Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God is a poorly written bundle of fantasy and religious stereotypes with nonexistent characterisation and a plot that never leaves the ground. We can’t recommend highly enough that you don’t go out and buy The Left Hand of God. And if you already have, leave it on the shelf.
After all of the pre-launch hype that the book received, we were expecting something more than this. We were expecting a book that would at least be an interesting and engaging read, if not the next Assassin’s Apprentice or A Game of Thrones. What we got instead was a book that was so painful to read that we didn’t finish it. A book that has characters which are never fleshed out and a plot that never made sense in a world that didn’t have any detail.
If you read the synopsis of The Left Hand of God on the back cover, you will probably believe that you are about to read a book along the same lines of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind.
Like Rothfuss’s epic tale and many other fantasy books, The Left Hand of God is about a young boy – and, true to the stereotype, he is an unusual boy in a land of hardship. Thomas Cale lives in The Sanctuary of the Redeemers – some form of religious sanctuary cum prison where boys are taken at a young age to be put through the brutal training that will enable them to live up to the sect’s particular vision of God.
But Cale is not like the others.
Where they cling to their illicit friendships as the only comforts they have in the face of the sheer mindless brutality of their redeemer masters, Cale is cold and friendless. Where the other boys seek merely to survive, Cale appears to be thinking below the surface of events, beyond the daily grind.
You can see where this is going.
As the book’s synopsis states, soon Cale “will open the wrong door at the wrong time and witness an act so terrible that he will have to leave this place, or die”.
In short, it is Cale’s fate to leave the Sanctuary of the Redeemers and make his escape to the world outside his walls, a world where he will grow and develop while simultaneously moving towards some unknowable destiny that will change the face of the world.
We gave The Left Hand of God quite a chance throughout its opening chapters. Because of the hype, we were prepared to overlook some of the glaring examples of poor writing in its pages. And if the book had been written with more skill, after all, the setting could have been a fruitful one. It is often through adversity that characters are best developed, and Hoffman certainly sets up a series of difficult situations for Cale in his book.
However it speedily became apparent as we moved through the book that it was just poorly written.
Cale’s role – as the mysterious child with unexplainable powers – think Paul Atreides from Dune – is to make his speedy advance throughout the world outside the Sanctuary, learning more about it at every turn while still being part of a wider plot that is slowly being unraveled. He will be pursued, he will make friends, he will gawk at young, attractive women and fall in love with them.
And yet the way that this journey takes place is so different from the mental and physical journeys of similar fantasy protagonists such as Pug in Magician and Fitzchivalry Farseer as to be a world apart. Hoffman doesn’t bother to explain why his protagonist is different from those around him (apart from, in one memorable occasion, to attribute Cale’s swordsmanship to a fall on his head). Cale is simply, somehow, different.
Fair enough, you might say. Hoffman might explain Cale’s difference later on. But trust me, it’s not like that. Cale’s difference is not the difference of a character in a Steven Erikson book, or a R. Scott Bakker book. It’s the difference of a character who an author has not created a complicated character for. It’s the difference of a stereotype of “the unusual boy, mature beyond his years”.
The same can be said for all of the book’s other characters. The Redeemers are utter stereotypes of religious zealots. They’re not human. They merely proselytize and commit casual acts of brutality on their charges, randomly, without meaning. Often-times Hoffman appears to use the blows of the Redeemers as some form of attempt to help build Cale’s character.
But without any meaning attached to the violence by either side, no character development takes place.
It’s a similar situation with other characters in The Left Hand of God. The young, nubile, innocent woman. The likably roguish wanderer who turns out to be of noble blood. The corpulent chancellor. The sidekicks who never quite understand Cale. The arrogant sons of noblemen who Cale cuts down to size. Every single character in the book is a stereotype of one form or another and it wears insufferably on the reader. There is no complexity to any of the characters.
There are two other aspects of the book which grate. Firstly, the plot is a nonsense. Characters commit certain acts for no discernible reason, or for reasons against their apparent character. The world itself seems to shift to make way for Cale’s progress through it, while he himself appears to be an immovable object.
It’s as if everyone who meets Cale decides that because he is the focus of the story, everything should shift around him. If there is a wider plot to the book that doesn’t involve Cale himself, we couldn’t discern it. And yet, this is the sort of world backdrop that makes fantasy novels so rich and makes the fans enjoy them.
The other thing which frustrated us about the book is the constant comments from the author’s point of view which are inserted into the text. The author will comment that somebody is “obviously” this, or obviously that, as if he is making a snide aside comment on them from the right of stage.
These “editorial” comments are incredibly amateurish and totally break up the flow of the book. They’ll make you feel as if you’re reading writing from a high school student. You just can’t do this sort of thing in an adult novel. Hoffman also uses them to avoid having to describe details of certain scenes. It’s like he’s taking the reader aside for a second and saying: “Hey, you know what a dungeon is like, right? So I don’t really have to describe it, right? OK then. Let’s skip that bit.”
There are one or two redeeming features about The Left Hand of God. Hoffman has an interesting concept in the Sanctuary, and of course everybody likes reading fantasy stories about cold, calculating youngsters – this sort of character has an intrinsic fascination because they’re so far outside the norm.
But The Left Hand of God does not represent a good effort at exploring that setting and that character. It is an amateurish, poorly written third-rate fantasy novel packed full of stereotypes and devoid of anything interesting for the experienced reader. Avoid it like the plague.
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17 Responses to The Left Hand of God: Review
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I’ll take the advice and stay away from the book, but I felt that the review would have been stronger with more specific examples.
Let me give one of my own:
You mention that the author uses “obviously” a lot. Is there a reason not to quote a passage?
Man, I just scanned the title and I thought you were talking about The Left Hand of Darkness. I was like, WTF???
Saw this at Costco last weekend and almost bought it. I have a lot of books on my reading list with better reviews, so I’ll stick to those. Thank you.
I think this review is completely unjustified and almost feels like the writer of the article has a personal vendetta against Paul Hoffman and the book. Reading it from cover to cover is also a good idea.
While I was reading this book I thought it was the worst fantasy novel I’d ever read…until I reached the end. The ending was good enough that it is now TIED for the title of ‘worst fantasy book I’ve ever read’.
Beginning and end were good but the middle sagged and there was minimal character development. The world was unimaginative and editing errors disrupted the flow of the book.
Just finished reading it and im totaly confused, Ok its fantasy but it has to have a certain logic which this hasnt, Stamford Bridge…Memphis…ffs either its total fantasy or its totally some where we know in a different time and place?
I wasnt sure if i was after some great disaster in the future , or which Memphis i might be in , young women just dont throw themselves at 14 year old boys , well maybe they do in 14 year olds dreams :)
I shall so totaly not be buying the follow up ………….
I totally agree with you 100% on this review. My own practically reflects your every sentiment.
starts with an interesting premise of religious zealotry and a child-slave army in training, chronicling the gothic, grotesqueries of Sanctuary life, which are well portrayed. But after the first 100 pages the story loses its way, becoming a series of encounters that go nowhere and tell us nothing.
The main protagonist, Cale, is an immediately likeable character who you both fear and sympathise, but Hoffman soon drops all character development in favour of moving the plot along and rambles on to meet a succession of cardboard characters, until finally allowing the novel to limp to a complete anti-climax in its final chapters and collapse wheezing back where it started.
This is not a book for Fantasy readers. This is Diet-Fantasy; the joyless, bastard cousin of full-fat Fantasy. I found it interesting to note that those who gave this book a wholly positive review were either first-time Fantasy readers or, judging by the quality of comments, not particularly literary-qualified. The book is an OK start for a new author, but feels decidedly over-developed (as by a focus group, attempting to please everyone, but resulting in none) or under-developed through laziness on his editor’s part.
It should never have been published in the state it is in.
I completely disagree with your book review. However, we are all entitled to our own opinions, even if yours is dead wrong.
There is no such thing as a “wrong” opinion. If you don’t know that then you have no validity to your statement.
I don’t really agree with this review its really negative and i am in the processing of reading the left hand of god and am really enjoying it, filled with betrayal surprises and action all round i think it is a great book
Can anyone explain to me who the soldiers are that Cale says he killed during his conversation with Idrispukke on about the 4th page of chapter 20????? (pg 247 in my Penguin edition). Is it just me or did this NEVER HAPPEN in the book?? Same as the first reference to Bosco. He is just inserted as a character we feel i felt i was supposed to already know about. This book has so many random things like this in it. I find i am always flicking back through pages Please respond if u can explain the above mystery though. It’s killing me.
Cale says the soliders are veterans from the war against the Antagonists. You are correct that it didnt happen in the book, but it’s implied to have happened prior to the events in the book. Although i will agree with you about Bosco, i was incredibly confused when he started being mentioned.
Bosco is the Lord Militant, so he is referred to earlier. But because we aren’t told about his real name beforehand there is a section where it can be confusing as to who he is.
I agree mostly with what has been said, which I find really frustrating because I think this novel just drips with potential… Its just none of it is realised. The Sanctuary – religious slave army idea, I think is great. You can do a lot with that. Problem is all the characters are 2D caricatures, names are an awful mix of made up from nothing and stolen from real life (Nathan Jog, Nicholas Panick, Stape Roy, Memphis) actions are taken with no motivation… other posters have already described this but also I would like to add that it shows no understanding of the warfare of the period. There is a reason that Snipers/ sharpshooters didn’t exist until rifling. Another blaring inconsistency; soldiers are told to “… blow their heads off.” With what? They have swords not guns. Just avoid it
It is a dystopian novel. There are canon and other “rediscovered” weapons. There are some pretty powerful weapons that the author spends a lot of copy explaining, maybe “blow their heads off” is just a phrase left over from when there were sniper rifles and carbines. What period warfare are you referring to? The future period? The boys are programed by a twisted monastic order, not to have personalities, but to be killing machines and possibly bring about their prophetic visions of armageddon. The names are awful? I found them pretty typical for this genre. There is a lot of mystery in this novel, not everything is explained. Not every fantasy novel/trilogy/series has to be some colossal, world building exercise. It can just be a tale of a time, or a place, or an event, or an idea, or of a boy coming of age. I am looking forward to the sequel.
I came across this review as I was looking for information on the sequel. I also have to disagree, I really enjoyed it. I am a little surprised, I am a pretty picky SF/Fant reader and am not afraid to stop reading immediately if the material does not live up to my expectations. I am not familiar with this website, maybe I just have different tastes than the reviewers. If there is this much negativity towards this book, make it a library loan to be safe.
i disagree with your review , you totaly slate it without reason sounds to me like your have some problem with the author . i had never heard of book and picked it up for a read in work and i thought it was great , i could not put it down after i started . cant wait to read next book . keep up the good work mr. hoffman thank you for a great book