At Tor.com
Adrian Tchaikovsky tagged five fantasy armies you don’t want to sign up for, including:
Don’t join the Vordanai army—or if you do, don’t get posted to Khandar
(The Thousand Names – Django Wexler)
Who wouldn’t take pride in the smart blue uniform of the Vordanai army? And Khandar’s a soft posting, surely? Yes, the climate’s not congenial, but all you have to do is make a showing on the streets to prop up the local despot. It’s not as if the prince is a complete ass and there’s going to be some enormous popular uprising to drive you back into the sea, eh? What’s that, there is? Well then it’s just onto the boats and back home, surely. I mean, nobody back home’s going to decide that you need to stay and fight against overwhelming odds, for someone else’s country, and for a prince who really is, all things considered, an arrogant idiot.
But it gets better! Because there’s obviously some ruckus going on back home, and now you’re not really sure just who your orders are coming from, and whether the real enemy are the Khandahari outside, or some of your fellows right beside you. And of course Khandar was a penal posting for ages, the dregs of the dregs, but surely, with all this other trouble going on, nobody’s going to start talking about mutiny…
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another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
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