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Post by ashley on Jul 7, 2011 11:59:23 GMT -5
The Left Hand of God is a fairly new fantasy adventure book written by Paul Hoffman. This book comes across as one thing: planned. From the cover to the last page it seems every aspect of this book has been polished, buffed, polished and re-thought a million different times. It is so professional it may seem to… try way to hard. It tries to please everyone, so making it a very awkward book to define an audience for. As the saying goes, write for everybody, and you’ll displease everybody. However, it depends a lot on your outlook on the topics at hand. Actually, no, fuck it. That’s bullshit. No matter your outlooks on religion or women, you’ll still get confused over who the bad guy really is. You may think it’s the Redeemers, with their child-beating, self-indulgent ways, but then the outside seem so sinful you want to gouge your eyes out. And hell, the Redeemers are the main candidate for being evil, yet one of there most strongest beliefs (believe women are evil) is potent throughout every female character. Arbell, Riba, Anna-Maria… they all seem to be portrayed as selfish, back-stabbing whores. This was the point I questioned what Hoffman was trying to say, that religion creates fanatics, or all women are evil. I tried to look the matter up, and turned up dust. The series is as ambiguous as an bed, and hell, I’ll say that this book is not for people who want a good VS evil. We don’t even know anything about the ‘Anatgonists’ whom the Redeemers are fighting, aside from that they have the same religion as the Redeemers but go about it in a different way, which in this books twisted logic, makes them ‘heathens’.
The main character, Thomas Cale (refereed to as Cale, since apparently address people by their first name is a sin), is just as ambiguous as the plot, and you don’t know whether to hate the bastard or feel sorry for him. Beside the fact he doesn’t know his real name (all of the children-soldier trainees are all named after famous martyred Redeemers) or his real age, he seems rather calm about where he is. Even if they do it dead men’s feet and year-old veggies. He kills well, he’s smart and he gets special treatment from Bosco, one of the Redeemers. I don’t know, but this reeks Gary-Stu, sure, but I still can’t figure him out yet, other than the fact he seems to take a liking to stabbing things a lot. He eventually is the lover of oh-so-perfect Arbell Swan-Neck (Swan-Neck being a fucking synonym from her fan-boys) who eventually turns him in to the Redeemers and he forever what to kill her even when she’s pregnant, apparently with Cale’s little ner’do-well. He does seem to have random intervals of neutral affection, even if he hated the person before hand. Cale also escapes his the Redeemer stronghold after witnessing one of the Redeemers cutting a girl open, and he runs away with her and his two buddies, Kleist (who seems to hate him) and Vague Henri (who is indifferent).
The plot changes direction so many times it’s hard to keep track, hell, I’m not sure where this is going, and I’ve no idea is Cale is going to fill his semi-evil masters desires and destroy the world or save it so her can beat his pregnant lover to death. Some things aren’t even explained properly, like why was a Redeemer chopping a girl up, or why Cale is ‘different’ from the other boys at the Redeemer stronghold. It seems like something you think you can get into, and some people can, and then you finish and wonder how you could. The main plot is still faded at the end as it was at the beginning, and hell, Hoffman gives up on characterization half way through, and everyone is so picture perfect it’s almost like a fan fiction.
What is good about it is the fact it stays frustratingly ambiguous. It doesn’t try to persuade you into anything, and yet you want it to so you can actually get what’s going on. The book isn’t overly complicated, so if you want to read it, you won’t have to remember what was said in the last chapter for you to understand. But there is something else that will confuse you: the location. Memphis, Jews, The Ark of Covenant, and the currency of ’dollar’. Fried potato chips, beer that was ’opened’. Where the hell is this place situated? In the future, past? Alternate Universe? It seems to forget itself and contradict itself, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was something read, and something to get frustrated about.
Overall, the book seems to be getting bad criticism, let, right, up, down and everywhere in between. Fires burn between the lovers and the haters wherever you ask about it. Me? It was alright. Not bloody brilliant or a pile of bloody bodies. It has way to much hype, and was seriously overrated. Overall, I remained -like the book itself- apathetic. [/blockquote]
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