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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kearney's best book yet, August 26, 2008
A few months back I noted The Ten Thousand as being one of my hot tips for 2008. Reading a lengthy preview that the author sent me a while back reinforced this feeling, and now reading the complete novel has confirmed my initial guess. Probably the most underread author in epic fantasy has delivered his strongest novel to date.
The Ten Thousand is based on The Anabasis, the best-known work of the Greek writer Xenophon. In that book Xenohpon relates how a Greek mercenary force of ten thousand warriors was hired by Cyrus the Younger, a Persian prince seeking to supplant his brother. When Cyrus was killed, the Greek army had to fight its way out of the now-hostile empire and find its way home.
In this novel the setting is the world of Kuf, which is divided between two humanoid species: the Macht and the Kufr. The Macht live in a mountainous peninsula made up of feuding city-states (reminsicent of Greece), whilst the Kufr inhabit the vast Assurian Empire to the south-east which dominates a huge continent. Many of the most famous mercenary companies of the Macht are summoned to the capital where a vast host is being assembled to sail across the sea and join the armies of the Assurian pretender Arkamenes, who seeks to usurp his brother, Ashurnan. Amongst these are Gasca and Rictus, two young warriors who join up for very different reasons, the former to see the world and fight, the latter to forget the horrors of the destruction of his city and family. As the story proceeds we meet other characters: Jason, the young and charasmatic commander of one of the mercenary companies; Vorus, a Macht living amongst the Kufr who is an advisor to Ashurnan; and Tiryn, Arkamenes' consort.
The story unfolds similar to the events of history, with the Macht fighting their way into the very heart of the Empire where Ashurnan awaits them with a vast host. There, at the Battle of Kunaksa, the hinge of the world will turn, with dire consequences for everyone involved.
As normal, Kearney anchors the story on his characters: Rictus, the young warrior lost in his grief and rage who finds opportunity and responsibility thrust upon him; Jason, the popular commander who doesn't know what he wants from life until, amidst the blood and mud, he finds it; Vorus, the exiled warrior who finds his loyalties and admiralties torn; Ashurnan, a ruler desperately trying to be a great king but not knowing how, whilst his brother believes he is great and worthy and doesn't realise the truth; and Tiryn, whose own preconceptions and believes are put to the ultimate challenge. They are flawed people, but the reader cannot help empaphising with them and the increasingly harsh challenges they face.
Kearney has previously attracted the reputation of doing battle sequences better than almost any other writer in the genre, better than Bakker, Martin or Erikson, with perhaps only Gemmell and Cornwell at the very height of their powers challenging him. The battles here are hard, brutal affairs but they are also used to make the characters change and grow, with every engagement also reflecting some revelation or advancement in the characters. It is an excellent device, perhaps not a conscious one, but handled superbly.
In this one novel (The Ten Thousand is a stand-alone, although Kearney does not rule out other works set in the same world) Kearney successfully encapsulates all of his strengths as a writer, making for his tighest, most satisfying novel to date, and may possibly have just given us the best epic fantasy of 2008.
The Ten Thousand (*****) is an engrossing, superb novel of war and its impact on humanity with a fitting ending.
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kearney is squandering his talent on unnecessary novels, October 27, 2008
With its graphic combat and mad-dash pace, Paul Kearney's The Ten Thousand is a grim, brisk novel; it's just not a necessary one.
The Ten Thousand is about Rictus, a young warrior who must lead ten thousand Macht mercenaries through the hostile Kufr Empire. If the premise sounds familiar, you may have read Michael Curtis Ford's ponderous The Ten Thousand or Xenophon's Anabasis, which is the origin material for both books. Kearney's novel is better than Ford's, featuring lean and mean prose that revels in the muck and stink of warfare. His descriptions of the Macht battle tactics bring to mind Stephen Pressfield's awesome The Gates of Fire, which Kearney obviously read, since he borrows at least one line of dialogue ("You were the best of us"). These two novels are separated by tone: The Gates of Fire is rousing and inspirational, whereas The Ten Thousand is gloomy and fatalist. To be honest, I prefer an uplifting story to a depressing one.
Although Kearney transplants Xenophon's story to a fantasy setting, I do not consider this novel to be a complete fantasy. The fantasy elements are not integral. If you replace Macht with Greeks and Kuf with Persia, you have the same exact story as historical fiction. To be fair, the author does inject a few interesting fantasy details. First, I like how men are a minority race in this world. In Kuf, they are treated as exotic and alien. It is the reverse in most novels, and I wish Kearney had explored this idea further. Second, the cursebearers are intriguing. These warriors wear unique black armor, which, in a way, symbolizes the Macht as a whole: Their most important artifacts are armor because war is their way of life, and the armor's darkness represents the futility of such an existence. Again, I think that Kearney could have done more with this idea.
Overall, The Ten Thousand suffers from a dearth of complexity. The story is a retelling of a classic premise with few detours. The characters have no depth beyond simple archetypes: the eager youngster, the grizzled veteran, the selfish miscreant, the noble leader, etc. They are faceless warriors who never lift their helmets long enough for us to know them as individuals.
Kearney proved his talent in the Monarchies of God series. He should use his talent to craft an original story rather than rehash an old one.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Incredible, May 21, 2009
This review is from: Ten Thousand (Paperback)
There is nothing I love as much as buying a book on a whim from an unknown author...and having it turn out to be incredible. "The Ten Thousand" was such a book for me.
Transposing actual historical events into a parabolic fantasy world results in a uniquely engrossing historical novel/fantasy hybrid. The prose is terse and wonderfully appropriate for the subject matter, and the characters are sparsely but masterfully sketched, developed just enough to give the book (which tends to focus on events on the grand rather than personal scale) just the right amount of "character driven narrative".
The battle scenes are incredible. I am not a fan of war scenes, am usually bored to tears by them, yet literally felt my heart beat faster and experienced occasional adrenaline rushes reading the battle scenes in this book. It was enough to make want to pump my fist in the air while gruffly shouting "yeah!" in a soldierly voice.
Take the movie "300" and give it a fantasy makeover, actually interesting characters, a more meandering plot, talented writing and you would end up with something similar to "The Ten Thousand." Completely worth every cent, it really makes me wish that Kearney was more widely read and appreciated
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