Notes from 1998: It did seem to me that Sandoz’s faith might be tested by the suggestion that he set off on the expedition under false premises, assuming the aliens’ songs to be hymns (this is initially Father-General De Silva’s idea), when in reality they were profane songs, which although some were ‘the poetry of storms’, some dealt with torture and degradation. Given that, Sandoz might well ask if the whole expedition had set God laughing up His sleeve (rather than ‘dancing with delight’).  This is the whole trouble of a One God Universe, which requires that God be infinite and therefore infinitely powerful, and apparently omniscient, despite which he will not remove the brick from under the hat, so to speak. Either God is all-powerful and testing Humankind for some purpose or other but will make it all right in the end (probably after you’re dead); or has established free will, so that evil happens because there is space for it to do so; or appears to allow evil because the universe is not actually being run for Humankind’s benefit but for that of some other class of beings entirely... (has this idea ever been used fictionally? There’s a comment in The Sparrow that maybe God prefers the Runa to humans, but the humans are soon disabused of this). 

Also interesting is the concept of an intelligent predator. You could expect it to be unlikely, as a predator needs powerful jaws and/or rending claws, which make language and tool use, respectively, difficult.  Predators may need to be quadrupedal though I was intrigued to see that MDR’s Rakhat zoology was inspired by that of Australia, where bipeds with balancing tails are the order of things , though the marsupial predators that have survived into the present era (Quoll, Tasmanian Devil and Thylacine) are quadrupeds. (viz. also, though, Tyrannosaurus Rex: long jaw full of big teeth, powerful hindlegs, tiny forelegs and long tail, may have resembled nothing so much as a huge and murderous jird.) I didn’t have a problem with the characters being ‘nice’ probably for the same reason MDR cites as having written them that way. Relentlessly unpleasant characters throughout = no interest in continuing to read book (Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow comes to mind, though did finish it). Besides, it does counterpoint the horrible things that happen to them. Sandoz’s celibacy is a symptom of the artificial distancing of the priest from everyone around him; a distancing that Sandoz sometimes regrets, sometimes sees as a form of grace, but which he has to do in order to achieve his vocation – if it were easy it would count for less.  

Anthony Burgess suggests in Earthly Powers that the church used to take the celibacy issue a lot less seriously; it was a condition to be aspired to, not a dogmatic rule. Celibacy is the first trial Sandoz undergoes, which foreshadows the trials imposed on him by the Jana’ata. The Jana’ata meanwhile degrade him still further, both sexually and in their terms – by destroying his hands; a predator with nonfunctioning claws is no longer a predator; though the act could be seen as an honour because in removing the ability to kill, it demonstrates that the individual is truly civilised and no longer dangerous. Problem with the spacetravel (‘four years ain’t too bad’)... isn’t there a bit where they stop the craft in deep space to do repairs? Do what, guv?  Notes from much later: isn't Shusaku Endo's "Silence" (made into a film by Scorsese in 2016) basically this story, and not only that, in a way that makes more sense? Jesuits sail to Japan and get amusingly tortured.