The Beating of His Wings

By: Paul Hoffman

Narrated by: Steve West

Following the bestselling novels The Left Hand of God and The Last Four Things comes the final installment of Paul Hoffman’s stark, epic trilogy.
Thomas Cale has been running from the truth….

Since discovering that his brutal military training has been for one purpose—to destroy God’s greatest mistake, mankind itself—Cale has been hunted by the very man who made him into the Angel of Death: Pope Redeemer Bosco.

Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those who created him, he has already used his breathtaking talent for violence and destruction to bring down the most powerful civilization in the world.

But Thomas Cale’s soul is dying. As his body is racked with convulsions, he knows that the final judgment will not wait. As the day of reckoning draws close, Cale’s sense of vengeance leads him back to the heart of darkness—the Sanctuary—and to confront the person he hates most in the world….


Includes the essay Making the World Strange: An Essay by Paul Hoffman.

Critic reviews

Praise for the Left Hand of God Series

“Brooding and magnificent. Hoffman has created a terrifying world and fitted it with strange and complex characters.”—Eoin Colfer, New York Times Bestselling Author of Artemis Fowl

“The Ender’s Game–meets-the-Inquisition premise should draw fans like moths to a flame....A rousing next step for fans of Terry Goodkind, R. A. Salvatore, and their ilk.”—Library Journal

“[An] increasingly epic tale, full of grand passions that twist in the hand like a knife blade.”—The A.V. Club

Desperately sad, piercing series.

I enjoyed the series a great deal! I am impressed by the author's warping of our own history. It seems to me that it must have been a complex challenge to reimagine the world we know in such detail. I listened to all three books over the course of a week or so.

Don't believe the bad reviews. Definitely credit worthy

I got second version with original narrator. Fantasy for adults. Very nice close out of trilogy.

excellent end to a fantastically unique trilogy.

Third book in the trilogy. Narrator is my favorite and does the most seamless and varied character voices. I have read this trilogy twice before and the audio books brought it such a new feel for me. The author weaves a surreal humor throughout, so expect an fantastic voyage. Just spectacular!

Beautiful, resonant conclusion to the trilogy

Outstanding fantasy series based in the strangeness of our world, held out for examination. I loved Thomas Cale and Vague Henry. The books are beautifully written, full of schoolboy humor and references. The author does clever things with real history filtered through the education of British schoolboys. I laughed out loud so many times!

I LOVED that the narratorial voice wasn’t stupidly snarky, as is the all-too-prevalent style these days. While wry humor permeates the storytelling, it is underpinned by a sincere engagement with profound questions about will and the power of history and ideology to shape us. It’s a grand theme. Epic. The requisite fantasy tropes are nicely handled. No need for magic systems here, where the strange peculiarity of ordinary life will suffice.

For the intelligent, well-educated epic fantasy reader; one who doesn’t mind a heavy dose of violence and a “grim-dark” willingness to look life in the eye.

yeah it's the end

I wish I knew why I dislike this book. probably would reveal something about myself.