The Jackal of Nar
Ratings4
Average rating3
15
Ratings4
Average rating3
A nation's fate rests one one man's struggle between loyalty and desire. His enemies call Prince Richius "the Jackal," but he is merely a reluctant warrior for the Emperor in the fight for the strife-ridden borderland of Lucel-Lor. And though the empire's war machines are deadly, when the leader of a fanatical sect sweeps the battlefield with potent magic, Richius's forces are routed. He returns home defeated—but the Emperor will not accept the loss. Soon Richius is given one last chance to pit the empire's science against the enemy's devastating magic, and this time he fights for more than a ruler's mad whim. This time Richius has his own obsessive quest—and where he hesitated to go for an emperor's greed, for love he will plunge headlong into the grasp of the deadliest enemy he has ever encountered. . . .
Featured Series
2 primary booksTyrants and Kings is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1999 with contributions by John Marco.
Reviews with the most likes.
http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2009/01/review-of-jackal-of-nar.html
Argh. I hate it when this happens. This book has a really cool concept, a war between neighboring empires with weapons at the cusp of modernity. And sentence-by-sentence the writing is excellent. It's smooth, easy to read, hard to put down. I was really into it.
Until about halfway through when the author made some very questionable choices that make the characters look like stupid assholes. I just couldn't buy in at that point. I'm all in favor of the “stupid teenager” plot (as in The Eye of the World), but these characters aren't teenagers and they're not stupid or naive until they start acting stupid and naive. I was kind of interested in what was going to happen, but not when considering that I only wanted to see how the characters were going to deal with the implications of their completely stupid decisions. I just couldn't read another 350 pages of that.
