Rictus es el último superviviente del ejército de su ciudad natal, Isca, una polis famosa por su destreza militar aun entre el aguerrido pueblo macht que, sin embargo, no ha podido evitar ser destruida por la alianza de sus enemigos. Sin patria y sin familia, Rictus no cuenta más que con su formación de soldado. Como mercenario, pondrá su habilidad al servicio de Phiron, un ambicioso general que ha reunido un ejército de diez mil guerreros a sueldo para internarse en el Imperio asurio y tomar el poder sobre él.
Aunque las primeras escaramuzas se decantan del lado de los Diez Mil, pronto un inesperado revés pondrá las cosas más difíciles para la expedición macht, que deberá emprender una agónica retirada a través de territorio hostil, abriéndose paso por la fuerza y dejándose el pellejo en el empeño hasta entrar en la leyenda.

As someone who doesn't read much fantasy, I think the following things put me off some of the books I've tried:

- Everyone being "Someone of Somewhere, son of Someone else";

- Too many names being descriptive (Redbeard, Strong-in-the-arm, Thick-Dick, etc.)

- Too much of the dialogue being clearly written with Brian Blessed or Cate Blanchett in mind.

- Stereotypes, or indeed deliberate over-subversion (if that's a comprehensible word) of stereotypes since both lead to 1-D characters;

- Swords having names;

- Talking animals;

- Too much mysticism;

- ...and a rum covey composed of various humanoid races and professions, normally including a wizard and a warrior, all have to set off on some quest to find some trinket or other, during the course of which one or more of them die and one is a traitor (God’s aye! I'd forgotten about the rag-tag posse who end up finding out they have more in common than they do not (even the traitor ends up conflicted)

I know the difference between meaningful authenticity and tokenism, but I am against male writers 'seeing the light' and the error of their ways, feeling a need to add women into their writing out of guilt and a new born need to do the right thing. Of course men and women have a lot in common and in an action story, within reason, they can be interchangeable. But character stories, absent plot, are very different, and believable and real women can't be created by simply thinking of a man and taking away reason and accountability. Because that's not As Good As It Gets. I’m glad Kearney does know how to use some of the above-mentioned tropes in a very smart way, even when we know how the story goes and ends, i.e., if you’re familiar with the history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

I'll get no end of crap for this, but novels like Stormlight Archive's world-building and storytelling just killed my interest in modern Fantasy. I could feel the deliberate, albeit "exquisite", bloatedness of the world-building. I do not know if it was me reading the books wrong or what, but I just kept getting pulled out of the moments with a, "what just happened?" I felt the same way about following up with Robert Jordan's books and made it to finishing book 5 before I just cut my losses. Apparently that type of storytelling is not my jam. Of course, at the end of the day, it's all down to what you like or dislike. Tolkien himself said the words to that effect when critics had a go at his own works: 'I don't care much for what they like'. For myself I can never understand the overlooking of Kearney's "The Ten Thousand", a fabulous, and uncelebrated Fantasy masterpiece. I’ll probably end up reading the trilogy. I just wish modern fantasy would all be like this. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2012/11/review-of-ten-thousand-by-paul-kearney.... ( )

This is perhaps my first real taste into the sub-genre of "military fantasy" and I don't know, maybe it's just not for me. I realize the story is directly based on the historical events from Xenophon's Anabasis, so it's hard to really feel much suspense when you know what's going to happen already.

Still, even Kearney's own embellishments felt kind of predictable and slightly irksome. Maybe it wouldn't have felt so awkward if the characters and their relationships had been more developed, but it did feel like most of the effort was poured into the book's martial elements. I wish just as much could have been focused on the novel's fantasy aspects which was what made this book intriguing -- such as the mysterious armor pieces worn by the Cursebearers. That said, the battles and the descriptions of them were very well done; Paul Kearney does have a way with writing combat sequences. ( )

I like Paul Kearney's writing, I really do. I thought that, save for the last book, his 'Monarchies of God' series was fabulous. Which is possibly why I was already halfway through this book when I realized I hated it. The story lay flat and refused to pick itself up, no matter how optimistic I remained. What's worse, it was not so much a story as an expose on just how ugly the human race could be. There was no consuming, epic drama that I loved from 'Monarchies'. There was none of the compelling characterization found in 'Mark of Ran'. It was simply a slasher film in prose form. ( )