Gorgeous cover and the writing to do it justice. As many others have mentioned, this book is two thirds Oregon Trail and maybe one third By the Great Horn Spoon! I know apparently everyone and their mother played Oregon Trail in school but I think I was too young for it. Anyway, all I had in third grade was By the Great Horn Spoon! and I adored that book. I read it at least three times in that year alone. 
 Third grade social studies was officially based around learning the history of your state and luckily, I'm from California, so we got to go on field trips to try panning for gold and we had class projects galore that revolved around the Gold Rush. Not to mention, since I was in this combined 3rd/4th grade class when I was in 3rd grade, I got even more Gold Rush stuff when I was actually in 4th grade! 
 Anyway, I'm predisposed to love this book and as Lee would say, that I surely did, even though for some reason, the cover was so ridiculously gorgeous that I actually DIDN'T read it for about two weeks. I couldn't shake the feeling that the book would disappoint me, so I kept putting it off. Maybe because everyone seems to love Rae Carson's other series and while I read at least the first two novels of that and don't remember disliking it - in fact, I'm pretty sure I enjoyed them - for some reason, I also didn't love it enough to really remember it well, which is really a rarity for me. 
 Surprisingly, the beginning of the novel wastes little time in setting things up and the book blurb is covered pretty much by page 60. The middle of the book dragged a little and I can see why some readers felt like it was one long, endless journey. Really, it sort of is...the plot, per say, is the journey. It's a survival story but instead of big, exciting showdowns or events, you get a realistic, accurate depiction of the struggles that the argonauts would have faced - cholera, pregnancy, various insights into social issues like slavery, Indians, the mass killing of buffalo/bison, gay characters, and so on. 
 I will say that although the book was beautifully written and engaging, and although I genuinely enjoyed the characters and it wasn't as though there were that many of them, I didn't really feel for them that much. That is, I feel for Lee because these people are near and dear to her, but whenever someone dies or bad things happen, I'm not sobbing over it or even particularly sad. It's like hearing that a friend lost another friend that you've never met. It's not a bad thing, just not quite what I expected, I guess. It's not that the book left me cold - it's heartwarming, actually, but it feels kind of distant. For lack of a better description, it felt a lot like reading a historical journal or account. I think that ties back to how slow the pacing feels even though I read through the book in maybe four hours over just a few days. There's no real sense of urgency or climax, just a long trudge toward the inevitable end.