This was a really frustrating read. Wu Ying spent the entire novel repeatedly going on about how he shouldn't do X, Y, or Z for many, many reasons, then 3 seconds later going ahead and doing X, Y, and Z for the flimsiest of reasons.

Despite being older in this book, he acts like he's actually gotten younger, or somehow lost a few dozen IQ points. This adversely affected his relationships with those around him, not that they were well fleshed out to begin with. The war portion came across as kinda boring, and there was a lack of motivation for a lot of the actions taken by the secondary characters - or by the main cast for that matter.

All in all this was pretty disappointing, I'll give the next book a chance, I like the series and the concept, so hopefully the next book is better.