Well that was pretty insane, but i’m still being generous giving it 3 stars. It reminded me of Terry Gilliams Baron Munhausen film for some reason, and then i remembered that Time Bandits is actually a religious story featuring god so maybe that would be a better comparison.
Despite its extreme christianity its probably about as close to standard christian religion as Time Bandits :P, or maybe being generous the Adjustment Bureau, What Dreams May Come, stuff like that.

The main problem, apart from the length, is that being a religious tale there was never a high likelihood of much conflict and the structure of the plot means the longer it goes the less and less that likelihood becomes.

Still there are a lot of oddities and sci-fi ideas scattered about that kept things bearable. It uses a bunch of bible quotes to justify itself but its interpretation of them is utterly ridiculous.
Despite being so christian most of its main elements are eastern. It never uses the word reincarnation but nevertheless reincarnation plays a big role in the story as does, telepathy, astral projection etc.
Oh yes... the author always uses the term Star to mean Planet, no idea if that was standard at the time. Also we visit the star (planet) Vulcan at one point :) , not that Vulcan though, the real planet Vulcan, i use the term real in a relative sense :P .

There’s quite a feminist message in here too. The main section of this is quite annoying as the author seems to be saying a Matriarchy is a good idea, while a Patriarchy is bad.
Now if she’d stopped at saying a Matriarchy is better than a Patriarchy it would be hard to argue with, i mean it would be hard pressed to be worse ;) . But better does not mean good.

Anyway the hypocrisy was annoying but once you learn how this Matriarchy was formed, its reason for being, that makes complete sense in the plot and it wasn’t because this place was perfect, so that was fine. And rather undercut the previously expressed views.

Overall, its long, boring, so absurdly religious it seems like parody at times nevertheless there are so many oddities of characterization and content that it was quite readable.

PS: Oh and at one point there were little aliens that reminded me of chubby E.T.'s or maybe the Stations from Bill and Teds Bongus Journey :lol .

Made available by the Merril Collection. ( )