sherwoodreads 's review for:

The Thousand Names by Django Wexler

I thoroughly enjoyed this military fantasy with magic, once I got past the prologue with a bunch of bad guys being bad, a trope I am not fond of.

Excellent female characters--some unpredictable twists--and ones that I saw coming I anticipated with pleasure. The world-building is a bit Hollywood backdrop, but Wexler's command of Napoleonic-era land warfare is excellent. The battle set-pieces were high points, and the hints of magic paid off satisfyingly, leaving me wanting more.

While the prose sometimes bounced me out--words like "okay" tend to disconcert me in other-world fantasies, and expressions like "really did a number on him", plus too many crucial moments, especially in the last half, were finessed by convenient "somethings", as in "something in his expression told X that . . ." which gets the pace moving at cost of character-building--the breezy banter pulled me right back in again.

Will be looking for the next in the series!