Unfortunately, I could not finish this book. I was super excited to pick it up, and the author's note gave me the impression that I would be reading the tragic story of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and that magic could be used to fight back against these colonizers, even with their technology. But instead of the Japanese, we have the Romans, and instead of Manchuria, it is a fantasy version? Overall, this was done in a very very strange way. The Romans are even written in a way where you could just change the word Roman to Japanese and you would get the same effect. Or, if one group is going to be out of fantasy, just make both of the groups that way. The world immediately disengaged me. The writing disengaged me even more, unfortunately. Perhaps if it was well-written, I would have been able to move through the story and forget about the ideas the author's note led me to believe, but the writing worsened my experience and drew out the story's flaws even further. It is just too repetitive unfortunately. I believe a sentence along the lines of "our magic was no match for their science" was repeated in almost 5 different ways in the first chapter and a bit of the second alone. I wish I could have read more, but I just could not manage to finish it.