I listened to the audiobook. I really struggled with how many stars to give this, between two and three. The first third of the book is fantastic, I was really interested and invested in the character's journey. Jess seems like a product of her time, and not a modern day insert for the first third or so. She's someone you can root for, and I honestly didn't have that much trouble suspending disbelief that she could pretend to be a man for so long.

I started to lose interest as we got into long, wandering descriptions of sharp shooting, scenes that could have been ten minutes dragged on for thirty. For a long time there were just endless sidequests and then Jess finally finds her brother and things really got dry and boring after that, to the point that I was so tired of listening to the story, I kept speeding it up. I just wanted the book to be over and felt the story should have ended hours and hours ago. By the end I was at 2.5x speed and doing something else so I wasn't even paying attention and I have no idea how the book ended and I aggressively don't care.

The writing itself was beautiful, and I did enjoy the character's voice and the author remaining consistent throughout. Honestly, I just think this book should have been about half the length that it was.