The Jackal of Nar

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.

At this point I'm a huge fan of John Marco. Everything I've read has at least been 4 stars. Even his YA book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book but it did have some issues that bothered me that brought it down 1 star.

Cons:
1. The actions scenes are very average and little to be seen.

2. The worldbuilding was a below average and he missed perfect times to tell about his world he created. At one point Richius travels across half the country in a matter of a page or two, going from city to city but literally nothing was said about some of the cities. Lack of worldbuilding is surprising from a 700+ page book.

3. The characters made some idiotic, stupid, downright frustrating decisions that I just can't imagine happening in the first half of the book.

Pros:
The characters, although irritating, are to die for. Character work is by far the most important thing in literature for me and John always does a great job with it. I'd say 90% of this book is just character building with tons of dialogue which I loved. I also realized that Marco loves to write about “forbidden love” in his books.

The story follows Prince Richius who is a part of a country stuck in the middle between 2 large countries. His country is technically an “Unincorporated Territory” to the country Nar (Basically what Puerto Rico is to USA). The Emperor of Nar, Arkus wants to take over Lucel-Lor to gain access to powerful magic that will make him immortal since his potions are just delaying death vs dismissing it altogether. He wants to Arkus to handle the fight only Arkus falls in love with a woman of that country, who's betrothed to the king.

Long story short he hates Lucel-Lor for their perceived barbarianism and the fact that the king won't let him marry his woman, even though she doesn't want to marry the king. Once he gets to know the Lucel-Lorians he finally understands who the real enemy and must choose who's side he's on.

There are tons of romance, betrayal, and death in this book and I'm excited for book 2!