It's the rare first novel that inspires such a feeling, but Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow did so with an engrossing story of first alien contact and an arresting central character, the Jesuit Emilio Sandoz, the leader of the first journey to a distant star. When Emilio and his friends land on Rakhat, lured by the splendid music of the Jana'ata, they are met and cared for by Rakhat's other race, the Runa. Ultimately, however, their fate rests in the hands of the Jana'ata trader Supaari VaGayjur, who leads Emilio to the Reshtar, the creature whose voice is as the song of angels. The newly published sequel, Children of God , emulates its predecessor in combining an elegant plot with larger themes. It unravels further the mystery of what happened to Emilio Sandoz and explores the ripple effect of the earthlings' mission on the biracial society of Rakhat.
Most sequels suck.
Let's just get that out in the open. Sequels, written or filmed, are nearly always a disappointment. It took 18 months and 31 rejections by literary agents before The Sparrow was accepted for publication. For weeks after I finished writing The Sparrow , I was in Emilio Sandoz's head, and that was a very bad place to be. Like the Father General, I felt a need to bring Emilio to some kind of resolution, and at the end of The Sparrow , he had only gotten to the point where he could name what had happened to him.