The Thousand Names

The awesome military battle sequences will lure you in to this book, but the characters will make you stay.

The world is very similar to 1800s Earth. This book takes place largely in the colonial desert country of Khandar and the following books take place in a fantasy analogue of a country similar to France.

Most characters in the world don't believe in magic, thinking it died out hundreds of years ago. Those who can use magic are few and far between, with most belonging to a super secret cult of religious fanatics. One of the best parts is the world allows for MAGICAL SUPERPOWERS while still having a pretty defined set of rules.

Wexler uses in-world swearing like Sanderson, McClellan, or really a whole host of fantasy authors. However, he mixes it in with traditional swearing, with my personal favorite being “brass balls of the beast.”

The two main POVs in the first book are Winter and Marcus.
Winter is a woman masquerading as a man in order to join the army. This type of thing can feel cliche, but holy crap is this done well. She finds herself thrust into a position of command and has to win the loyalty of her troops throughout the campaign. This is one of my favorite tropes and Wexler nails it. If you like Kaladin's Bridge Four arc in The Way of Kings, you'll probably love Winter.

Marcus is an officer in one of the army's colonial garrisons and he finds himself in charge of a bunch of demoralized and beaten troops. He is more than a little old-fashioned in his worldview and it is incredibly satisfying to see his development.

While not a POV character, Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich arrives to whip what's left of the army into shape. He is eccentric as hell but an absolute genius. Wexler really nailed Janus's character: he's engimatic, a little unsure how to act around people, but he is brilliant and proves it on multiple occasions each book.

Read this series if you like strategic military campaigns, think guns in fantasy are awesome, and enjoy reading excellently written female characters!

Read this series if you like revolutions, demons, and interesting portrayals of religion!

Gunpowder fantasy was a genre I didn't know existed until I read Brian McClellan's fantastic Powder Mage series. I evidently like my fantasy with a side of nice uniforms. Who knew. Unfortunately for me, this didn't quite fill the hole in my fantasy heart, and overall lacked a bit of cohesion I really kind of needed to bring it together in my mind.

There's two main points of view in this book: Marcus as the colonial captain of the army trying to make things work under a colonel sent by their king from their homeland, and Winter, a girl-masking-as-a-guy enlisted in the army who gets a field promotion to lieutenant. She doesn't feel capable of handling this new position she's in as she's now in command of a sizeable amount of troops she's responsible for keeping alive. Despite being in relatively close proximity throughout the book, the two points of view never really overlap until near the very end of the book. As a result, it felt sort of like I was reading two separate stories entirely within the same book.

I did like the unique setting and plot, but they're a bunch of colonials putting down a rebellion in the country they invaded, essentially, and the book's framed this as a good thing and they're the good guys. It felt a little....weird, in that respect.

It's also got kind of a slow start. Things didn't start picking up and moving towards some goal until the last half or third of the book. Stuff happens in the beginning to flesh out the main characters, but it feels a bit disjointed after you get to the actual meat of the story and things that happened and mattered before don't seem to fit anymore. One example of this is when Winter wanted to use the training ground early on to train her super green and inexperienced troops. She, being relatively low on the rank structure doesn't have much sway, but she manages to trick her way past another higher ranking guy and earn her some extra field time. It felt at the time like this was something important, or at least that it'd come back to bite her, but it never did. There's other examples of small events that felt larger, but were never referenced again.

I've added the second book to my to-read list for now, but I'm not sure I'm going to rush to pick it up, or that it'll hang with some of the others that have been waiting there longer.

I really enjoyed this one. Taking a foreign legion approach to Fantasy was fascinating, and the desert setting was a nice change from the usual European inspired fantasy. Like a lot of modern fantasy this one really plays down the fantasy quite a lot - the magical and fantastical elements do appear and play a strong role in the climax, but mostly this story focusses on the day to day running of a foreign legion (‘The Colonial') and their campaigning in a North African inspired fantastical land.

The book uses two main POV characters, First Captain Marcus and the rapidly promoted Winter Ihernglass, who rises from Ranker to Lieutenant over the course of the book. In addition, a couple of other POVs are used in ‘prequal' section to each part of the novel, giving an alternative point of view from the other side of the conflict. The characters are well drawn and likeable. The different rivalries that a world weary foreign legion would possess are interestingly captured.

There are strong imperialistic overtones to the story, inherent in its setting. I know some people would object to the caricaturing of the native inhabitants, but to me this is told from the perspective of the ‘imperials' so this captures how they would view it. I post this as a warning to those who may be offended - to me this was not a big issue.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this - it takes in interesting setting and applies a refreshing take on fantasy. Looking forward to continuing the series!

What I noticed with this book is that it didn't take me too long to like the characters. Characters are an “end all be all” for me, and I need to like them for a book to be even remotely enjoyable. Sometimes I just never even warm up to any characters, so this was excellent.

I had trouble caring for the main storyline though. The action sequences were very long, half the time I was just confused, and other times I just wanted things to be over with. It also took me an embarassingly long time to learn the characters' full names. Why is this important exactly? In one character's POV people would be referred to by a different name (their first name, or family name) than in the other character's POV. I had to reread the summary just to double check sometimes.

My main points are just silly personal things I have trouble explaining, so it kind of comes across as if I didn't like it. But I did! And I especially liked Winter and Bobby! But I wouldn't say I liked it or them enough to be interested in checking out the sequels.

almost non stop-action of various kinds, memorable characters (the colonel and Winter), some nice, original magic ideas (I loved the idea behind the last magic confrontation), good, fast writing style, good twists (great even, towards the end), never boring, always catchy.
The world is very well shaped - a fantasy mixture of the French colonial wars in Algeria with the French (Napoleon) campaign to Egypt (Khandarai here), with hints of a France similar to that in the Dumas novels (kind of a Richelieu against the interests of the king, in this book only suggested, perhaps developed in the sequels). It is not actually a gunpowder fantasy, but a gunpowder novel with added fantasy elements - and a captivating one at that.
The opposite of many other reviewers here on GR, I absolutely loved the first 2 thirds of the book, which could be summarized as march-battle-march-battle and so on, or manly men doing manly stuff while being soldierly and, well, very manly, and also some women doing... manly stuff? I did not enjoy that much the last third, an Indiana Jones style adventure with a tint of YA for girls - but it compensated with some good twists. So this volume is 2/3 military fantasy and 1/3 adventure fantasy (actually the fantasy elements are quite low, generally).
In the military part, the author proves a very good understanding of tactics (though also some typical civilian misunderstanding of the actual military life, even hilariously wrong - like the trick pulled by Winter on the training field - it could not have worked, since the second officer was NOT in her chain of command) - helped by enemies that oblige to mostly be dumb and tactically ridiculous (which is not a mistake, there were plenty of such examples in wars). The battles themselves are very captivating and exhilarating - great reads, congrats on that! (since battles are very hard to describe realistically, I could only think at Abercrombie as another author that gets those right).
To summarize: a very entertaining read, having no flaws as a fantasy (just a few as a military, but even those only noticeable to actual military readers) - I look forward to read the rest of the series! Also, one of the very few books that provided me with a believable ”strong woman” character that I actually ended up rooting for - congrats on that, too!
Bonus: you could get a taste of the Shadow Campaigns universe with a free story available here:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-coolest-fantasy-story-youll-read-this-week-514117561
No gunpowder or military fantasy there, but at least 3 major characters from the books.

Gunpowder period in time, I have an absolute abhorrence to this particular time, maybe because while in battle, both sides just march until a certain point and start shooting at each other........this to me is so illogical, a pity Brian Mcclellan was able to made his powder universe different and interesting, this one just made me hate it again............

Well, this particular was slow in starting, it had a lot of viewpoints to introduce, hey let's face it, this is an Army, among the protagonists, I sincerely like Ihernglass, then Captain D'Ivoire and least is the Colonel Vhalnich (this guy has a lot of secrets that I can not guess).......

Then the introduction of some magic and the mystery surrounding it..........hope the action heats up on the second book!!!!

3.5 out of 5 stars

After striking out with The Powder Mage series and not completely loving this series-starter, I'm not convinced that “flintlock fantasy” is the subgenre for me. Even so, there is a lot to like about this book – interesting cultures, well-written characters, and unexpected twists to name a few. I learned more about military ranks, formations, and factions than I thought possible even when the overall story gets bogged down by long battle sequences that I struggled to follow.

It sounds like the second book improves upon many of the stumbling blocks I encountered within this first book (fewer battles, more focus on characters, better pacing/plotting, etc.), but I'm not going to rush out to devour it. Book 2 will likely fall to the bottom of my TBR pile, but I'm not ready to give up on the series just yet.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

From far left field comes a fantasy novel that mixes war with magic effortlessly. To top that off, Django also gives great background to each character rooting them in their past to provide believable reasons for each plot in the book. The story is told primarily from 2 POV's and is very well managed allowing the writer to impart enough mystery without impacting the narrative. But for me the center stage is taken by the battle formations harking back to an era of muskets, powder & Bayonets where squares and wedges are used to outwit cavalry or Zombies. Onwards

Executive Summary: This one is more flintlock than fantasy. It should appeal to any military fantasy, or maybe even military fiction fans, but may be found slow/uninteresting to sword and sorcery readers.Audio book: Mr. Poe is a decent reader, but nothing spectacular. I think he does attempt to distinguish voice a little, but it was mostly too subtle for me to really tell the difference. He does have good inflections and emotion in his reading at least.Full ReviewI didn't know much about this one coming in, just that it was supposed to be another “Flintlock Fantasy” similar to [b:Promise of Blood 15790883 Promise of Blood (The Powder Mage, #1) Brian McClellan https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1350337505s/15790883.jpg 21512438]. While I enjoyed both, these series seem to be very different.Apart from the prologue the first half of this book contained almost no magic at all. There is pretty much just a lot of military protocol and character development. I'm not a big reader of military fiction in any form, but it is one of the aspects of Malazan Book of the Fallen I'm really enjoying. Unlike that series however there are no medics who use magic to heal or mages who attack with spells here. There are simply soldiers with muskets, bayonets and swords.I think anyone who finds well described military action boring may be turned away by this one. It really is sort of slice of life with military men for a good portion as Mr. Wexler builds the world and his characters out for the reader.I enjoyed the first half of the story at a solid 3-3.5 rating, but when the fantasy element of this book did finally come along it really raised things to another level for me.We are provided with two primary point of views that of Captain Marcus d'Ivoire and a soldier named Winter Ihernglass. I liked this contrast between things at the command of the unit and things down at the grunt level.I think Mr. Wexler also does a good job of swapping between the two while keeping the story flowing, especially in the later chapters where we get both POVs instead of just one of them.We do get some POVs from the opposing forces in this book, but they are mostly relegated to the prologue, interludes and epilogue. I would have liked to see more from the opposing characters as for now their motivations are vague at best.I'm still not sure who I'm rooting for in this series. I'm not sure if the goals of the Vordanai and their new commander Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran are for the best. I think that's part of the charm of this book. Most fantasy these days operate in shades of grey, but since we're not given much in the way of opposing viewpoints the reader is left to draw their own conclusions about who (if anyone) is in the right here.Things really pick up at the end and this book comes to a satisfying conclusion while setting things up nicely for the next book, which I'm now looking forward to.