An highly engaging and recommended book of Military and Nobility and the complex relationship between Taki, the Japanese Commander, and Claus, his foreign knight, and pledged servant. In Battle Taki is fearless, the epitome of the noble, brilliant leader adored by cadets and his army. Claus is by blood related to the enemy, but has been accepted as Taki’s Knight, and while distrusted, he pursues his loyalty to Taki with a scary devotion. The emotions off the field are complex as the war, as each revelation of the relationship between the two changes our understanding and adds another layer (explicit scenes). The book ends on an emotional high as Claus gains knowledge about Taki’s duty that he had not understood before, and we are left, impatient for book two to find out how a love of devotion and brutality might change. We are rooting for the two, though society is against them (the ethnicity of Claus and the status of Taki are both barriers to an open relationship or trust), we want them to be united both on and off the battlefield. Love doesn’t have to be war, but we will only find out in book two. I will be buying it as soon as it is released, and recommend if you haven’t gotten this book for your ‘save and re-read’ shelf, you do so right away.