Django Wexler

What would a young Napoleon have done to get his hands on magical weapons?

That’s essentially the question Django Wexler explores in his flintlock fantasy The Thousand Names. But he uses an alternate universe to run his literary simulation.

The story is set in Khandar, an arid colony of the Vordanai empire. A local religious movement known as the Redemption has overthrown the Khandarai prince and chased the Vordanai garrison from the capital. Things look grim for the evicted troops until an show more eccentric and uncommonly intelligent colonel arrives with orders to crush the rebellion. More covertly, he’s also seeking a Khandarai artifact imbued with arcane power.

The early parts of the novel are light on magic, though. Much of the book reads like military fiction, focusing on the campaign the Vordanai wage against the acolytes and allies of the Redemption. Muskets figure heavily into the fighting, as do cannon, cavalry, and Napoleonic-era infantry formations. At times, I felt as if I were revisiting one of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe novels. (Not a bad thing!)

I also enjoyed the protagonists. Wexler primarily tells the story through the eyes of two Vordanai officers, one a senior captain and the other a “ranker” on the climb. They’re both easy to root for. So are the majority of the supporting characters.

But I wish we’d gotten more of the Khandarai perspective.

In the book’s acknowledgments, Wexler writes that, “This is not, in any sense, a historical novel. At best it was inspired by history, in the loosest Hollywood sense of the word.” The Thousand Name’s imperial dynamics feel like more than a loose parallel to reality, however. The Vordanai, no matter how sympathetically drawn, are ultimately pale-skinned invaders; the indigenous Khandarai have darker complexions, ranging in hue from “pale ash” to “brown-black.” Given that the colonel is modeled after Napoleon and possesses similar military genius, it makes sense that the Vordanai often have a tactical advantage. Yet some of their victories made me wince; I didn’t always appreciate being expected to cheer for the occupying force. Replacing one of the Vordanai officers with a Khandarai point of view might have complicated the reader’s loyalties in more compelling ways.

To be fair, we do get a few chapters featuring native characters. Wexler also generally depicts the Khandarai as a complex people composed of multiple subcultures and factions. And the Vordanai don’t come off as morally superior; there are plenty of bad apples serving under (and opposing) the colonel. The book isn’t an apology for colonialism—I’d still recommend The Thousand Names to anyone who enjoys historical fantasy with a martial bent.

But the story could have been even better if it were more balanced.

(For more reviews like this one, see www.nickwisseman.com) show less

A really good book is one that, even when you're in abject misery, allows you to completely escape. That's what this one did as I had dental work done this week. I was actually happy to sit there and have a full excuse to read for a prolonged period.

Wexler creates a fantasy world with Napoleonic influences. It's a military with bayonets and muskets, where magic is regarded as a lost or demonic art. The military strategy is sound. The characters are complex, and the governments are not show more portrayed in clear black or white. What really made this book for me is the character of Winter. I adored her. I've always deeply admired women who bind their breasts and live as men to fight for their country.

I will definitely continue with this series, hopefully under more pleasant reading conditions. show less

While I do have some issues -- if LT allowed, my rating would be 4.75, not 5, but I rounded up, partially as I share this account with my wife who loved the book even more than I did -- this was an incredibly enjoyable read. The secondary world fantasy meets time loop premise is very neat, the snarky character voice is entertaining and relatively plausible given her backstory, I am a big fan of humorous footnotes when handled well (which they were), and the plot moves at a brisk pace show more throughout the whole book.
The issues are more nitpicks. The novel suffers a bit -- not a lot, but a bit - from the typical comedic story problem of the plot taking up the space in the latter half of the book that the humour did at the outset. The transition is very gradual, which helps, but it is undeniable that while the first 60 pages (out of nearly 400) are consistently hilarious, at least to me, the jokes are far fewer and far less funny by the final, say, 200 pages. Connected to this is the protagonist's increasing emotional investment in her surrounding cast, undermining her ability to be sardonically cynical and brutal in the manner that drove so much of the humour and excitement early on as her internal POV slides slowly from callous antihero to world-weary regular hero. This is perfectly addressed within the story itself, though, but it might cause some readers to expect one thing from the book, and then be delivered something else.
Another small nitpick is that the logic of the magic rocks that fuel this universe are trying to have it both ways, being ineffable Tolkien-esque mystery magic that can do anything when the story needs it and nothing when it doesn't, while also being hyper-defined Sanderson-esque science magic that operates within clearly predictable rules. Wexler is very adroit at not letting this come up in the same scenes, though, so the minor logic holes caused are fairly easily ignored.
Finally, the ending - and, I suspect, though I'd be happy to be proved wrong, the second/final novel that follows -- is very predictable, though Wexler does a very good job of dancing around it for as long as possible. That ending, and the protagonist's surprise at both it and her implicit new challenge that will follow, is the sole exception to one of the things that impressed me the most about this novel: an intelligent narrator. When the protagonist does something the reader can easily see is a bad choice, it is immediately lampshaded by the narrator, and that takes me from feeling annoyed with the protagonist to sympathetic. We all make mistakes, we all make dumb calls; what makes a protagonist annoying to read about is when they remain oblivious to their own screw ups. Our protagonist Davi is a very intelligent character, and her meta-textually calling herself out on it the second she makes a bad call or fails to see something obvious coming makes a world of difference to me as a reader.
Another, related, thing that impressed me was the protagonist's degree of self-awareness. There is a major change in her understanding of the world towards the end of the story, and her thoughts and reactions to this are consistent, insightful and very, very understandable, and make what would have otherwise been a fairly predictable plot device into an incredibly powerful moment of character growth.
All in all, one of the best novels I'll read this year. I'm both excited and a bit trepidatious about the sequel bringing the story to a close -- the premise for it seems much less suited for an entertaining story than did that of this first installment, but I really hope to be proven wrong on that -- and will be reading it sooner rather than later for sure. I'm also now curious about checking out some of Wexler's other, more serious writing. The fellow clearly knows what he is doing. show less

Everyone's right: this is great. It's military fantasy set in a replica colonial Egypt, the former of which is not my favourite thing, but the latter of which I dug. However, the simplicity and repetition of the military-campaign plot structure was balanced out for me by the complexity of the characters. We only had a couple of viewpoints, which really enabled us to dig into them deeply and get comfortable with them. (I can't wait to see how they go returning to their demons in the second show more book.) It's not quite "epic patchwork" fantasy, but there's enough of that going on in the background that I enjoyed it tremendously and am looking forward to more. show less