3.5 stars. 
 This book is hard to review, since there are aspects of it that I really enjoyed as well as other aspects that didn't work for me. I thought the setting and magical elements were imaginative and engaging, and the characterization of the heroine, Amani, was well done. A girl gunslinger in a remote desert town, Amani dreams of fleeing her oppressive family and doing something more with her life. She's flawed, and makes mistakes, but also learns from them. I really liked her dialog and interactions with Jin, a mysterious foreign boy she meets at a gun competition who sweeps her into a new adventure. 
 The part of this book that I struggled with was the blend of Western tropes and storytelling with Middle Eastern culture. The story starts as a spaghetti Western, turns into a 1001 Nights fantasy, then into a political military uprising. It was like the author couldn't decide which story to tell so they just included everything. The blend is unique, but not entirely believable. Miraji, the imagined country where the story takes place, is a mix of medieval Islamic culture and occupied India. Characters and places have a blend of Arabic and Persian names, there are calls to prayer and prayer rugs, but then there are also gun factories and I swear Amani is wearing a cowboy hat in the beginning of the book. It just felt a bit off to me 
 I'm hoping as the series continues that the world building matures, and hopefully the next book will be a four or five star read.