Books like The Forge

Somehow I've managed not to come across this series before - probably largely because I've never much enjoyed any of Drake's works I've tried. And I've always been conflicted about Stirling: I like a lot of his concepts, and the emphasis on battle descriptions is right up my street, but they are almost universally spoiled for me by his taste for nauseating levels of sadism - not to mention the black and white good vs evil he specializes in, though that's less of a concern in this book, where it's difficult to describe any of the parties as "good". I violated my "no more Stirling" rule when I ordered this from the library.Anyway, as others have pointed out, this series is heavily based on Belisarius' historic campaigns, at least as far as I've reached. This first book represents the campaigns in Persia, and taking purely the description of the military campaigning it's interesting. I did find it difficult to enjoy though because of the (admittedly most likely realistic) depiction of the atrocities associated with warfare in a corrupt slave-owning feudal society. Others have also pointed out the similarities with the (later, I think) Drake/Flint Belisarius series; at a high level they are extremely close, but tone (and the fantasy vs. SF tinge) differentiates them. For my money, though neither is stellar stuff (not sure I ever got all the way through the series), if you were only going to read one I'd go for the later one and skip this one. Though that does require tolerance of Flint's often melodramatic prose, at least there's no explicit child rape that I recall.