The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel by Michel Faber

I admit that I was prepared to not like this book. It concerns a Christian pastor being sent to the first inhabitable planet found by humankind so that he can minister to the alien species already living there, but I quickly discovered that that was an extremely simplistic view of the story. What I had expected to be a boring read, or an annoying read, or perhaps a non-read if I put it down and never picked it up again, quickly turned into an I’m interested read. This is a book very much about people – their personalities, their relationships, their abilities to encompass certain amounts and types of information, and also their frailties. There were several unexpected heart-wrenching turns to the story, and while this is most definitely a science fiction novel, it’s one that deals with the ramifications of science as it relates to human (and alien) existence, and not just thrusters on full.