Django Wexler

Django Wexler is an American fantasy author. He has published the "flintlock fantasy" series The Shadow Campaigns (2013–2018), the young adult Forbidden Library fantasy series, and other works.

Career

Wexler obtained degrees in creative writing and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and engaged in post-graduate artificial intelligence research at the university. He later worked as a programmer and writer for Microsoft in Seattle before turning to writing fiction full-time.

Summary

The Shadow Campaigns

Wexler's epic fantasy series, The Shadow Campaigns, is set in a world resembling Europe and North Africa during the Napoleonic era. It mainly follows three soldiers of the kingdom of Vordan – Count Janus bet Vhalnich, a character patterned after Napoleon, Marcus d'Ivoire, a seasoned infantry commander posted to a backward colony, and Winter Ihernglass, a young woman who disguised herself as a man to be able to enlist. As they struggle through Vordan's equivalents of the French Revolution and the attendant wars, they also face a supernatural threat in the form of conspiracies fighting for control of the rare remnants of magic still existing in the world.

Reviews

Reviewing the series for Tor.com, Stefan Raets described the first novel, The Thousand Names, as a "military fantasy full of spectacular battles" with a large and diverse cast, but criticized Winter's lack of agency.

The Shadow Throne was appreciated by Publishers Weekly as an "audacious and subversive sequel" and by Liz Bourke at Tor.com as an "immensely entertaining" novel that unlike other male-written fantasy, avoided the grimdark trend and featured a "central, significant, queer relationship between two women", but noted that Wexler relied much on coincidences to advance the plot. She also praised the third novel, The Price of Valour, for surpassing its predecessors as an "explosive, action-packed" epic fantasy novel with complex characterization and, again, a wide variety of female characters.

Bibliography

Novels

The Shadow Campaigns series

1. The Thousand Names, 2013, Roc, ISBN 978-0-451-46510-8
2. The Shadow Throne, 2014, Roc, ISBN 978-0-451-41806-7
3. The Price of Valor, 2015, Del Rey, ISBN 978-0-091-95056-9
4. The Guns of Empire, 2016, Ace, ISBN 978-0-451-47732-3
5. The Infernal Battalion, 2018, Ace, ISBN 978-0-451-47734-7

Short fiction:

• "The Penitent Damned", 2013, io9
• "The Shadow of Elysium", 2015, InterMix

The Forbidden Library series

1. The Forbidden Library
2. The Mad Apprentice
3. The Palace of Glass
4. The Fall of the Readers

John Golden series

1. John Golden: Freelance Debugger
2. John Golden & the Heroes of Mazaroth

The Wells of Sorcery trilogy

1. Ship of Smoke and Steel, January 2019, Tor Teen, ISBN 978-0-7653-9724-9
2. City of Stone and Silence, January 2020, Tor Teen, ISBN 9780765397270
3. Siege of Rage and Ruin, January 2021, Tor Teen, ISBN 9780765397317

Burningblade and Silvereye series

1. Ashes of the Sun, July 2020
2. Blood of the Chosen, October 2021
3. Emperor of Ruin, April 2023

Magic: The Gathering fiction

• The Gathering Storm - released in 20 instalments, June–October 2019
• Sundered bond (Kindle ebook). Wizards of the Coast. 2020.

Short fiction

Stories

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected	Notes
The end of the war	2015	Wexler, Django (June 2015). "The end of the war". Asimov's Science Fiction. 39 (6): 14–31.		Novelette
Amara Kel’s Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)	2020	Wexler, Django (2020). "Amara Kel's Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)". The Empire Strikes Back : From a Certain Point of View. Del Rey.

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Notes

External links

• Official website
• Django Wexler at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database