It Must Be A Marmite Thing?

The Left Hand of God – A Review

To be completely honest from the start I would never, in a million years, have picked up The Left Hand of God. I had seen it in the bookshop many times and just never bothered to pick it up. However that might be due to the dismal blurb, which really makes no sense whatsoever. However, a friend recommended it to me and the bookshop happened to have it in stock so I bought it.

Now maybe it’s because I just finished Assassin’s Apprentice and The Left Hand of God was something quite different from Hobb but I quite enjoyed it. Among the fantasy community I am part of, this book seems to be the worst one to come out in a long time. For reasons I am trying to figure out many people did not like this book at all. I can think of two reasons people didn’t enjoy this book:

1. They do not understand Hoffman and his allegory

OR

2. I am just absolutely oblivious to how bad this book really is.

On the other hand, people have raved about Name of the Wind, which frankly I found unbearable. Thomas Cale is a much more interesting character than Kvothe and his world is much more intricate. Now for this reason only I can only come to one conclusion – The Left Hand of God is a marmite thing. You either love it or you hate it. So decide for yourself whether you are willing to read it, but I would keep in mind that it is most certainly a marmite thing.

That being said I am going to read the next one in the series The Last Four Things, however I do not have high hopes. I can sense there is going to be a prophecy about Thomas Cale, and there is nothing I hate more than a prophecy. It’s just a cop-out for the author so they don’t have to think about how to end the book, they just end it the way it is prophesised. Boring.

(Thanks @dk_stevens for the marmite comparison).

Here’s a blurb for The Left Hand of God:

The remote Sanctuary of the Redeemers is a huge, grim fortress. There boys younger than 10 are taken for intensive training in hand-to-hand combat in preparation for a forthcoming holy war that only the high priests know about. Sixteen-year-old Thomas Cale is one of the thousands of boys who endure unspeakable treatment at the hands of the warrior monks. Sensing something special about Cale, the Lord Militant takes charge of his training, making it extremely harsh and driving him to achieve more and more. When Cale comes across a Redeemer performing a vivisection on a girl, he slays the man, rescues another girl, and realizes that to live he must escape into the outside world. What ensues is a riveting tale of pursuit, derring-do, battles, and death. Unfortunately, some intrusive authorial explanatory asides interrupt the narrative flow. Enigmatic Cale is something of a berserker on his dark side, a protector on his good one. Other principals are credible, and the settings—the foul sanctuary, barren landscape, and aristocratic city to which Cale flees—vivid. A rousing trilogy-opener. (From Booklist)