FANTASY REVIEW: The Last Four Things - Paul Hoffman

Release Date: 28/04/11

SYNOPSIS:

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, Thomas 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 is enough – 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. The annihilation that the Redeemers seek may well be in Cale’s hands – but his soul is far stranger than they could ever know.


REVIEW:

OK, I have to admit first off that I wasn’t a fan of the original title in this series (The Left Hand of God), and with problems to do with characterisation, pace as well as prose I was hoping that number of them had been fixed with this title. Whilst I can’t say that a lot of my concerns have been fixed with this title I can say that the author is learning and is steadily getting there with some decent prose within alongside working on allowing the reader some breaks within to gather their thoughts for the next chapter.

It is an interesting world to explore and whilst the characters and their lack of appearing anything but stereotypical of the genre and rather two dimensional without any real hooks within them this title is still holding steady as the author is listening and learning from elements that were a little bit too contradictory in previous releases. All in whilst it won’t set the world alight it is steady fantasy, although with some seriously good new talent on the way (Elspeth Cooper) you may want to borrow this one or wait for the paperback before investing.