The Thousand Names

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.