I found this book to have an interesting enough premise to finish it, even if the audiobook narration was awful. If you want to listen to this one - don't. When the narrator started putting on an accent to show that the characters switched to another language, I nearly dnf'd.

The cultures in the book felt fleshed out, and the theme of adaptation and mutual exchange was a prominent one; the conflict also felt multi-faceted and well developed.

However, the writing was clunky at times, and the world building outside of the two main cultures, and within them - outside of how they pertain to each other and to the war, seemed limited and underdeveloped to me. The two sides of the conflict also felt incredibly black-and-white, with the main villain especially being rather simplistic in his morality ("evil").

Still, Ryo is a well-meaning protagonist that tries very hard, and that endeared me to him.