Book Review: The Left Hand of God
WARNING: Lots of Spoilers ahead. Oh, and snark. Vicious amounts of it.
Ahem.Okay.
I was ohhh-kayy with the book in the beginning, and then towards the end I started enjoying it a lot. But there's a lot I regret about the way it's been written, because, ah, the plot has so much potential. The chapters roughly between the middle and the end, appalled me with pages and pages of cluttered information and non-stop, unimaginative I'm-gonna-preach-and-you're-gonna-listen prose. This...threw me off; I would definitely have liked the book better if not for the 'war' arc. Now, for more detail.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT HIS BOOK:
1. (Nearly) Compelling protagonist. Cale's pretty..um, intriguiing, if I might say so.
2. The setting itself is pretty believable and interesting, although a map would have Helped. Note the capital H.
Let's move on to WHAT I DIDN'T:
1. Character Depth EVERYBODY other than the main character, Cale, is a plot device. Well, maybe not everyone: Vipond's pretty solid; I couldn't help but like IsrisPukke (how da heck do you pronounce his name?!) for his short snatchy witticisms. Reminded me of Captain Jack Sparrow. (Hehe.) Kleist is pretty well carved out too, in fact, better than Cale. He was the only one who looked as though he had any volume to him at all. The girls. Are. Dummies. Apparently, a. Riba's a gorgeous, plump, and curvy, buxom little girl for Henri (about the closest to decent character) to fall in love with. He apparently, watches her bathing. And the all-knowing omniscient narrator tells us that even if she'd known, wouldn't have minded because, oh! Of course, she was raised to provide such pleasure to men, right?
b. Arbel Swan-Neck. Is as two-dimensional, which is to say, bland, as they get. Swan-Neck? Really? If I were to read even just one more epitaph to her oh-so-beautiful-gorgeousness and how everyone in the empire swooned over her divine looks, I would have thrown this book across the room. It represented the only females in it as creatures with no purpose but to...drive the plot forward.
2. Unnecessary Details and ..stuff: It's a truth, universally acknowledged, that any author, remotely competent must only put in his books what's utterly. Necessary. Alright. I made that up. But hey, just what did the part which goes on and on about the spies sent to 'look after' Cale in the forest have to do with the frigging plot? For that matter, what did the two months in the forest, either? Oh, right; Cale was conveniently away while Arbel Swan-neck *gags and retches* gets kidnapped. But, we'll get to that later.
And the part where we discover Henri has magically acquired perfect bowmanship with crossbows, out of no-bloody-where. Huh?
This book has some utterly pointless stuff thrown in, just for the sake of....what, exactly? Who knows.
3. Uneven Plot movement This books has section where the characters are just, waiting desperately for Something to Happen, so the plot can move. This parts are needless to say, dull. And boring. And go get a thesaurus.
4. Clunky Masses of Prose.
This was, by far, the worst part of the book. I actually flipped through the pages ahead to see when all this drabness would end. To my dismay, it must be be said, it went on for pages. Like a pathetic history textbook. I'm not even kidding, the narrator expects us to pay attention to passages and passages of the war scenario and how the oh-so-great-and-smart Cale will sketch out a battle plan for the Materazzi, while infusing it with yawn-worthy political drama.
5. Patchy character development
Like, whut? This one's a bit too hard to wrap your mind around. You just begin to think the character's changed, at least a little bit, and then something happens and it all goes back to square one. Some are just way too contrasting: Why did Cale kill Solomon Solomon (seriously, who names someone the same thing twice?) and then save Conn? Huh?
And just how did Arbel-- no. Just no. Not the SN-word again-- suddenly, dramatically develop such intensely strong feelings for our oh-so-bad-and-bloodthirsty dude when she hated him at first? Also, wait a minute, wasn't Conn Materazzi her first crush? So our dude bashes him up and she falls for him immediately after that just because Riba (who's now conveniently her personal maid) spills hot tea on him? Yeah, that's totally believable.
You get the idea. Let's move on.
6. Plot Holes from Tartarus:
So the Materazzi army, which has been repeatedly hailed as the best in the whole wide world, loses to a bunch of soldiers with more disadvantages than disadvantages? Right.
To be honest, this was also kind of predictable, because the whole time before the war we've been told that there's no way they could have no chance of losing. So this was just kind of dumb.
How da heck does one make a 200-foot long rope from human hair?
I'd think only someone like Captain Jack Sparrow, peace be upon him *wink*, would be up to the task.
7. Characters as Plot Devices:
"Dear readers, meet Madamoiselle whats-her-name who has no role in this book other than being made beautiful by the talented beautifier Riba , and later firing her, so Riba can now be a fantastic plot device too! Hurrah!
Simon, Arbel, Riba, even Henri and Kliest appear as though they're only there to make sure the plot moves ahead for our anti-hero, Cale. Only Vipond, IdrisPukke and Cale himself seem to be of any actual consequence.
8. Sloppy Love interest:
Swan-Neck and Scar-Back sitting in a tree,
Falling in love randomly.
When Redeemer Bosco asks Arbel and her dad to 'hand Cale over', she refuses:
"Never! Not a chance!" she said passionately.
Passionately? Da heck? That word made me cringe, okay? You don't tell your readers that someone's said something passionately. You let them figure that out.
Every part in this book involving females uses some overly expressive adverbs. Awkward.
9. Too many loose ends.
Alright, agreed this book is first in a trilogy, but even so, it has too many lose ends: what did the guy take out of Lena's gut? Why were the girls raised in the sanctuary? Some clearing up would have been nice.
And with that, we come to the end of this review.
Will I be Reading the next book?
Sure! If someone gives if to me for free, that is.
