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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sado" data-source="post: 1853586" data-attributes="member: 20589">The Jackal of Nar by Jon Marco and its sequels. This was a lousy series that tried to be both heroic saga and military fantasy and failed at both. I can't believe I read the whole trilogy, but I hate not finishing something.The writing style is clumsy and disjointed. It also feels railroaded, as if he wrote it backwards, starting with a specific ending and forcing every plot turn to lead toward it, no matter how illogical.The actions, thoughts, and reactions of most characters are simplistic, inappropriate, and at times a bit irrational.  I can't imagine real people having the reactions some of his characters did.  At times it seemed like a kid trying to write a grown-up novel.It is obvious that the characters are all stereotypes (the noble warrior lord, the silent mysterious foreign sidekick, the beautiful princess in distress, the devious scheming enemy leader and his ruthless general, etc), which is not a problem in and of itself, but these were all taken to the extreme and turned into almost ridiculous caricatures of these archtypes.  In addition, in the battle scenes the armies seem incredibly small.  Most of the "grand" battles had no more than a few hundred men. Richius held the Dring Valley for years with 200 men. I believe the largest force assembled at one time was the Imperial Legion with 1000 men.</blockquote>