When The Sparrow is good, it's really good, but when it's bad, it's really bad. The setup is utterly absurd and almost made me abandon the book, and the jovial banter (poor suffering Cubs fans, now on another planet!) was tedious. But my desire to know what Bad Thing happened on that planet kept me going, and by the end, Russell had me again. The last two chapters were quite something. Maybe it should have been a novella.