>Anyone reading War and Peace will need at the very least a list of characters

Indeed, I almost gave up on it for that reason. Great story but does the character really need 6+ different ways to refer to them. "Too Like the Lightning" and its sequels are also great but Ada Palmer suffers from same of the same desires to refer to characters in far too many different ways to keep up with. That said, I also scored poorly on the face blindness test so maybe it's a cognitive inability keep up with too many names on my part.