Pros:
1) fun magic system. Magic seems to be loosely wuxia based and has serious Last Airbender Vibes, though very minimalist in natural and unrefined.
Cons:
1) Caricature levels of melodrama. There is literally nothing but angst fueled depression for the vast majority of the novel, if not the entire thing. I honestly don’t know because I gave up after forcing myself to get through 2/3rd of the novel. there is literally no motivation to keep reading because things just get worse and more depressing the longer you read and it’s not even enthralling.
Apparently the author felt like the best way to emphasize how crapsack the two MC’s situation is, was to up the angst and negative plot points up to eleven. it was so unrealisticly edgy and dark that it completely breaks suspension of disbelief on many occasions.
MCs live in an ultra racist, ultra nationalist, ultra xenophobic, ultra corrupt, and ultra sexist empire that has zero regard for their “elite” warriors who can each kill scores of soldiers each and are their first line of defense against their enemies and has stood for over a thousand years. I’m sorry but that just doesn’t fly realistically. no empire like that could last over a thousand years without major regime changes or an utter collapse at some point. with all those negative triggers set to eleven, it’s unrealistic that such an empire could have lasted for 100 years let alone over 1000. also, authoritarian nations like that would put an extreme emphasis on keeping a strong military not let there most powerful frontliners get used as cannon fodder.
2) Poorly designed and overly simplistic world development. each nation/empire is defined by a single magical element, a single crafting specialty, a single ethnicity, and overly stereotyped. this whole book reads like it was originally an Avatar: The Last Air Bender fan fic that the author confused more mature with negativity and angst.
3) Terrible pacing. The entire story lacks cohesion. each chapter reads like the author had a whole bunch of ideas and tried to duct tape them together to make a single narritive. It has some chapters that are incredibly long and boring, chapters that are so fast paced that they just skip past all the story building and rush to the conclusion the chapter was leading to and random flashbacks that add little if anything to the main story and feel like unneeded filler.
4) Narration is preachy and pontificating. As mentioned in point 1, the whole book is a bag of melodrama and some of the negative points are only made to reinforce how shit the thematically Japanese magical empire is. If the author kept it to realistic levels it might have been alright but the whole story just comes off as preachy propaganda against a Japanese culture and cramming all the atrocities of World War II into a single story disguised as a fantasy novel, which is ironic, because the whole beginning of the book focuses on ‘pot-kettle-black’ where the empire is accusing others of propaganda in their own propaganda.
TLDR:
I honestly don’t know how this novel has so many 4 and 5 star reviews when the book is this mediocre. uninspired, poor pacing, melodramatic, and with thinly veiled propaganda and criticism of Japanese culture and history.