Scan barcode
A review by peterkeep
The Shadow Throne by Django Wexler
4.0
Django Wexler has a really enjoyable series going on! I read The Thousand Names 7 months ago and really enjoyed the book for its original setting, interesting characters, and realistic battles. So as I was waiting for my copy of the second installment to come in the mail, I began looking forward to revisiting the military camps in the sandy desert cities they campaigned through.
This book doesn't have those. At first, I was a bit disappointed - I really enjoyed the two main POV characters (there were a few other spread through The Thousand Names, but Winter and Marcus are the two main ones), and an extra character or two in The Shadow Throne meant that I had to split my time with Winter and Marcus. Also, the setting moved back to more standard city, and the action moved away from firing muskets and a haze of gunpowder smoke to political scheming and a tug-of-war of government power.
Essentially, Wexler decided that instead of repeating the same type of thing from his first, he would swing in the other direction. After finishing the book, it's clear that it worked. Moving away from some of the strong points of the first book allowed him to explore and show off different aspects of his world as well as his writing. There even were a couple of small battle scenes that helped satisfy my craving for cavalry charges and military tactics. While this story was pretty separated from the events preceding it, it seems like the series still has an overall direction.
The larger story seems to be lurking just below the surface even though it's hard to see all of the details of what Wexler has planned for the rest of the series
(I think there are supposed to be 3 more books). That should be plenty of time to split between the old favorite characters and the new ones in different, fresh settings.
This book doesn't have those. At first, I was a bit disappointed - I really enjoyed the two main POV characters (there were a few other spread through The Thousand Names, but Winter and Marcus are the two main ones), and an extra character or two in The Shadow Throne meant that I had to split my time with Winter and Marcus. Also, the setting moved back to more standard city, and the action moved away from firing muskets and a haze of gunpowder smoke to political scheming and a tug-of-war of government power.
Essentially, Wexler decided that instead of repeating the same type of thing from his first, he would swing in the other direction. After finishing the book, it's clear that it worked. Moving away from some of the strong points of the first book allowed him to explore and show off different aspects of his world as well as his writing. There even were a couple of small battle scenes that helped satisfy my craving for cavalry charges and military tactics. While this story was pretty separated from the events preceding it, it seems like the series still has an overall direction.
The larger story seems to be lurking just below the surface even though it's hard to see all of the details of what Wexler has planned for the rest of the series
(I think there are supposed to be 3 more books). That should be plenty of time to split between the old favorite characters and the new ones in different, fresh settings.