would be "freed" from Oakes' influence and be more susceptible to the manipulation and desires of those on the ground versus those who still lived aboard Ship. Different sets of values and standards at work, here, as the desires and goals of Ship's crew did not necessarily coincide with those of the colonists. The desired seduction was hoped to bend the newcomer to the goals of the colonists. It does not quite work out like it was intended, but the 'end result' is somewhat achieved. I suppose I should be 'grateful' Herbert did not have any children being raped or sexually assaulted like he had happen in the later books of his Dune series.

It is a very choppy book; I am not sure how well it flows together in terms of the overall narrative. It bounces around so much that it is hard to follow, at times, and some characters are suddenly killed off after they have been introduced and then apparently discarded after being given enough background information to seem 'important' to the flow of the story. Ship is very strange, as he wants humanity to learn some specific lesson but is very . . . stupid? obtuse? dim-witted? in how He (It) goes about either teaching or revealing this lesson to humanity. This very denseness on the part of Ship makes the ending so much more . . . disappointing than it needed to be. Ship leaves Pandora behind, taking with "Him" the remaining humans still board in suspended hibernation while "It" returns to "The Void" in an effort to achieve some sort of satisfaction or climax or SOMETHING to "justify" its existence and the wringer with which it has put humanity through by choosing Pandora as the 'final resting (testing) spot' of/for the human race as a whole. Ship claims "the Lesson" has been learned and humanity has 'earned' the right to go on living and existing in the Universe until humanity does something to kill of the branch of itself that is attempting to co-exist on Pandora with the planet's indigenous species and "supreme planetary intelligence." The book felt like a couple of partial stories pieced together in an attempt to make a "complete" story. If I were to break the book into 'thirds,' it almost felt like each third had nothing [or very little] to do with the other two-thirds of the book. The beginning seems to have one focus; the middle seems to have a different focus [religious violence]; the latter part has its own focus [a planetary intelligence that no longer seeks to kill humans], and then the end, where it attempts to tie everything together. It felt like it took a while to build up in the beginning [mostly, I suppose, because of the numerous characters that have to be introduced], then the middle picked up some speed and started to get interesting, then the final portion of the book seemed to move in spurts of speed and drag before it just . . . ends. And what an ending! Such a disappointment! Not even a climax worth talking about. It just . . . ends. Ship leaves, and that is that. Whatever.

I would rate it 2.4 to 2.6 stars, I suppose, rounded down to 2.0 stars because of the two rapes in it as well as how darn slow it starts out. It takes a long time to build up any momentum worth speaking about. I was hoping some more couples would form, but that was not to be the case, which was also disappointing. It felt like the authors could not decide between how much romance they actually wanted in the book or if they wanted any romance at all. I do not know how likable any of the characters really were, as there seemed to be an abundance of paranoia, distrust, scheming(s), and double-crossing going on to the point of taking away from the overall narrative. It was an okay book; I can see myself reading at least the second one to see how things progress and if it gets any better. I am not so sure about the third book in the series, but we shall see what we shall see in that regard.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have been intrigued by this book ever since I saw the cover as a little boy. I finally got my hands on it...and after 50 pages, my hands will no longer touch this. I don't know what madness is going on here, but it makes the film 2001 look like a linear Disney film. Reading the reviews, I see that people either love or NOT love this book...and I'm afraid I'm in the NOT category. For my own sanity, I will be moving on.