The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn

//Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvellous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you— and you— and you too— if not some god whose name we have forgotten?//

The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn is the third book in her Samaria series. It can be read as a standalone, as long as you have some background information of the past centuries on Samaria (which I am happy to provide below).

Here’s the deal:

We find ourselves on a different planet, where the Samarians, Edori and Jacobites co-exist. Samarians worship the God known as Jovah. When they ‘sing’ to Jovah, Jovah instantly (and I do mean instantly) sends help within the hour, in the form of rain, medicines and grain.

The Edori are nomads and sailors who believe that somewhere out there is a supreme universal being, but they’re not sure whether that being is Jovah or not. And then there are the Jacobites, bitter agnostics, who claim that Jovah is not a God — instead, Jovah is a machine!

The feud between theists/religion and atheists/science has now caught a bloodthirsty fervor. The Samarian head has started a military genocide to purge the land of Jacobites.

Tamar, a young Jacobite woman decides to search for the Alleluia Files— solid substantial proof that Jovah indeed is all metal and is no deity. It seems that the Samarian Alleya had discovered the truth about Jovah and had even spoken to the machine. If Tamar can discover the files, she can protect the Jacobites.

The Grand Revelation:

In the end, the files are discovered, and truth finally comes to people. But the cost of truth is heavy. After being so long deluded, are the people prepared and equipped to deal with such a giant void? And so this planet, eyes open wide, discovers a new problem: to worship or not.

The agnostics only want to believe in available quantitative evidence. The fanatics call it blasphemy to doubt God, because even the original settlers (makers of the Jovah machine) followed a faith. And this is where Alleluia Files really shines — I was very impressed by the very powerful arguments that Shinn makes for each party:

//But if there is a god, how do we find him? Where’ do we look? Jecoliah asked. Do we create him ourselves, from our hopes and our desires? We have been down that road before, and it was a blind alley. We do not want to delude ourselves again.//

//Do you truly want to live in a universe where you, Conran Atwell, are the highest achievement, the only moral arbiter and the final judge? I do not trust to your goodness enough. I do not trust to any man’s. If we do not have a god, we have no limits.//

Let’s not forget, no matter how much evidence we accumulate, the questions of who and where is God will always chase us. The solvable problem is how best to bridge the sides so that the social foundation doesn’t crumble into dust in that age old tussle.

//You are missing the point, she said to him calmly. If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice with me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?//

Parting Thoughts:

The world-building seems to be based off the Judaeo tradition. Shinn has taken painstaking effort to portray the daily rituals and customs, the local language, the intergenerational and interclass tensions. Even the most mundane details get captured, like small talk during dinners, etiquette between employer and employee, food habits. It’s an old world, removed from technology and magic both, but very immersive. Everything that Shinn writes is evocative of deep thought and emotion of every shade, even the darker uncomfortable ones.

I will part with this last hair-raising quote from the book, which gives us a small litmus test of whether we may believe in God or not. Put yourself in the most desperate situation possible, and think. Did you look for a miracle which would make things right, just the way you want them to be? As per Shinn, the hope for that miracle is God: believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

//I have been raised to deny the existence of Jovah–of any god. And yet, when I was at my most desperate and most afraid, I prayed. The words rose to my mouth before I knew I was thinking them. And help came. I think we need a god so greatly because some god has created us, and he left behind that deep desire. I don’t believe in Jovah, but I believe in something.//