The Left Hand Of God

The Left Hand Of God
Paul Hoffman
8/10

Well here we go, the review for Thesaurus (its actually for a worker at Thesaurus, but its not a big distinction and easier to say) i was asked to do it, and i must say, i am glad i was. This is a great book, paul is one of those writers thats able to tell a story in a way that makes it seem real, interesting and leaves you wanting more. I often say that the characters are original etc but this time i'm not kidding, the protagonist of our story is a complex, enthralling and, although eccentric, strangely loveable.
The small boy, Thomas Cale, is brought up in the worst possible environment, he grows up and is taught by a collection of extremist monks who believe strongly in using physical pain to atone for sins that all are born with. All that the boys who grow up in the remote monastery with these priests are taught to fear god, behave perfectly and to fight in time of war. Cale is a particularly good fighter, and one of the highest ranked monks talks a special interest in his education. this means harder lessons, and harsher punishments.

When Cale accidentally walks in on an atrocity during an errand, he sets in motion a series of events that lead him, and two of his friends, to run away from the monastery and become important factors in a coming war between the order of monks they ran from, and the large city of a powerful warrior race that they ran to.

The book is not without faults, however. There are numerous references to locations, travel, landscapes of various terrain, and a number of landmarks. There is no map in the book so picturing the world from vague descriptions is hard, and often frustrating. Hoffman has also used numerous real life names for people races of people, this forces us to think of stereotypes and saves the writer from having to describe them to us, it seems lazy and it is confusing. As a final irksome detail is that a few times in the book the writer takes on a storyteller sort of tone, this shocked me because there was no indication it just, at the end of a chapter, the narrator started dropping hits of things to come. We never receive warning of it and before i had time to work out what was happening, it was gone and the book moved back into the normal flow. It was a good use of writing, but I found that the change in tone stopped the book dead. For all you history buffs, the climax of the book, an all out war between the two forces is really an almost move by move copy of a battle from history,i wont say which one, however. Again this seemed like a lazy part of the book. A disappointment, being able to guess what will happens.

All of those put together may make it seem like it has a lot of cons but in reality, its a very small part of the book that is at fault, the rest of the 400+ pages are literature gold and well worth reading. A BIG thank you to Thesaurus for asking me to do this book, i'm very glad i got it and some more recommendations would be much appreciated. I think that the book is worth a detention, but if your monk oppressors catch you, then expect a thorough beating :P