The Thousand Names

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.