Better than the first book, there still are problems with the delivery of this story. Some attempt was made to explain how one pair of our heroes use magic where they should not be able to. And then some attempt I believe is made to explain magic and how it fits politically with the authors other series.

It fails for me as I have not read the other series. But a great deal of time is spent with the subplot that seems to fizzle out. There are things that work though. The battles and concept of armies moving about. The names of the nobles have been drilled into us so often that it begins to make sense, but the number of mercenary companies is so vast that mentioning new ones intermixed with ones we have heard of before is just a confusion.

Further it is done so to describe a battle. A good book on battles where they show how units move and maps of where units start a battle, would have benefited the author writing a book on a large war. Here we get lost, a lot in battle. We also see a hero complain bitterly that he does not have the fighter credibility and yet he survives through several actions unscathed and is made the third part of the armies best special forces team.

It does work as a story, but the holes should have been plugged. McKenna seems to have a grand idea, but then there are other problems as well. Financing the army. It all comes from a few men. Not a government. Just saying that doesn't mean anyone could do so. We know that in our own world to finance a mercenary unit takes fortunes. To finance an army worth, on campaign. It is why we have governments.

The author throws out a line that the captured capitals treasury did not have a lot in it and they hoped to have found a fortune to pay for the army. Well, they should have found a lot in it. If you start doing the numbers, how much a mercenary needs to earn each day, and multiply that out by an army, that is not going to loot to supplement its needs because it is paid well, the financiers have had to been hoarding from their fantastical profits for a long time. And if these men were like any other men in their line of work, let me have that business. I would be a billionaire in no time.

Those problems show McKenna writes something but does not think about it. The same with time scale where some pages it takes a day to cover half the map and other times weeks. A dedicated editor who paid attention to this could have begun to make this series head towards the level that Jordan maintains in the Wheel of Time. Instead we have someone who has a good outline for a story, that needs more work. ( )

The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution #2 ( )