Books Received | The Last Four Things At Last

A shadow has fallen on this house since the mailman came the other day, bearing a gift, and a woeful burden.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

That's right.

If you haven't been reading The Speculative Scotsman the whole time I've been at it, this one time I'll forgive you - just so long as you click through to peruse my review of The Left Hand of God from March last year. And then maybe one of the opinion pieces that came in the fallout from the review, too.

Still among the most trafficked articles on TSS entire, those.

So it was with hope and no small amount of trepidation that I took possession of a review copy of The Last Four Things a few days ago. Of course I remember how very wrongly The Left Hand of God rubbed me, yet I found myself wishing that this sequel has learned where there was learning to be done. Because many other reviewers - like Liviu and Robert Thompson - really did enjoy it. And I'd like to have a nice thing or two to say about Paul Hoffman's work this time out. Things can't get much worse, can they?

Well, I've since read the first chapter - I couldn't resist, though I was and I am in the midst of another book - and I can confirm that no, things haven't gotten any worse. Which isn't to say they've necessarily gotten any better...

I should have a full review up within the next ten days. You may stay tuned.

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Just a quick PS to say, since from time to time there's chatter about whether publishers and publicists get sore about negative publicity, Penguin and Michael Joseph were as polite and as professional as ever when I discussed coverage of The Last Four Things with one of their many, many representatives.

So kudos to them. Seriously.

Would that I could say the same about certain other... ah, but that'd be giving the game away, wouldn't it? You'll have to wait for my tell-all autobiography, The Rise and Fall of a Speculative Scotsman, due out this October, to hear about those. :)

The Other Right Hand of God

So guess what I just came across?

No, it wasn't porn. Cheeky lot, aren't you? It was - cue an ominous roll on the snare drum - the sequel to none other than... The Left Hand of God. By Paul Hoffman.

Well. It was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn't it?

The Last Four Things is coming in April 2011 from Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin Press. At approximately 512 pages, it's significantly longer than the first book in this would-be series. And I'm going to have to read it, aren't I? Believe it or not, my review of The Left Hand of God - my rather vitriolic review of The Left Hand of God - is one of the most highly trafficked articles I've published here on TSS.

Which is rather confusing, really. Would you all prefer it if I hated on stuff? Is that what's going on here?

Any old way, here's the blurb for The Last Four Things:

"Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. These are the Last Four Things. Now there are Five.

"Meet Thomas Cale...

"Returning to the Sanctuary of the Redeemers, Cale is told by the Lord Militant that the destruction of mankind is necessary, the only way to undo God's greatest mistake.

"Cale seemingly accepts his role in the ending of the world; fate has painted him as the Left Hand of God, the Angel of Death. Absolute power is within his grasp, the terrifying zeal and military might of the Redeemers a weapon for him to handle as simply as he once used a knife.

"But perhaps not even the grim power that the Redeemers hold over Cale - the boy who turns from love to poisonous hatred in a heartbeat, the boy who switches between kindness and sheer violence in the blink of an eye - is enough. The annihilation that the Redeemers seek may well be in Cale's hands - but his soul is far stranger than they could ever know."

That lede-line is properly putting me in mind of another Michael Joseph publication, the similarly disappointing I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore. I confess, I'd rather read a sequel to that than another dismal Paul Hoffman novel.

But there you go. You want it; you got it.

*cries quietly*