There are too many things happening here and it’s very evident that the author had too many ideas for this story and fails to stick the landing. On one hand it’s a story of a pseudo-romance novel in the vein of Pride and Prejudice, the protagonist is married to man that she doesn’t understand, until she does and it turns out he’s actually this good person. It’s a story about politics and hierarchy, a suppressive ruling government who censors its media and lies about enemy incursions for the good of all. It’s a story about want-to-be super heroes who fight crime in a large city, but don’t kill because that’s against the creed of the leader of the band of ragtag do gooders. It’s a story about parenthood and a mother learning to love her cold (literally) children and value them for who they are, not what they’ve taken away from her. It’s a story about a woman’s fight for independence and identity who’s barely surviving in a feudal Japanese patriarchy. It’s a story of elemental magic users and the secret bloodlines that make some houses stronger because they have mastered certain techniques, almost identical to Avatar the Last Airbender. It’s a story where there is physical superiority among the races and white people are inferior and slaves while the Asiatic people groups are physically dominant and mentally in a different class. It’s a story of a culture who favors training with a sword, in a world where planes, machine guns, and satellite uplinks are prevalent and there’s nothing stopping a government from outright carpet bombing whole villages. All said, it’s a total mess.
The dialogue isn’t written well enough to stand on its own, the characters are fine but not revolutionary, and the world building is so clunky and has far too many elements in it to really make sense. It also suffers from the fantasy trope of using made up words for too long, until the reader can infer what is being said that there is an outright learning curve to figure out what’s being talked about. It even ends on a weird note that makes it clear the author got exhausted with telling the story so she decided to be done.
One thing that’s really important to note about this book is that it’s an offshoot of a book series she started and never finished, writing a letter explaining that she was struggling with the world-building elements of the universe. This is on plain display although she seems to have just used the kitchen sink method of throwing everything at it to see if it would stick, and for me, it did not. The narrator as well is serviceable, but if you look at his CV, you’ll see a long series of middling fantasy novels which is about his range judging by this book. If you want an amazing fantasy series that is fully fleshed out with elemental magic and swordplay look at the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher, much better recommendation.