Well, this is gonna be a harder review to write. Let's try to tackle this by going through my journey and emotions during my reading experience:

This book starts out very slow. In fact the first part, which is about the first 200 pages, is pretty much just slice of life. I normally do not have an issue with this. In fact if we take another author who writes a shit ton of slice of life, Pirateaba, I often times adore these chapters / stories to death. However this did not carry over to this setting at all.

I certainly have been very indifferent / uninterested in the Western genre my whole life. So that absolutely has to have something to do with it. Also it got pointed out to me that this story actually is an anti-western because it subverts many of the common tropes of Westerns. And while I could certainly see glimpes of the satire at play here, a lot of the humor just did not land for me and the whole trope subversion thing probably just passed me by completely. I also felt bad about all the female representation in this. It feels like you could either be a whore or a wife and there is nothing else. 

So yeah if the book ends after part 1 I probably give it 2 stars. Did not hate it, but certainly didn't like it at that point. An alternate version of me might DNF at that point but since actual me rarely does that and this book gets such high praise I continued forward and yes I'm glad I did.

With the beginning of part 2 we get an actual plot and like a whole goal to this story. But what's more important: I started caring about these characters, especially one of our two main protagonists (Gus). I might have discovered about myself that I just do not like cowboys but the journey and hardship these characters endure is really compelling and it absolutely starts dragging you in. We also start meeting other characters and while one of them is absolutely terrible and further diminises the female representation in this book the other two are actually quite entertaining and I especially liked when the characters / stories started intermingling. I also started having quite a bit more laughs in part 2, so in general the book started to have a lot more emotional impact.

Part 3 (the final part) is the culmination of that where emotions are supposed to run the highest and they do. The characters arcs come to fitting ends and it is all written very beautifully. I could very much see people tearing up a lot during the final chapters but that did not happen me I think because I just wasn't loving these characters. I appreciated their journey, the decisions they made, embracing their character flaws it was all executed very well, it just didn't have this very big emotional impact it could have if I just cared a lot more. I hope what I'm writing makes any sense. 

Part 3 also introduces us to the first good female character in this book and boy does she have an impact on the story and the characters. Her final speech was actually the moment that got me closest to just breaking down, crying. 

Overall this was quite the experience. I am sure I will look back fondly to it and it will resonate in my mind for quite a while. But in the end my rating is heavily skewed towards personal enjoyment and that just wasn't always there for me.