** spoiler alert ** 
 Agggghhhhh....I....dunno what I think of this series anymore. I *loved* the first two books, and the fourth, but somewhere along the way I started to get pretty frustrated with some things. This book proooobably falls a little more on the not-liking side. It's hard to say. There are some awesome thing. But also some not awesome thing. Like too much Amnesia-Laurence. And random dropping of side characters (Junichiro, wtf?). And not enough Roland! And Harcourt! And Sipho! I'm also not totally sure how I feel about thinking this book would be set in Japan, but then that only covered about 1/3 of the book. I did kind of like the stuff with Laurence and Prince Mianning, but then we left that behind for Russia. I have to admit, as I was reading the parts in Russia, I liked that Novik still stays true to history with all the supply issues and including the scorched earth thing. But I totally thought that they'd finish with Napoleon's capture and the next book would be his escape from St. Helena and then the final battle at Waterloo. I'm a little annoyed that Russia is getting dragged out. And was the final line like a giant Game of Thrones shout out?