Review - The Last Four Things (The Left Hand of God book 2) by Paul Hoffman

 

3 in 5 stars Rating 

This is the sequel of The Left Hand of Good and if you remembered my review I was not impressed at all by that book and ended up with more questions and a confused face each time the POV changed. 

Well this book was better in a way but worst in another. 

This book start right after Redeemer Bosco take back Cale to the Sanctuary to follow his plan. The plan itself is to become the Pope and start to "clean" the Earth from humanity so God can start again.

Cale is now under the Redeemer control and need to prove to everyone in Chartres that he is the Wrath of God and came to help the Redeemers against the Antagonists and everyone that don't follow the same faith

I still feel that we have so much ground for Cale to explore that it hurt that he is still making the same again and again: he make fights, don't make friends and seems to want to destroy everyone and everything. 

His actions are all mixed like a fight is inside him for Good and Bad: he can kill and be the most cold person in the world and 2 seconds after he is the most devote friend ever wanting to save as much as possible. Well... he is a teenager with the burden of being a Death Angel so it is only normal this fight but sometimes it feels like he is not even opening with himself. 

While the first book was a complete mess to follow who's POV is in this one it's much better! We can understand more easily with who we are checking the events. However.... we have pages and pages of war description and without dialogue and for me it was the worst ever as personally I like description but not for 5 or 6 pages in a row! 

We have also a lot of new characters here that became important and it was more easy to follow them and there actions than in book one. Every character have something that will link to Cale: Redeemer Gil, The Materazzi, Kleist and the Clepto Clan,.... you may think at the beginning why it is important to follow Kleist POV until you understand where they are going and the same apply to the Redeemers. We have old characters coming back to the plot with a little bit of information of what happened to them but even that was not very well explored for me: The Materazzi situation was vague and letting go some suspense but not explaining a lot for example . In another hand we have a complete focus in Kleist situation after leaving Henri Vague alone with IdrisPukke and that part seems to be very important as I feel they will all see each others and that can make a big difference in the storyline of book 3.

We have more twists and turns that make it more easy and passionate to read but we need to take special attention all the time to better understand why that event was happening. 

The Redeemers part of the story was very good and made my day while I was reading the scheme of Bosco: it was intriguing, fast action with the good amount of description and suspense. 

In general this book was better in therms of action and plot and action but the massive description took away stars for my rating. I don't mind the author describing stuff to make it clear and easy to the reader imagine the surrounding but when is too much it feels like we are reading a war book for History Classes. 

Again not very impressed in overhaul by this volume but hope the last book if this trilogy will save the storyline and explore finally all the potential of Cale 

Review - The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman (The Left Hand of God Series Book 1)

 

3 in 5 stars rating

This is a re-read book. Do I remember when I read it and if I like it or not? NO 

I only remembered the name of the MC and the city! But in my defense I'm not a big fan of Dystopian or Si-Fi genre in general. 

Let's talk about this book: 

In the hellish Sanctuary of the Redeemer, young boys are trained from the age of five to be unthinking soldiers. Cale, the most promising, is singled out for punishment for the most trivial offenses but one day, Cale stops a Redeemer from dissecting a girl and he and his two friends, Vague Henri and Kleist, escape the Sanctuary with the girl named Riba and go on the lam with the destination of Memphis.

The Redeemers believe life is sin and salvation only comes through blood and pain. Thus, torture is a common form of discipline and the methods used made me uncomfortable as well as how they brainwashed the boys as well as how the conditions they where. 

While Cale is in Memphis learning about everything, Bosco (his Redeemer Tutor) believe that Cale is the most important human being in the world and will stop at nothing to secure his return. Cale has a destiny that is not revealed until the end, but we do learn that, as the result of a particular “talent,” he’s virtually unbeatable in combat. And here comes the bigger hole ever: Bosco decide to attack the city with the only purpose to have Cale back.

Where is the logic of that? I mean I understood that the information from the spy was that the 3 boys was in the city but even... how to make sure that they was still there during the attack or that they will came back for any reason? How to confirm that Cale was not dead when he run to save Simon? Or that he didn't run away with his friends as so many times they talked about? 

Bosco got lucky as Cale found a correspondent love and he didn't got killed by the Mond during is stay in the city!  

Also the violence is extreme and well described but the story is told through multiple viewpoints with clumsy transitions as look like the author remembered an idea and follow it. 

We jump from Cale to a Redeemer without notice in the same chapter where we pass from a friendship to a plot to conquer the city. And the same happens when we talk about Riba... she appear from nowhere with an update of her new life and then it get suspended in the middle to come back to Cale and his friends trying to understand everything.

We have very good aspects to the story and very good charactes with tons of room to develop and to connect with the MC so I hope the book 2 will be better but I'm not impressed at all so far