The Novel
Acceptable Loss
Book I of The Witch Field Trilogy, an early modern military fantasy about a system that works, the people it spends, and what remains of those it keeps alive.
Official book pageReviewed
What is Acceptable Loss about?
Witch-Major Irena Vahn was meant to guide the Covenant's chosen defender. Instead, she watched him die holding a city together as it collapsed inward around him. The Covenant carved their names into stone and called it victory.
Four years later, another frontier fortress faces annihilation. The Covenant has found a doctrine that forces soldiers to keep fighting after fear should have broken them. Extraction works, but every victory concentrates more power, more pressure, and more human cost in fewer hands.
Beneath the stone, Irena finds the same architecture spreading again: a civilization trying to survive by concentrating too much belief, too much fear, and too much human cost in one place.
Read a free Witch Field storyAt a glance
- Author
- Sandro Andreatta
- Series
- The Witch Field Trilogy, Book I
- Genre
- Military fantasy and historical fantasy
- Setting
- A gunpowder frontier of star fortresses and pike-and-shot armies
- Central character
- Witch-Major Irena Vahn
- Planned publication
- October 2026
Historical fantasy built from real systems
The novel draws on the Habsburg Military Frontier, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the Italian Wars, and the Thirty Years' War. Its world is shaped by siegecraft, gunpowder armies, frontier societies, fortified cities, and states learning to organize violence at scale.
Its magic is grounded in collective belief and systems theory. Witches do not cast spells; they compress, release, and redistribute pressure inside groups of people. That makes the Field less a supernatural weapon than an unstable form of infrastructure.
In one sentence
Acceptable Loss is a military fantasy novel by historian Sandro Andreatta in which collective belief becomes physical pressure across pike-and-shot armies and besieged frontier cities.
Acceptable Loss questions
What is Acceptable Loss?
Acceptable Loss is an early modern military fantasy novel by Sandro Andreatta. It is Book I of The Witch Field Trilogy and follows Witch-Major Irena Vahn on a fortified frontier where collective belief has physical force.
When is Acceptable Loss planned for publication?
Acceptable Loss is planned for October 2026.
What genre is Acceptable Loss?
Acceptable Loss is military fantasy and historical fantasy, drawing on pike-and-shot warfare, siegecraft, star fortresses, and early modern frontier societies.
Is Acceptable Loss part of a series?
Yes. Acceptable Loss is Book I of The Witch Field Trilogy.
Who wrote Acceptable Loss?
Acceptable Loss was written by Sandro Andreatta, a historian, novelist, and co-creator of SandRhoman History.
Is Acceptable Loss available yet?
Not yet. Acceptable Loss is planned for publication in October 2026. This official website will carry current publication information.
What makes Acceptable Loss different from traditional historical fiction?
Acceptable Loss uses an invented world and a rules-driven magic system, while its warfare, institutions, fortifications, and frontier societies draw on late medieval and early modern history.