You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
nico1000 's review for:
The Thousand Names
by Django Wexler
***Mild spoilers but honestly there is nothing to spoil***
Don't know what to say about this. First half is pure musket and marching action, last 20% There's zombies, demons, forcefields... None of it properly built up.
I don't know if I'm comparing this too much to Way of Kings and The Heroes, maybe I am, but this just was not working for me plotwise. It's not grimdark at all. It's not fun. Not creative. No humour... Very formulaic, (black and white movie type formulaic). Very optimistic, sunny, very "Oh boy, oh boy! Today is mighty fine for marching ain't it?" There are no real surprises, no real twists, no real villain, or even slightly bad shady person (except for Evil Meanie Murder-Plotting Bully Brute Rapist Misogynist Racist Transphobic Davis who is the only thing good in the book but hovers somewhere near being Bluto (from Popeye) who is the dumping ground for every single bad thing), nothing really at all aside from a kind of Cowboys and Indians type action. Or rather, that kind of civil war reenactment type action.
Character wise, it does marginally better.
Winter Ihernglass does the absolute worst job of pretending to be a man, and seeing the author is actually a man, it's weird to me that he made her so decidedly feminine, complete with fainting spells. Bobby, another girl in supposed hiding, is just as effeminate in disguise. I don't get how they could pass as men for a day for a less of years... At no point do these soldiers go through any kind of medical or fitness examination. It's the epitome of "don't ask don't tell". They find each other and along with the standard captive priestess of all these type of Arabian-ish stories, they just girl bond and look out for each other in a weird platonic girl roommate situation.
The Spy is obviously a spy so... Don't know why anyone would trust a person who introduces themselves "Hey, I'm from the Ministry of Spying, Lies and Backstabbing. But I'm cool. Mind if I lazily seduce you?" And as for the Colonel being enigmatic or charismatic or however they describe him in the synopsis? LIES. All I know about him is his eyes are grey and are always constantly "flashing with _____" and that he "smiles like summer lightning". Aside from that - Zzzzzzzz.
Marcus... I could literally eat a book (paperback), vomit it back up half digested, make a paper maché dummy from the vomit, leave the dummy to sun dry for a week, and THAT DRIED OUT HUSK WOULD HAVE MORE LIFE IN HIM THAN MARCUS.
The audiobook narrator reads it with all the vim and vigour he could muster, but the plot of this book is so tedious. It's like listening to a very dramatic person describe in vivid detail paint drying. Or like somebody narrating along to a child drawing a connect the dots puzzle. "She went from 2 to 5, ignoring 3 and 4 COMPLETELY! Only when her crayon had reached 5 did she see the wrongness of what she had done. But luckily she had not lost or broken her crayon. Her grip was firmer than ever! I will go back, she resolved grimly. I will go back to two, and go on to three and then four. And five will have to fend for itself until she could get back to it."
Don't know what to say about this. First half is pure musket and marching action, last 20% There's zombies, demons, forcefields... None of it properly built up.
I don't know if I'm comparing this too much to Way of Kings and The Heroes, maybe I am, but this just was not working for me plotwise. It's not grimdark at all. It's not fun. Not creative. No humour... Very formulaic, (black and white movie type formulaic). Very optimistic, sunny, very "Oh boy, oh boy! Today is mighty fine for marching ain't it?" There are no real surprises, no real twists, no real villain, or even slightly bad shady person (except for Evil Meanie Murder-Plotting Bully Brute Rapist Misogynist Racist Transphobic Davis who is the only thing good in the book but hovers somewhere near being Bluto (from Popeye) who is the dumping ground for every single bad thing), nothing really at all aside from a kind of Cowboys and Indians type action. Or rather, that kind of civil war reenactment type action.
Character wise, it does marginally better.
Winter Ihernglass does the absolute worst job of pretending to be a man, and seeing the author is actually a man, it's weird to me that he made her so decidedly feminine, complete with fainting spells. Bobby, another girl in supposed hiding, is just as effeminate in disguise. I don't get how they could pass as men for a day for a less of years... At no point do these soldiers go through any kind of medical or fitness examination. It's the epitome of "don't ask don't tell". They find each other and along with the standard captive priestess of all these type of Arabian-ish stories, they just girl bond and look out for each other in a weird platonic girl roommate situation.
The Spy is obviously a spy so... Don't know why anyone would trust a person who introduces themselves "Hey, I'm from the Ministry of Spying, Lies and Backstabbing. But I'm cool. Mind if I lazily seduce you?" And as for the Colonel being enigmatic or charismatic or however they describe him in the synopsis? LIES. All I know about him is his eyes are grey and are always constantly "flashing with _____" and that he "smiles like summer lightning". Aside from that - Zzzzzzzz.
Marcus... I could literally eat a book (paperback), vomit it back up half digested, make a paper maché dummy from the vomit, leave the dummy to sun dry for a week, and THAT DRIED OUT HUSK WOULD HAVE MORE LIFE IN HIM THAN MARCUS.
The audiobook narrator reads it with all the vim and vigour he could muster, but the plot of this book is so tedious. It's like listening to a very dramatic person describe in vivid detail paint drying. Or like somebody narrating along to a child drawing a connect the dots puzzle. "She went from 2 to 5, ignoring 3 and 4 COMPLETELY! Only when her crayon had reached 5 did she see the wrongness of what she had done. But luckily she had not lost or broken her crayon. Her grip was firmer than ever! I will go back, she resolved grimly. I will go back to two, and go on to three and then four. And five will have to fend for itself until she could get back to it."