Oliver Twist fights back

This month's recycled SFX review is of The Left Hand of God, by Paul Hoffman. A major marketing push (including what seems to have been quite a big mail-out of ARCs) means that it's had a lot of attention in the fantasy blogosphere over the past few months. Some of the attention - generally, I think, the more thoughtful - has been quite negative.

For my own part I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's uneven and a tiny bit smug - having one character appropriate James I's views on smoking ("a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain" etc) struck me as a bit too Look How Clever I Am, for example - and its gender blindspots are depressingly familiar. But it's fast, involving, and on a sentence-by-sentence level pretty well-written; it's formulaic fantasy, but hides it well.

This review first appeared in SFX issue 192 (March 2010 - and no, I've no idea why the March issue has been and gone before the end of February, either...).

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There aren't many 400+ page fantasy novels you could gobble down in under two days, at least not with your brain engaged. Happily, this is one of them.

In an alternate seventeenth-century Europe, brutal wars of religion are raging between the Catholic-esque Redeemers and their Reformed opponents, the Antagonists (we suspect that isn't what they call themselves). In the Sanctuary of the Redeemers, a teenage boy named Thomas Cale lives a vaguely Dickensian life of unfulfilling meals, arbitrary punishments, and the sort of military training that would make Rambo feel inadequate. He has, of course, a destiny.

Left Hand has many of the trappings of 'young adult' fiction: adolescent protagonists subverting a confusing, hostile adult world; growing pains as a major theme. Still, there's a degree of grimness here that may be too much for younger teens: not so much the violence, which is pervasive but for the most part inoffensively cartoonish, as the central act of it that sets the plot in motion.

Despite the dark tone and the slightly fussy omniscient narration, which increases the sense of a nineteenth-century novel in genre fantasy form, this is an extremely fast, fun read. The writing is vivid and atmospheric, and the world as it unfolds is fascinatingly rich. It's often clumsy in its haste; some of the dialogues about religion are wince-inducing, and the female characters are all pitiable victims or attractive scenery. The romance on which the later part of the story pivots is also deeply unconvincing. But plot and pace are so compelling that it's easy to glide over these problems. And lurking beneath the surface there are some thoughtful depths about abuse, desensitisation, and trust.

~~Nic

Comments

[Oeter Gurney]

The definition of smug is not whatever confused notion you seem to have but an unjustified sense of your own rightness. Your review shows all the acuity of a pub bore not because you dislike this book but because you merely list a set of assertions without backing them up at any point. 'I liked this, I hated that'is not worth the typing or the reading. All bloggers please note. Didn't your English teachers tell you to support your claims?
Irrespective of the merits of this book you get a D.

[Victoria]

Oeter, I think you are being extremely unfair here. You must take into account that this review was not written for Eve's Alexandria but for a print publication which imposes strict word limits. It would have been both impossible and ridiculous for Nic to have backed up each of the points she makes with an example as though she was writing a GCSE essay. Her job as a reviewer is to provide prospective readers with a quick overview of the book's plot and themes, and then make a judgement as to its quality. If you take the time to read any of Nic's reviews for the blog you will see that the brevity of this review is a function of its purpose.

You begin your comment by offering a definition of smugness. I suggest your comment is a definition in itself.

[Oeter Gurney]

Victoria, you refer condescendingly to GCSE essays as if justifying yourself was a tiresome schoolgirl task. It's a fundamental of civilised argument and whether her article was written for a print medium is neither here not there. Print is not some self-evidently divine medium whose demands are simply to be taken at face value. The facile dissemination of thoughtless opinions is exactly that and saying that Eve is to be trusted because of some unspecified quality you assign to her is not analysis. It is not required to justify every single remark but at the very least a selection is necessary to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about. Anything else is just an assertion that you are right and need give no reasons. As with so many people you treat books as if they are consumer objects where it is the object alone that's on trial and not the person pronouncing judgement on it. It's the worst kind of intellectual bad faith to judge anyone about anything without giving reasons. Words don't mean just what you choose them to mean - arguing that bloggers/ reviewers justify their opinions can't be smug or complacent. I would ask you to consider the implications of your defence of Eve and what it means. Do you really believe that taking someone's work - and it's not overall a bad review of the book - and merely pronouncing on it has any point? It states that the world consists of people who are permitted to make unargued statements and those who for reasons of time are to to swallow them. Do you really want to defend such a world?

[Nic]

Oeter,

1) Who, pray tell, is Eve?

2) As Vicky notes, I had 280 words for the review in question; thus, no space for extensive supporting quotations etc. My more usual technique can be seen elsewhere on this site.

3) The example you pick out from my preliminary remarks, namely the book's smugness, is actually one where I do provide an example of what I mean (this being because it isn't from the review, so I had more space). You may not agree with it - nor, apparently, with my definition of 'smug', which I understand to mean self-congratulation - but it is there.

4) Really, I'm devastated that I failed to meet your standards. Just devastated. Luckily, the internet is big enough for both of us, and many more besides.

[Twain]

It is the one example you provide but it is in no way self-explanatory that quoting King James is smug. Why? What possible reason could you have for making this assertion? Accuse Hoffman of plagiarism and it would at least make sense. But what's interesting and something you might consider the next time you so airily pass judgement on someone else is how little you like it when it's done to you. And I, at least, have a point to make which you don't address; the impropriety of a culture where passing judgement without justification is acceptable. You claim that you didn't have space in print - then don't write for newspapers that won't let you justify your opinions - and then state that you had more space in your internet excerpt and so had the chance to do so. So, in other words, when you had the chance to expand you barely took it but assumed the right - as so many if not all bloggers do- to speak ex cathedra like some infallible little Pope. You are wrong to say that the internet is big enough for both of us as if size matters in this context (in other words what you're saying is shut up and go away). All opinions are not equally valid and the only way we can distinguish between them is by an honest and fair desire to justify ourselves when we pass judgement. A place where everyone can say what they think is Babel, one where everyone who speaks has to justify themselves is a civilisation. You might ask yourself once your nose has had time to put itself back in joint which one of these you want to be part of. And next time you sentence a writer put yourself in their place and ask how you liked it when it was (fairly this time)done to you. You regard a confusion about your name as a matter for high indignation. You know in detail what I object to about what you've written, Hoffman doesn't. I'd say you owe him an apology and a promise to do better in future. Somehow I don't think he'll get one.

[Nic]

Twain/Oeter (is there a particular reason you decided to change name between comments?):

I'm really not sure where your ire is coming from. I made an assertion ("a tiny bit smug"), I gave an example (the allusion to James I), I clarified what I meant ("a bit too Look How Clever..."), all in the above post. You, manifestly, don't share this opinion, and have said so. That's what reading is all about: we all respond to books in different ways. So why the drama?

I'd say you owe him an apology and a promise to do better in future.

Now this is just silly.

[Victoria]

Lol. It's difficult to know what to say isn't it? There is part of me that desperately wants to rise to the bait here. But another more sensible part knows that it isn't worth it. Methinks I detect a faint odour of anti-blogging prejudice that has nothing to do with Hoffman or this review.

[Bobbo]

If anti-blogging ( yes lets imply that anyone who disagrees with us is by definition irrational) means pointing out that you have an obligation to meet a standard of argument as required in simple national exams then that would, indeed be anti-blogging. I don't think part of you at all wants to rise to the debate because you would have to have some counter idea if that were so. You've been asked to raise a poor game and you have no convincing counter reponse. What you are doing and the justification you bring to defend it is just bluster. I demand of blogs that they meet minimal teenage standards of justification. You are wittering around the question but not answering. Put up or shut up.

[davywavy]

I demand of blogs that they meet minimal teenage standards of justification

And I demand of you free cream buns every day, a pile of gold and world peace. Get to it.