Barry Sadler's Casca books, 22 in all of the (currently written) 26, varied in quality. Some were very good, some ordinary and a couple simply awful. Most of this was due to Sadler's name being put to the work of ghost writers so you can excuse some of the bad novels being written by people who knew nothing of the character. As for Sadler himself, most of the time he managed to write punchy stories with good amounts of action and they rarely disappointed.

The Mongol was found on his PC after he died, almost completed. The last bit was finished off by a colleague (and if you look closely you can tell the difference in writing style from the rest of the novel). This was easily the best of the latter dozen of the books attributed to Sadler and concerned the early years of Genghis Khan's rise to power, guided by our eponymous hero afte rbeing rescued from a life of slavery fighting a-la Conan the Barbarian as a chained fighting dog against other slaves.

The process of moulding the disparate tribes of Mongolia into a fighting force is dealt with here, as Casca and the young Temujin - who would one day become Genghis Khan - gradually built up their followers and battled against the odds and jealous warlords to fashion the unstoppable Mongol Horde that would one day cover the biggest area any empire in history achieved. The relationship between the teacher (Casca) and the student (Temujin) is of interest and you can see how the Mongol grows into a confident young warlord and eventually outgrows his teacher.

The only gripe I had about this was the sudden ending and of course this is understandable as Sadler died before he could finish it. I am left wondering how he would have completed it, but that's something we can only ever guess at. ( )