Children of Some god or Another

I think it's much more fair to compare a sequel to its predecessor than our heartless comparison of movie adaptations to the novels they're based on. With that disclaimer, I'll begin with my The Sparrow/Children of God comparison.
Though it was interesting for Emilio's tale to be "wrapped up," it was not satisfying in the same sense that The Sparrow was. Where the plot of The Sparrow served to explore religion and morality, Children of God was a heavy-handed continuation of something that may have been better left unresolved. It was fitting in The Sparrow for awful things to continue pecking at the very core of Sandoz's beliefs, as that was what Russell was exploring, but in Children of God she merely used the same mechanism, without any real purpose behind why.
As for the entire Revolution idea...it was far too easy. Just like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress having Mike in the background, controlling communications, strategy, security, weather satellites and horoscopes, there was never a question of whether the Runa would be successful. They had Sofia and her iPhone hiding in the forest to arrange everything against the Jana'ata. I enjoyed the idea of said revolution because it had just cause and provocation, as I would have had the various Meso-Americans risen up against the oppressive Cortes instead of their bleak fate, but the solve-all method Russell used to orchestrate the revolution was too easy. (I'm not volunteering to develop something better...but I did expect more after The Sparrow.)
Nico and Isaac were both interesting charactre additions. Carlo could have been interesting, but after he failed to really add anything to the plot other than Emilio-snatching and telling Emilio he was going to add something to the plot...he just became deadweight. None of the other new crew members seemed to develop either (the only thing Sean Fein was good for was his name and the accompanying joke), and even John Candotti wasn't very insightful or forgiving or optimistic or humourous.
Upon reading the ending of Children of God, I kind of just wondered where any of it had come from and if it had really gone anywhere. As I mentioned before, the idea behind the revolution was interesting. The reservation idea was cute. Sending Emilio back to Earth, again, seemed useless to me in his overall redemption process, and I was just left wondering if he had made his peace with his religious beliefs, as I assumed was the goal of the novel.