Book Review: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

[Buy this book from Amazon

in the UK / in the US]

"Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie, for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary.

"The Sanctuary of the Redeemers is a vast and desolate place – a place without joy or hope. Most of its occupants were taken there as boys and for years have endured the brutal regime of the Lord Redeemers whose cruelty and violence have one singular purpose – to serve in the name of the One True Faith. In one of the Sanctuary’s vast and twisting maze of corridors stands a boy. He is perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old – he is not sure and neither is anyone else. He has long-forgotten his real name, but now they call him Thomas Cale.

"He is strange and secretive, witty and charming, violent and profoundly bloody-minded. He is so used to the cruelty that he seems immune, but soon he 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. His only hope of survival is to escape across the arid Scablands to Memphis, a city the opposite of the Sanctuary in every way: breathtakingly beautiful, infinitely Godless, and deeply corrupt.

"But the Redeemers want Cale back at any price... not because of the secret he now knows, but because of a much more terrifying secret he does not."

***

Expectations are high for The Left Hand of God, almost unbearably so. Some have tipped it as among the most anticipated new fantasy novels of 2010, and from the outside looking in, it's not difficult to see why. Here in the UK, Penguin Books have embarked on what is reportedly the single biggest and most expensive publicity drive in the publisher's long history, taking in the most mainstream ad campaign I've ever seen employed for a piece of speculative fiction short of a new Stephen King; not to mention a series of viral trailers you'll find infecting the likes of YouTube and DailyMotion and even, bafflingly, a iPhone app.

The premise, too, sounds appealing. Tailor-made, one might go so far as to say, to hit home with fans of speculative fiction; Hoffman has a check-mark in all the right boxes. There's a chosen one with an impossible love interest and a pair of unwilling allies caught in the middle of an epic battle between powerful opposing forces set against one another; there's a touch of alternate-history about the world Cale must navigate, yet a whiff of the real world rendered unreal in the mode of so many superior narratives.

In short, The Left Hand of God arrives carried aloft by a wave of high hopes and great expectations, but it is far from the equal of either. The Guardian observes that "it might have been planned by a focus group," and reviewer Patrick Ness is right on the money; everything about Hoffman's highly-anticipated genre debut seems calculated to win over fans of speculative fiction, and perhaps it may have, had it not a myriad of other, more commercially viable target markets in mind. Penguin Books only stands a chance of recouping the massive financial investment they've made on The Left Hand of God if it sells fantasy to the masses in the same way they bought into the horror genre via the likes of True Blood and Twilight. This is that book.

None of which, come right down to it, is really Hoffman's problem, but that his publishers have pitched The Left Hand of God far too hard is only the tip of the iceberg. As the action shifts from the sickening training camp at Shotover Scarp to the burlesque streets and alleyways of Memphis where Cale finds refuge from the Redeemers, Hoffman seems to lose sight of the sliver of promise that had speckled the narrative's first act. The pace set by his protagonist's attempts to escape chokes at the sight of the city and soon stalls entirely

For the larger part of The Left Hand of God, in fact, Cale and his companions do... nothing. They wait. Sometimes they talk about not waiting, but decide, invariably, to wait a while longer. The days, weeks and months wasted away in Memphis only serve to pad out the first volume of a fantasy series of indeterminate length; without them, Hoffman's novel would be comparable to a YA effort, and a slim one at that. Perhaps Penguin, seeing some potential in the draft presented them, had its author divide The Left Hand of God down the middle and demanded that Hoffman fatten up the remainder for fear of putting off fantasy fans whose eyes light up at tomes fit to work as well as doorstops as narratives. But I digress - speculating about where it all went awry will do little good.

Hoffman's prose is rarely more than competent. It chugs along like a train-ride to nowhere; eventually, it gets you where you're going, but the awkward stops and starts that punctuate the journey are infinitely more memorable than the supposedly striking vistas glimpsed along the way. His idea of character development never amounts to anything greater than a bit of clumsy exposition that states how and why Cale or one of the forgettable supporting players have changed their outlook. And the worst is yet to come.

As I've said, The Left Hand of God meanders woefully on its way to the inevitable battle between the legions of Redeemers and the armoured Materazzi of Memphis who Cale has inexplicably taken to advising, but when that climactic encounter finally arrives, the pay-off is unspeakably disappointing. Hoffman's clumsy narration during this sequence shifts to an equally ineffective eagle's-eye perspective; he recounts the clash as if it were an historical event occurring in the far distance of time and space.

Still more distracting is the way in which the author's numeric obsession, heretofore only an occasional obstacle, wins out as the irresistible force of the Redeemers meets the Materazzi's immovable object. After building up to this battle for so long, when it comes to the actual article Hoffman seems content to simply relate the mathematical composition of each army; the referential number of each regiment; even the ages of each soldier. Once you've noticed the author falling back upon the presumed safety of the numbers that were so pivotal in his previous work - a book which apparently "predicted the collapse of the world financial system" - the numbers here, there and everywhere become impossible to ignore.

There are occasional glimmers of something worthwhile in The Left Hand of God, but for the most part, Hoffman's first genre novel is derivative, distracted and downright dull. This early in the year, readers are no doubt keen to latch onto the next great fantasy; assuredly, however, this literary identity crisis falls far short of that high watermark. In all likelihood Penguin's disproportionate publicity campaign will persuade enough readers to buy The Left Hand of God that sequels will come along to resolve the many plot threads left unresolved by this disappointing volume's abrupt conclusion, but unless Hoffman hones the scattershot craft he exhibits herein, I truly don't think I'll care enough to find out.

***

The Left Hand of God

by Paul Hoffman

January 2010, Michael Joseph: London

[Buy this book from Amazon

in the UK / in the US]

Recommended and Related Reading