6/10

This book really brings you into dark places. I said that about the Left Hand of God, but I had no idea you could be drawn further down. Fantastically, it left me grinning and waiting for more. Cale goes from love to hate, back to love, and then to hate, and back and forth so many times you can't help but be torn between them. This book plays with your emotions, all the while satisfying that dark side you didn't know you had.

I like the book, but there are a bit too many plot-twists for my likning.
Cales cunning and intelligence is more prominent in this book than the first, but he also gets a bit high on his own Power, and stabs his friends in the back a little

I really wasn't going to go forward with this series. After finding Left Hand a painful and clumsy exercise in poor writing I decided to ditch the series (which is a big thing for me)

Unfortunately some well-meaning friends gave me the third book for xmas last year. Well me being me, rather than thanking my friends and returning the book, I loaned The Last Four Things from the library.

What struck me first is an apparent change in tone. Maybe I just didn't pick up on it in the last book, but the voice narrating this piece espoused far more sarcastic humor than before. While the change in tone was welcome in a way as it morphed the melodrama of the story into satire, the series is still difficult. The main problem with Last Four Things it the protag Thom Cale, currently back with his Redeemer 'buddies' spends the majority of the book non-plussed about his situation, creating a similar effect in the reader.

Only by the last quarter does stuff start happening, and its reasonably exciting stuff, but like many episodes in a series, one finds the author may just be filling time before some decent events because these days your epic fantasy has to be at least seven books to be respectable.

Nonetheless Four Things was an improvement on the first book, less cringing prose (less not good mind you) the narration is slightly tighter and the flow of the book is smooth enough to read quickly which is a good thing.

I couldn't finish this book, unreadable.

I know the second book of a trilogy often suffers from sequelitis/bridge syndrome. Never as good as the first book and just setting everything up to bridge what was teased in book 1 and will come to its climactic conclusions in book 3. That being said this was dull, uninspired, and a trudging read. I’d quite enjoyed book 1 when I read it years ago and I was finally getting round to reading book 2 as I’m working through my TBR pile. Based on this book I’m going to Wikipedia what happens in book 3 and not put myself through slogging through it. As whilst I would hope it would be better than this sullen trudge through barely concealed dislike of the catholic church (and I say this as an atheist with an Irish protestant mother) that is just awfully written and frankly managed to make the church, even with all their various negatives, come out in a paradoxically better light. As the plot limps forward through the book it’s as though the imagination and creativity that Hoffman had for book 1 was rapidly draining away and with it any attempts at ingenuity or allegory is lost and replaced by a plot and point that is even clunkier than a knight in medieval armour trying to dance the jive. The only reason this is getting two stars and not one is because it isn’t as bad as Moby Dick or the Parson’s Tale.