Book Review: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

by FantasyFictionWarning: Violence

Don’t run away yet, I promise this is a fantasy novel and not something dogmatic!

The left hand of god is about a boy called Thomas Cale, who was raised in an eerie and violent monastery to become a weapon against the unfaithful. Beaten, humiliated and punished often without warning, Cale is a brutal and unforgiving child, an expert in combat who feels no fear and can predict any move an opponent makes. So when he sees a young girl about to be grotesquely murdered by a redeemer priest, no one is more surprised than Cale when he risks his life to save her. He is forced to go on the run with two other acolytes and the girl, escaping the Sanctuary and making their way across the treacherous scablands to the city of Memphis.

Accused of murder and imprisoned, Cale quickly proves his skill as a warrior and tactician, becoming a vital player in the political battles of Memphis. He falls in love with the Marshal’s daughter, Arbell Swan-neck, embarrasses the pride of the Materazzi army and befriends the out of favour half brother of the Lord Chancellor. His devil may care attitude and dour reticence mean Cale (and his rather unwilling friends) are constantly in trouble, but when Arbell is kidnapped by the Redeemer army it is only Cale who can bring her back alive. But maybe it’s not Arbell that the Redeemers are really after.

This book is gritty, bloody and in some parts so witty that it made me laugh out loud. Richard and I have been discussing pain in fantasy and how some authors (cough Ian Irvine cough) dispense punishments and pains to characters that couldn’t possible survive it. We are fragile creatures after all (And no, I will not be reviewing any of Ian Irvine’s books any time soon, I did read them, but they are far too gory for me).The left hand of god is different – yes, the characters suffer excruciating pain, but only the ones who have been conditioned to harshness (those who grew up in the sanctuary and IdrisPukke who has spent years running, hiding and being shot at) actually survive it.

I also liked the scene where Cale battles Solomon Solomon. As a duel, it’s much more realistic than many I’ve seen, where the author wants to give the character a fluffy, merciful side. Cale has no softness. Even his feelings towards Arbell are tempered with violence, confusion and pain. Cale does not know mercy, because he has never seen it. When he does something, there is always more motivation than just doing the right thing – when he saves Simon from the boys in the yard, it’s more because he hates the boys than because he feels pity for Simon. When he pulls Conn from the battlefield, even Cale cannot say why he’s done it. Even when he rescues Arbell from the Redeemers, he is expecting a hero’s welcome and great recognition on his return. Cale is not a nice boy. He is not honourable or merciful or even good. But he is not bad either.

This book has some horrific moments. If you are at all squeamish, I suggest you miss pages 368 – 372. But if you do read it and decide that such a scene is too horrible to be realistic, I’ll remind you that a nearly identical method was used by Turkish troops during the Armenian genocide to wipe out the entire population of villages – human beings can be just as terrible as anything you’ll find in the left hand of god.

Wikipedia tells me the next book in this series is coming out soon. It’s called The Last Four Things. I’ll probably read it and it will probably haunt me for a few days like this book has. But it’s worth the reading – Paul Hoffman‘s style runs on and on, never stopping and never slowing and when he does backtrack, it’s deftly woven into the storyline so you don’t feel like you’ve lost time or track in going backwards. The violence is unforgiving and the politics are… well, political and if you like that kind of thing then you’ll enjoy it and if you don’t then your eyes will glaze over a little bit like mine did. Same with the battle tactics. Both (politics and battle tactics) are well researched, but not my cup of tea. The only other problem I had with this book are the obvious lines leading to a sequel. I like to be surprised by reapperaing characters in sequels – ones that pop up and you go ‘oh! Wow! I’d completely forgotten about that guy!’ In this story, characters like the boy who survives the village massacre are simply turned loose and you are left thinking ‘gee, I wonder how long before he turns up again’. But apart from these small irks (and it’s mostly me being picky), this book is a good read that is a bit like a car crash – horrific, but you can’t turn away from the page!

437 pages. Published in 2010 by Penguin (Michael Joseph).

PS: I found this, which I think is a really clever way of using visual media to advertise a book.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmeDvY7s2F0&w=560&h=349]

Book Review: Black Sea Twilight by Domnica Radulescu

by Author LoveFictionHistory

I like books about misplaced histories. What happened in Romania under Ceausescu, the Armenian Genocide, India immediately after the British withdrew, Haiti after the revolution – all these events that happened and impacted thousands and have somehow been glossed over in history books and swept under the rug. Romania has always held a macabre fascination for me, I think mostly because I have lived all my life in Australia, where at most our political systems is laughable and at least we pay nothing for education and food is abundant. We are spoiled and fat and with the exception of what happened to the Aboriginal people during settlement, Australia has been lucky.

I don’t know enough to get into some political diatribe about Communism and security and nationalism and civil war and I liked that Black Sea Twilight doesn’t spend hours trying to negotiate the history of the Ceausescu dictatorship. Instead, it simply tells what was happening inside the country from the point of view of a young girl who is struggling to be an artist, struggling to be a daughter, a sister, a lover, a Romanian. As Nora juggles these roles, the story moves along at a frenetic pace. First Nora is fifteen and about to discover her passion for art and for the boy she has grown up alongside, a Muslim Turk named Gigi. When the pair rescue a melancholic and beautiful french tourist from drowning, Nora realizes that she must act in order to hold onto her loves and begins to paint the divine and grotesque images she has in her head. Life under Ceasescu is getting more and more unbearable, as Nora’s twin brother Valentin returns from Bucharest and Nora suffers septicemia after procuring an illegal abortion which brings her family and all those around her under government suspicion. When Nora, Gigi and Valentin all have their university applications knocked back after her and Gigi unwittingly overhear military secrets, Nora knows she must leave Romania and make her way to Paris where she can be free to live and love and make art.

After two years lost and alone in Istanbul, Nora finds herself in Paris once again saving the tragic Anushka from herself. She enters into the university of art and finds new friends, but she longs for the freedom of her beloved Gigi, to see her brother and family again. In discovering unspoken truths about her new friends – Anushka, the circus girl Didona who once broke her brother’s heart and the motherly Agadira – Nora finds herself learning more about herself, her art and what she is going to become. Finally the Romanian revolution overthrows the dictatorship and Nora is free to speak with her Mama and see her brother perform in concert. But so much has changed, not only within Nora herself, but with the country she fled and the love of her life who has been on his own hard journey. There is no going back, but what life are they going forward into?

This book doesn’t stop. Told in first person by Nora with dialogue both spoken and implied, this novel allows you not only into Nora’s life, but into her very soul. Colours and shapes and sensations come alive thanks to Radulescu’s beautiful and frenzied prose. Although in some instances it is difficult to keep track, this adds to the narrative – When Nora arrives in Istanbul, ill, suffering from amnesia and uncertain even of the language she is speaking, the scene and language picks you up and carries you on a bizarre carnival ride of emotion and longing and confusion and art. When Agadira and Nora are nursing Anushka through the ravages of heroin withdrawal, it seems as though time condenses into a long twilight with no sleep and no awake and no beginning and no end, which only serves to elaborate the desolation and suffering of Anushka and the desperation of her nurses. The tag line on this copy of the novel says it is “a spellbinding story of escape and self-discovery”. and I certainly found myself captivated, dizzied and gloried by it, enthralled by the sense of history and more than a little in love with Nora for all her strengths and weaknesses. I’m certainly on the look out for Radulescu’s other novel, Train to Trieste.

Review: the Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards

by Fiction

The Lake of Dreams is Kim Edwards second novel. Her first, The Memory Keepers Daughter, was from all acounts excellant. I haven’t read it because when my mum got me a copy for my 24th birthday, I accidentally left it in the sun room and my dog ate it.

Come my 27th birthday and I got my mum a copy of Tobsha Learner’s ‘Yearn’ (yes, our birthday’s are on the same day) and she wrinkled her nose up, said Eww and told me she only had Toshba’s earlier book because my Dad had purchased it. I read ‘Quiver’ when i was 14 and loved it – next year I’ll get mum a voucher. She got me a copy of The lake of Dreams – hopefully next year she’ll get me a voucher too.

Despite my misgivings, I actually enjoyed the book and read it in 2 days while I was home sick from work. It’s about a woman called Lucy who has a terrible habit of running away from her own life. Unemployed and with her current reationship at a standstill, she returns to her mother’s house in a small town called the Lake of dreams. Lucy soon discovers the town – and the people in it – are not exactly what she remembers. feeling like an outsider in her own hometown, Lucy becomes enraptured with the story of a long lost relative – the tragic Rose and her beloved daughter Iris.

 But tracing the history of Rose and the mysterious and beautiful glass windows she is somehow connected to, forces Lucy to look closely at her own family and how the past and the future are crashing together for the Jarrett clan. With her partner Yoshi far away, and uncertain of their future together, Lucy finds her heart stirring for an old flame.

 The story weaves together history, family discord, beautiful scenery and heartbreak and presents it to you in an easy, flowing package. Lucy is believable as a character and if i personally didn’t like the choices she makes throughout the book, well that just makes her more realistic to me. A complex and well researched narrative, the Lake of Dreams has made me think perhaps getting a non-chewed copy of the Memory Keeper’s Daughter wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

Review: Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov

by FantasyFiction

Shadow Prowler was published in Russia in 2002 and only translated this year. I wish they had translated the whole series (from what I can gather, its quite popular in Russia) in one go, because I’m rather hooked and can’t wait to see what happens next. I found this novel on the ‘new books’ shelf at the library and grabbed it – it totally satisfies my cravings for decent, original, fast-paced fantasy and my obsession with anything Russian!

The story is about Harold, a master thief, who is commissioned by the king to sneak into an ancient tomb which has been overrun by an unnamed evil in order to recast the binding spells keeping a vengeful wizard and his rampaging army out of the kingdom. In the meantime, there seems to be a new threat arising in the mysterious Master, who has spies and minions everywhere. Harold sets out with an unlikely bunch of companions – a group of soldiers, magical elves, the kings jester and a long-dead archwizard who only exists inside Harold’s head. When the elves cast a spell in order to help Harold enter the tomb, Harold finds himself reliving memories that don’t belong to him. In order to survive the journey and the task which lays at the end of the road, Harold will have to piece together the puzzles of the past and gather every skill he has ever learned and even perhaps listen to a nonsensical prophecy sung by a tiny green man wearing a jesters bell cap.

It takes a few chapters to get used to how this book is written. It’s in first person but also completely in present tense. While this makes somethings a little hard to follow, it has the advantage of drawing you right into the story. The little flashbacks are put in chapters of their own, in italics, so it’s easy to see how they are separate from the main story, but get interwoven in. the characters are well drawn and the development of Harold and Kli-Kli and the relationship between them is just so rich and intricate, you feel like you have known them for a lot longer than one book. the mythology is fantastic, drawn partially from Russian mythology and partially from Pehov’s brilliant mind. I really can’t wait for the next installment to be translated. Andrew Bromfield has done a fantastic job and the prose is flowing and melodic throughout – I couldn’t even tell it was a translation. Some beautiful little pieces of prose make your heart sing and your mind forget that you’re reading fantasy, not high literature. Even people who don’t appreciate the fantasy genre (get OFF my blog!) will enjoy this tale – while it does have elves and orcs and shamanism, it also has brilliant renderings of tactical battles and gorgeous descriptions of landscapes and a heavy dose of breathtaking adventure.

Review: The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

by FantasyFiction

When I told Richard that I finished this book, he asked if it was any good and the only word I could find to describe it was devastating. And then I sat at the computer for 20 minutes trying to write a review that didn’t include a spoiler. It’s still not coming easy.

This book is set in a post-apocalyptic America where zombies (the shuffling, moaning kind, not the super fast ones) attempt to feast upon the scattered living population while hillbilly mutants distill the zombies into chitin-inducing stimulants. And in the middle, a fifteen year old girl is trying to get redemption for her sins, but that redemption is following too close on her heels for her liking. And if you are not already racing off to beg, borrow or steal your own copy from that brief endorsement, then you are dead to me (with a pencil shoved into your brain via your nostril to make sure you stay that way).

The book has some quirks. Dialogue isn’t contained within quotation marks and at times it’s a little hard to tell if the main character, Temple, is talking to herself, someone else or just inside her own head. The technique adds to the ambiance of the novel however, and is worth taking the time to puzzle through. The speech patterns and dialect of the characters is also peculiar. It is how I imagine people would talk in post apocalyptic America where only the strong and ruthless survived and then spent a little too much time alone with only themselves to talk to. The only inconsistency I found was that Temple is illiterate and was raised in an orphanage and in foster care before setting out on the road, but her speech is peppered with words and ideas far above what you’d expect for her position.

The book is full of lofty ideals slightly twisted by the fact that there are zombies staggering around trying to eat people. Temple believes in God, a god “too big to need the supplication of the puny wanderers of the earth”. She believes in fate and beauty and revenge. And she tries, in her own way to live up to these beliefs, taking the mute Maury across country to find his family despite the fact that it leaves her open to danger. It’s a novel about the hope of humanity in a country fallen to ruin. And at the same time, the book is a judgment on mankind’s ability to fall back onto base instinct. The ‘slugs’ retain enough memory to hold hands, to climb aboard a still-moving carousel, to endlessly repeat actions they made while alive. They are still human, and yet not. They are driven by a hunger which pushing them forward constantly, despite threat or futility. The want to feed. The need for flesh. Mindless and craving.

The book describes my ideal apocalypse, if ever an apocalypse could be considered ideal. Slow moving zombies are only dangerous if you stay still long enough to have them mob you or if they take you by surprise. Temple has her gurkha knife, but there is no shortage of guns and ammunition left by evacuees. And she picks up 6 packs of coke in abandoned corner shops all across the country. If we must suffer a government-released zombie virus that heralds the end of the world, sign me up to be a reaper.