digerbop's review against another edition
3.0
Review originally posted at: http://digerbop.ca/2013/08/the-pale-hand-of-god/
A dark tale of swords, prisoners, kings, and gods
Anyone who thinks that the justice system today is too lax should take a look at The Pal Hand of God. These days, depending on the prison, criminals get free room and board, daily exercise, and the only painful thing is that they have to wear that awful colour of orange all day! Talk about fashion suicide! What will your friends think? Criminals today get given fresh clothing on their arrival and shown to their rooms. In The Pale Hand of God, fresh criminals are given a sword and told, "You're gonna need this!"
The Good:
Though I have never been in a prison and cannot tell you first hand what it is like, I have heard it is no picnic (unless you bring a red and white checkered blanket with you I suppose... but that would just clash with your orange jumpsuit!) S.M. White lets you know what it is like in the clergy-controlled prison city of Iban Su. You can almost feel the grit and taste the blood as you enter this city of dread with Lainn Sevai. The description is so rich that every sentence shows you the face the demon that is this book. As you enter deeper and deeper into that grotesque maw, you realise suddenly that this isn't reality but just a book. That is when you slap the beast in face and say, "you are just make believe, silly! You thought you could eat me?" Everything from the scum on the ground to the stars sparkling in the sky high above the shadow-encased buildings has a character of its own, and draws you right into the world of S.M. White's mind. Not only is the description glorious, but it sets every scene in a way that readers and writers alike will be in awe of (except for me, obviously. I'm immune to such treatment. ;) ).
The Pale Hand of God is a little bit longer than many of the indie books I have been reading recently, and it is a welcome change. White really takes the time to get in the heads of his characters and informs the reader enough of their back story to make motivations believable. Because it is such a dark story, you really feel awful for the characters while learning about what has happened to them and watching what is happening to them as an external observer, powerless to do anything. Internal monologue runs rampant, beautifully filling out a scene with the characters therein.
S.M. White concludes the book well, wrapping things up and answering many questions, but leaving just enough of a taste to make the reader want more... and thankfully there is more!
The Bad:
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The writing it top notch, but unfortunately the book is not. It starts out very strong with multiple chapters from the point of view of Lainn Sevai inside the prison city of Iban Su. Everything is going along well (or maybe not so well in Lainn's case) and then all of a sudden... POV change! Now, it doesn't just change to the POV of a character we have already met, or even a character in any way related to what is happening with Lainn Sevai. Instead, we are shipped half-way around the world to some epic battle about to ensue between characters we didn't even know exist. There is little cross-over between the "two stories" that are being told except that they are in the same book, and the same world. By the end, things come together, and the reader can see how it all makes sense, but it takes most of the book for this to happen, so the reader is left hanging wondering what is going on.
A sister problem to the first is that a lot of characters are introduced in quick succession after the initial burst of good setting from the POV of Lainn Sevai. There were so many characters, names, and POV changes all at once that I began to not care about what was happening and just wanted to get back to Lainn Sevai. It also doesn't care that some of the character have similar enough names to be confused with each other so that the reader is not actually sure who this new character is without doing some back checking into previous chapters or just pressing on in hopes that it will make sense eventually. Once weeding through all of this mess (first 100 pages or so) and the characters are all introduced, the book continues on fairly smoothly, but the initial execution is very poorly done.
Look at this prison city, look at this guy who's life sucks...
Oh, by the way there is a king and another king, and two empires at war, and a stolen princess and...
Oh, and there is this guy who is supposed to do... something, but then gets rolled off a cliff in a cart for no apparent reason...
But this is about a prison city isn't it? Okay... so back to that then...
...And somehow this is all part of the same story!
Conclusion:
All in all, I enjoyed this book and will probably be purchasing the sequel. I am absolutely in love with S.M. White's writing style and the hearty descriptions that he pulls off with little more effort than picking bananas out of your teeth. If you push through the initial messy POV confusion issues it is well worth your time. If you like dark fantasy and don't mind some strong mature content, you will not be disappointed. Oh, it's also free, so no harm in checking it out. ;)
A dark tale of swords, prisoners, kings, and gods
Anyone who thinks that the justice system today is too lax should take a look at The Pal Hand of God. These days, depending on the prison, criminals get free room and board, daily exercise, and the only painful thing is that they have to wear that awful colour of orange all day! Talk about fashion suicide! What will your friends think? Criminals today get given fresh clothing on their arrival and shown to their rooms. In The Pale Hand of God, fresh criminals are given a sword and told, "You're gonna need this!"
The Good:
Though I have never been in a prison and cannot tell you first hand what it is like, I have heard it is no picnic (unless you bring a red and white checkered blanket with you I suppose... but that would just clash with your orange jumpsuit!) S.M. White lets you know what it is like in the clergy-controlled prison city of Iban Su. You can almost feel the grit and taste the blood as you enter this city of dread with Lainn Sevai. The description is so rich that every sentence shows you the face the demon that is this book. As you enter deeper and deeper into that grotesque maw, you realise suddenly that this isn't reality but just a book. That is when you slap the beast in face and say, "you are just make believe, silly! You thought you could eat me?" Everything from the scum on the ground to the stars sparkling in the sky high above the shadow-encased buildings has a character of its own, and draws you right into the world of S.M. White's mind. Not only is the description glorious, but it sets every scene in a way that readers and writers alike will be in awe of (except for me, obviously. I'm immune to such treatment. ;) ).
The Pale Hand of God is a little bit longer than many of the indie books I have been reading recently, and it is a welcome change. White really takes the time to get in the heads of his characters and informs the reader enough of their back story to make motivations believable. Because it is such a dark story, you really feel awful for the characters while learning about what has happened to them and watching what is happening to them as an external observer, powerless to do anything. Internal monologue runs rampant, beautifully filling out a scene with the characters therein.
S.M. White concludes the book well, wrapping things up and answering many questions, but leaving just enough of a taste to make the reader want more... and thankfully there is more!
The Bad:
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The writing it top notch, but unfortunately the book is not. It starts out very strong with multiple chapters from the point of view of Lainn Sevai inside the prison city of Iban Su. Everything is going along well (or maybe not so well in Lainn's case) and then all of a sudden... POV change! Now, it doesn't just change to the POV of a character we have already met, or even a character in any way related to what is happening with Lainn Sevai. Instead, we are shipped half-way around the world to some epic battle about to ensue between characters we didn't even know exist. There is little cross-over between the "two stories" that are being told except that they are in the same book, and the same world. By the end, things come together, and the reader can see how it all makes sense, but it takes most of the book for this to happen, so the reader is left hanging wondering what is going on.
A sister problem to the first is that a lot of characters are introduced in quick succession after the initial burst of good setting from the POV of Lainn Sevai. There were so many characters, names, and POV changes all at once that I began to not care about what was happening and just wanted to get back to Lainn Sevai. It also doesn't care that some of the character have similar enough names to be confused with each other so that the reader is not actually sure who this new character is without doing some back checking into previous chapters or just pressing on in hopes that it will make sense eventually. Once weeding through all of this mess (first 100 pages or so) and the characters are all introduced, the book continues on fairly smoothly, but the initial execution is very poorly done.
Look at this prison city, look at this guy who's life sucks...
Oh, by the way there is a king and another king, and two empires at war, and a stolen princess and...
Oh, and there is this guy who is supposed to do... something, but then gets rolled off a cliff in a cart for no apparent reason...
But this is about a prison city isn't it? Okay... so back to that then...
...And somehow this is all part of the same story!
Conclusion:
All in all, I enjoyed this book and will probably be purchasing the sequel. I am absolutely in love with S.M. White's writing style and the hearty descriptions that he pulls off with little more effort than picking bananas out of your teeth. If you push through the initial messy POV confusion issues it is well worth your time. If you like dark fantasy and don't mind some strong mature content, you will not be disappointed. Oh, it's also free, so no harm in checking it out. ;)
hostral's review against another edition
4.0
Iban Su is a city prison, its wardens are clerics who seem supernatural in their powers and inhuman in their ministrations.
Once a prisoner enters Iban Su, there is no leaving, no escape, no future. For those who are not craftsmen it presents an endless toil against the monsters within both human and inhuman.
There are many intriguing characters and interesting perspectives in The Pale Hand of God, so I'm going to write a little more than I would usually to cover them all.
Our main protagonist, Lainn Sevai is a good man in a bad world, and his harsh upbringing is shown through the merciless and cold decisions he is forced into making on a day to day basis. He battles his own inner demons as his own conscience recoils at the nature of the life he must lead, and it makes for fascinating reading.
Klesa is the only female point of view character in the entire book, if my memory serves me correctly. Her heritage is explored as she flits from hope to despair, bouncing between protagonist and antagonist like a ping pong ball and serving as love interest for every hot-blooded male she comes into contact with. It is through her that we witness some of the darkest moments of the story.
Kinlan sur Rhian is our second protagonist, a man tasked with finding the legendary Paarus at all costs. His tale occurs outside of the city and is a welcome respite from the confines of Iban Su's walls. His unique abilities and desire to conceal them allow for some interesting interactions with the various mercenaries he invariably tromps through the world with. He was my second favourite character and a good half of the book chronicles his attempts to locate and obtain the Paarus.
Edwin is a more straight-laced knight of chivalry and justice, fighting for king and country and invariably failing. To watch a leader of men confronted by the worst that humanity has to offer was an interesting counter to the many fantasies that feature indestructible armoured men of justice.
My favourite character was the antagonist, the hedonistic Sagnier. An absolutely repulsive human being completely led by his desires, he serves as a perfect embodiment of the very worst effects of Iban Su, suffering from a facial mutilation that is gruesomely described in detail almost gleefully by White at every given opportunity.
White's prose in general is descriptive, bordering on purple at the beginning. I attribute this to the typical 'author finding his feet' phase that all independent authors without a professional editing team suffer from. There are some beautiful passages that come from this desire for verbosity, and for the most part it isn't a hindrance in terms of pacing.
The story itself is magnificently told, and the immediate comparisons to Gemmell are warranted. Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard have also been mentioned and with good reason, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that these writers have been an influence on White's writing.
So if it was a wonderful story, magnificently told, why the four star rating?
There are typos, the occasional grammatical errors that take you out of the story and in spite of its size, the relative mystery of the forces involved remain due to a lack of exposition. Given that this is a technique I use in my own writing, I won't criticise White too much for that, it's a credit to his writing that I wanted to learn more about the land and the people that inhabited it.
Furthermore, the italicised passages prior to each chapter's beginning were only tangentially related to the chapter in question, and I eventually found myself skipping them in annoyance.
There is much darkness in this book, it's grim and gritty and doesn't pull any punches. There is rape and there is much death, there is an overarching gloominess that others might find hard to slog through. The book doesn't revel overly in depravity, but there is much of it there to illustrate just how horrible the inhabitants and their city are.
Those of you looking for an enjoyable light fantasy will want to avoid this, but fans of deep psychological fantasy or a dark book that doesn't hold back will find this an essential read.
As of writing this, Mr. White has recalled his books from Amazon for some additional editing. This will only improve the work, and if they have returned as of your reading this, I whole-heartedly recommend them, as my quibbles over grammar will probably be null and void.
The Pale Hand of God is one of the best independently-published fantasy books I've had the pleasure of reading. You should have the pleasure of reading it too.
Once a prisoner enters Iban Su, there is no leaving, no escape, no future. For those who are not craftsmen it presents an endless toil against the monsters within both human and inhuman.
There are many intriguing characters and interesting perspectives in The Pale Hand of God, so I'm going to write a little more than I would usually to cover them all.
Our main protagonist, Lainn Sevai is a good man in a bad world, and his harsh upbringing is shown through the merciless and cold decisions he is forced into making on a day to day basis. He battles his own inner demons as his own conscience recoils at the nature of the life he must lead, and it makes for fascinating reading.
Klesa is the only female point of view character in the entire book, if my memory serves me correctly. Her heritage is explored as she flits from hope to despair, bouncing between protagonist and antagonist like a ping pong ball and serving as love interest for every hot-blooded male she comes into contact with. It is through her that we witness some of the darkest moments of the story.
Kinlan sur Rhian is our second protagonist, a man tasked with finding the legendary Paarus at all costs. His tale occurs outside of the city and is a welcome respite from the confines of Iban Su's walls. His unique abilities and desire to conceal them allow for some interesting interactions with the various mercenaries he invariably tromps through the world with. He was my second favourite character and a good half of the book chronicles his attempts to locate and obtain the Paarus.
Edwin is a more straight-laced knight of chivalry and justice, fighting for king and country and invariably failing. To watch a leader of men confronted by the worst that humanity has to offer was an interesting counter to the many fantasies that feature indestructible armoured men of justice.
My favourite character was the antagonist, the hedonistic Sagnier. An absolutely repulsive human being completely led by his desires, he serves as a perfect embodiment of the very worst effects of Iban Su, suffering from a facial mutilation that is gruesomely described in detail almost gleefully by White at every given opportunity.
White's prose in general is descriptive, bordering on purple at the beginning. I attribute this to the typical 'author finding his feet' phase that all independent authors without a professional editing team suffer from. There are some beautiful passages that come from this desire for verbosity, and for the most part it isn't a hindrance in terms of pacing.
The story itself is magnificently told, and the immediate comparisons to Gemmell are warranted. Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard have also been mentioned and with good reason, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that these writers have been an influence on White's writing.
So if it was a wonderful story, magnificently told, why the four star rating?
There are typos, the occasional grammatical errors that take you out of the story and in spite of its size, the relative mystery of the forces involved remain due to a lack of exposition. Given that this is a technique I use in my own writing, I won't criticise White too much for that, it's a credit to his writing that I wanted to learn more about the land and the people that inhabited it.
Furthermore, the italicised passages prior to each chapter's beginning were only tangentially related to the chapter in question, and I eventually found myself skipping them in annoyance.
There is much darkness in this book, it's grim and gritty and doesn't pull any punches. There is rape and there is much death, there is an overarching gloominess that others might find hard to slog through. The book doesn't revel overly in depravity, but there is much of it there to illustrate just how horrible the inhabitants and their city are.
Those of you looking for an enjoyable light fantasy will want to avoid this, but fans of deep psychological fantasy or a dark book that doesn't hold back will find this an essential read.
As of writing this, Mr. White has recalled his books from Amazon for some additional editing. This will only improve the work, and if they have returned as of your reading this, I whole-heartedly recommend them, as my quibbles over grammar will probably be null and void.
The Pale Hand of God is one of the best independently-published fantasy books I've had the pleasure of reading. You should have the pleasure of reading it too.
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