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This book was SO good.

This has been described as what Pride & Prejudice would be if it were a historical flintlock military fantasy (light on the fantasy, also pretty light on the romance) and it's very accurate!

Premise:
In this book there are two warring nations: Denland and Lascanne. We follow what are essentially Lascanne's redcoats.
There was a first military draft, then a second, and it still wasn't enough. Then surprise, there was a final draft that entailed enlisting one woman from every household. Our main character is one of these women.

� It uses framing, perspective bias and wartime propaganda in very very clever and not-commonly-seen ways.
� There's a ton of military tactics and wartime too.
� There are drawing room politics
� It's also a fiercely feminist tale that shouldn’t feel so organic and realistic for the time period but IS.
� And of course the Lizzy-Bennett-Mr-Darcy-style romance.

My main criticism would be tHAT....
The very very end intertwined all the romance drama with big huge political turnabouts, and the main character was acting so out of character. It was BONKERS. It threw all the carefully constructed logic out the window. This was jarring because the rest of this book felt overwhelmingly immersive and atmospheric.

Another very smol minor criticism is that the main character's little sister was whiny and oblivious in a way that felt super cartoonish.

So what I'm going to do is to rewrite the ending in my head and round this book 5 stars because the other 95% of it was phenomenal and will leave me thinking about it for a long long time.

Rating: 4.75 stars