Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Parable of the Talents > Status Update

Lauren goes to the CA Center in Eureka, encounters her brother Marc, who's now a preacher for CA. Is this the betrayal that results in her demise?

Lauren masquerades as a man and searches for Larkin, careful to avoid attracting attention. Checks certain secret caches for signs that other Earthseed members have checked in. This is practically spycraft -- and there's still risk that someone bad might have figured out what's going on.

Having decided to scatter in small groups, carrying Earthseed and the memory of Acorn with them, they began to search for their abducted children. The evidence that this is extralegal, but the powers that be will not enforce the laws against those they favor, so it may be impossible to recover the children.

What the captives could not do, nature did -- thanks to the captors' own stupidity and fanaticism. They removed the trees that held the hillside in place, and the landslide obliterated their cabins but spared their captives. Now Earthseed must regroup and find a new way in a changed America.

The full horror of the failed uprising and its consequences probably will never be known. Lauren's surviving writings show her reflection upon the hypocrisy of their captors, and how it seems to have fueled their sadism, which often takes on disturbing religious forms. Sin and forgiveness -- which would be particularly disturbing for the daughter of a preacher, who still misses her father.

Even worse revelations about the Crusaders -- at least some of them are sexual sadists, and become aroused by tormenting their female prisoners and then act upon it. They are also hypocrites, pretending they don't do such nefarious deeds. Do these kinds of movements attract such lowlifes, or are these movements created to provide outlets for their desires?

We learn of the fate of Lauren's husband. Yet another stupid death caused by fanatics not bothering to take the time to get properly trained on the tools they used, and thus not taking into account how the subjects might react to their use.

The determination that Earthseed must survive, even if Acorn were destroyed forever. And the question of what is going on in nearby neighborhoods. Do they realize what is going on so close to home -- and do they care. Do the Crusaders present themselves as regular people when outside, not sadistic fanatics?

More horrific actions by the Crusaders, as they've taken to calling themselves. The brutalities, the rapes and the murders -- and more proof that the separation of church and state is good for both. When the coercive power of the state enforces religious conformity, fear-based fawning and masking replace genuine belief, and put the wrong sorts of people in authority over faith.

After the terror of confinement, their captors come to order two of their number to dig graves for those who died, with no consideration about their strength or the suitability of the tools. It's clear this is to break them down to nothing, so they can be remolded in the model of Jarrett's Christian America.