I'm not sure what to think of War!, as I'm not sure the book knows what it wants to be.
The secondary information on the main theater, Bogota, is stunning. We learn a lot about the latent racism against metas (and vice-versa), the promotion of 'tribal' law vis-a-vis gangs, their favorite sports, and the history of the city through the eyes of people there.
My confusion in regards to all this information is this: Isn't this a warzone? We're talking about the front line of conventional combined arms against guerilla warfare with magic thrown in, and people are still looking to party at the clubs?
This city, that has no central government after an Azzie missile strike levelled City Hall?
This city that has been seeded by magical, people-eating demon trees as an area denial tactic?
Why the hell are people still in this city?
Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of information on Bogota that would make an excellent addition to 6WA. Is War! the best place to put it? I'm not sure. It pushes the actual conflict into the background. Giving it a first read, the only reason that I would know there's a war on is because the Jackpointers say "this place would be great if there wasn't a war on."
Editing. I saw it in 6WA, and I see it here, and I'm concerned about the quality of product. It's the job of someone reviewing to ignore SGS (spelling/grammar/syntax) unless it breaks immersion. On the flipside, manuscripts sent to agents are tossed out if readers catch more than three SGS errors within a portion of the manuscript. They do this because they feel the writer doesn't care enough about his product.
Sadly, this is the sense I am getting. Issues are cropping up, such as SGS errors, repeated inserts, or glaring contradictions in style. These things would be picked up in a post-layout proofread, and they're not. Errors that a Word spellcheck would catch are cropping up. To me, this is a grave concern. I would treat 6WA as an unhappy one-time thing, but War! is starting to show a trend and it's not one I want to see.