I don’t read many Sci-Fi novels but really enjoyed Becky Chambers Wayfarer novels and having read reviews of Frontier thought it might appeal. I wasn’t disappointed Frontier is a fast moving humorous novel with some great quirky characters. It was fast paced, quickly moving between locations and characters which meant there were occasions where I felt momentarily lost but it all comes together in the end.
Thoroughly enjoyed this novel and looking forward to the next Grace Curtis novel.

Great premise, a Sci Fi western cross country adventure with a sapphic romance. Brilliant cast of characters that we meet along the way.

The writing style was a little confusing at times, we don’t learn the main character’s name until the end of the book, for no real reason.

I enjoyed this, would like to read something different by this writer.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for allowing me to have an e-arc copy of this book!
This is my first time reading anything by Grace Curtis, and as this was described to me as a sapphic sci-fi western you know I wanted to read this!

I’ll be honest though, I did not finish this book. It so long for me to get into this and when I kept trying to pick this book back up, I would literally pick everything else up instead. Eventually I just had to give up and could not get through the rest of it.

It was not what I thought it would be, and unfortunately does not seem to be the kind of book that I usually read.

I did love the beginning of this book, but I just felt so lost as to what the point was and it felt like it was taking too long to get there that I have DNF’d at around 20% in.

Previously reviewed on <a href="http://goodbadandunread.com/2023/05/12/review-frontier-by-grace-curtis/">The Good, The Bad, and The Unread</a>:

I’m still a great fan of <i>Firefly</i> and would love for there to have been more of it, current issues around its creator notwithstanding. Alternatively, I’ll accept stories that follow a similar premise in any media, particularly if the queer subplot is more main-plotlike. This story is definitely a Space Western, for all it mostly takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, and the main plot is very much driven by a queer love story, so very much my kind of thing. Hundreds of years in our future, a lifepod from a spacefaring vessel falls, lands in a desert wasteland, and is tracked down by a pair of scavengers and their hastily co-opted driver. The pod’s sole occupant has a search mission of her own, however, and no time to interact with those who have no intention of helping her.

For much of this book, we don’t learn our protagonist’s name. She is merely described according to her actions or how others see her: the Stranger, the Courier, the Tramp, and so on. Since she has little knowledge of Earth as it is in her time, we learn about how things work alongside her from the thoughts, words, and deeds of those she meets on her journey and also from snippets of writings by those from our protagonist’s contemporaries. Our protagonist’s lost love was on a mission to rediscover Earth and to see whether those left behind, when the planet was abandoned due to climate change, left descendants who would now benefit from her civilisation’s advanced weather technologies.

The people our protagonist encounters are mostly followers of a religion that sprang up in the times leading up to the evacuation of Earth, who worship Gaia and believe that those who left are sinners doomed to suffer in the hell beyond the sky. I like this reversal of Heaven Above and Hell Below, and how it altered the everyday language of ordinary people. On the other hand, I was less taken by the idea of a single planetary religion that had hardly fragmented in the many years that had passed since its founding, and by the apparent lack of any belief systems among those who had left (I remember <i>Babylon 5</i> handling this trope well, and even <i>Firefly</i> was pretty good on it).

On the other hand, I like how the seemingly unrelated excerpts from various works related to our protagonist eventually all made sense in the context of what had happened prior to the start of the story. This is a debut novel, of course, and I’d like to see how the author’s writing develops.

A good read though. The characters and plot is good. One downside of me is that I put a lot of expectation to what I read but it doesn't elevate to what i am expecting but it doesn't disappoint me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

It took me a little while to get into this novel, particularly with Curtis playing around with the main character's name for almost half the novel, but by the time the reveal was made, I was hooked. Curtis's world-building is sparing but fully realised, and the little vignettes of the Stranger's journey bring a post-climate-crisis Earth to life with the additional feeling of a Western. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

This was a really great read. A sapphic sci-fi western? Um, sign me up! The authors describe a vivid setting taht I would struggle to be in. It gave you a real sense of what the characters were dealing with. We also deal with the topic of climate change and it’s affect on the world because of it but we are also reading a book with a great deal of hope. I highly recommend this one.

I am always grateful for the opportunity to read Netgalley books, and I feel so bad when I don't like a book, especially since this seems to go against the grain.

I love the genre and was excited to see where it goes. A space pod lands in the desert of a futuristic Earth that is digressed and plundered. The stranger has a sole mission to reunite with her crew. We follow her search across this ravaged and lawless earth.

It has a Mad Max feel about it, gritty and desolate, but the characters weren't strong enough or charming enough to grip me. The story felt extremely disconnected during the first half, jumping from one scene to another, with no real intent or value to the overall story. I was often left confused and a bit bored.

It picked up a bit in the second half, when they return to the past and provide some back-story. This saved the book, somewhat. But then returned to the future again, and felt like disconnected stories joined together again.

I just didn't get it!

2.5 stars

Frontier follows an unnamed main character as she travels in search of her lost loved one. It promises to be a sci-fi western with sapphic love and laser guns, and it does deliver all of these.

The world building in Frontier was good. I enjoyed the setting of Earth post-climate crisis, and thought that having a main character from space arrive on a planet that hates space travel was a fun concept.

I don’t think that having an unnamed main character worked in this instance. I was intrigued by this initially, as I had not seen this done before, and quickly realised why - I was not attached to the main character at all.

Each chapter was told from the perspective of a secondary character, who was encountering the main character in a different situation. She was known as “The Stranger” or “The Courier”. She mentioned multiple times that she was searching for her lost loved one, but it was hard to feel invested in her search with no back story for the majority of the book. I also found that I was not attached to the secondary characters as they were only given a chapter each.

The book did redeem itself slightly in the final third. After learning more about the the main character’s life prior to arriving on Earth, and learning about her relationship, I was much more invested in her quest. I enjoyed getting to know her more and thought that the complexity of her character was written well, I just wish I hadn’t been made to wait so long to get this.

I found the style hard to get along with. It often felt as though the author was writing the book as though it were a movie. Each chapter was a dramatic scene in which the protagonist arrived somewhere new, encountered a problem, solved it, and moved on. This became repetitive very quickly. There was little happening in between, and again this led to me feeling very unattached to her. I would have liked to understand her thoughts about the events occurring, and to know how she was getting from one location to the next. I feel like the details were very sparse.

If you are looking for a fast-paced, action-packed, queer story this could be a lot of fun, but unfortunately it didn’t hit the mark for me.

Content Warnings:

death, murder, gun violence, animal death, violence, suicide, xenophobia, alcohol

Thank you Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent read, I really enjoyed the flow of the book and it really grabbed you in as a reader. I enjoyed the journeys that characters went on both physically and emotionally
I would give this 4 stars as I really really enjoyed it
A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher’s for providing me with an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review

I think the first issue for me with this one is the very high expectation I had on picking it up. After all, a direct comparison with the likes of Becky Chambers and Mary Robinette Kowal means the standard of story-telling and characterisation has to be extremely high. And frankly, I don’t think the book delivered quite enough magic to be able to stand alongside both authors.

That doesn’t mean it is a bad read, however. Just that it isn’t an outstanding read. But I struggled quite badly with this one for nearly the first half. There is a particularly vile antagonist who keeps popping up and managing to win the day. Initially, I didn’t warm to the main protagonist all that much, even though she is clearly more principled than a number of the folks she encounters. But while it’s clearly flagged she’s looking for someone, we don’t know who. Neither do we really know who she is. And upsettingly (as far as I was concerned) nice people are carelessly gunned down as if they are nothing.

The level of violence also brought me up a bit short – though yes, I know it’s the wild west in a post-apocalyptic world. But Becky Chambers was also mentioned and I was expecting the more uplifting worlds that she depicts… So my progress through it was a bit of a trudge and I was considering DNFing it – until we got to the flashback sequence, when we get to properly meet the protagonist and understand her urgency and who she’s trying to find. And suddenly I was utterly invested the story. And wondering why on Earth this section didn’t appear a whole lot sooner in the book. That still really bugs me – I feel the narrative has been scrambled for some stylistic reason and frankly, that kind of mucking about is what drove me away from literary fiction in the first place.

From then on, the story gathered pace and I was hooked, thoroughly enjoying the denouement and the tender relationship between the protagonist and her lover. However, I’m giving this one three stars – and I haven’t done that with a book I’ve completed for a long time. While I obtained an arc of Frontier from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
6/10

I really enjoyed this book!
I will admit it took me a while to figure out the jumping perspectives, but once I did I felt the story flowed well, and seeing all the side characters was great, even if some of them had quite sorry fates.

The idea of the earth being barren was so interesting, and it gave me massive trigun stampede vibes but with way better female characters. I also loved the religious aspect of the mother earth, and how different characters viewed the earth.

I really enjoyed the more experimental jumping of POVs, but I did also like the more traditional part towards the end, as I enjoyed seeing the main character thoughts and feelings.

Overall I loved this book, and will definitely be reading more from this author.

I am enjoying that Science Fiction appears to be increasing in popularity again based on the number of titles I’m seeing. It’s a genre that I do believe has a lot to say about now. Sadly though Frontier by Grace Curtis feels an unusual blend of old school plots and new style that for me really don’t mesh that well.

A mysterious object appears in a land that was once Australia. The earth after climate change was deserted and those few remain believed Gaia punished them and they must repent. From the object The Stranger arrived in a dangerous world where life is cheap and danger always lurks and seeks someone close to them.

There was a lot of deja vu in this story. It tumbled with post apocalyptic imagery - corrupt and evil Sherrif’s searching for our non-terrestrials , bizarre moments (a gunfight over books) and likely fake religions and in many ways goes for the obvious. There are some nice touches - the reminder that medication in an apocalypse will be scarce but overall nothing particularly new jumped out at me.

The characters are fairly boiler plate and having one named The Stranger for quite a large part of the book feels a little strange where blanks and annoyingly the non-Earth historical records interrupting the story signalled both the plot; major revelations and also signalled again that nothing new is coming. It’s a very simple tale fast paced but rather empty.

Curtis’ style aims for poetical but feels a little laboured and a mosaic structure of mini adventures that for me don’t come together. Overall a big disappointment and not one I can recommend.

Space Western... gave me Firefly vibes so I was very intrigued.

With a surprising start to the story, we then follow a stranger as she traverses her way through this almost post apocalyptic world, we don't know a lot about her only that she is searching for someone.

We then continue to follow the stranger through this world and we tag along through her various encounters - with a wide variety of people.

One of those, not really sure how all this is going to play out at first, kind of books but as it progresses you see small reveals and crossovers as the stranger finds her way.

I won't say too much but bear with the story. It jumps about a lot and was a little hard to get into the swing of at first, but enjoyed well enough once we got there. I read part and jumped into the audio for other parts, with the way this is told, both mediums worked really well

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped. One reason was that we don't get to know who exactly our MC is until we're in the last quarter of the book. Another reason was the lack of information for characters and background. I was often rereading passages because I thought I had missed some information, but the info just wasn't there in the first place.

The idea behind the story is good. The execution could use some fine tuning.

Ravaged by climate change, Earth is a desperate wasteland. Those who stayed behind when humanity ran to the stars are shepherded through the heat and the dirt by sheriffs, preachers and mother Earth. Somewhere in the bleakness, a Stranger emerges from a wreckage.

Frontier reads like a collection of interwoven short stories, each one connected by the Stranger, who is depicted with a different nickname each time. Her story is told through the eyes of several characters, who all briefly assume the role of protagonist in their own small narrative. Collectively, they tell the tale of a world decimated by climate change, and of a lost woman seeking her love.

This reminded me somewhat of This is How You Lose the Time War, as the story isn’t told in one seamless narrative, but in fragments of different times and location. The writing style is different from TIHYLTTW - it’s less poetical and more satirical, contrasting the brutal depictions of life on a dying earth with a witty, dry humour - but there is a similarity in threading together pieces of a queer love story. There is a distinctively Western aesthetic about the setting, a dystopian world of gunslingers, bandits, preachers and sheriffs. It’s a cruel yet wonderfully depicted landscape, and the journey that the Stranger takes through its barren dust is as violent as it is tender.

The little stories in the first half cover a vast array of topics: religion, love, family, and each one manages to hold its own with wonderful gems of characterization. There’s gunfights, backstabbing, tortoises and even a mini murder mystery on a train. It does take a little while to get into the narrative style, and the change in nicknames and perspective characters is a little confusing when it first happens, but it’s worth it.

The second half focuses more on the main character, as the threads of her past are finally woven together. Throughout everything, the murmurs of a love story are always present, but as the Stranger becomes more familiar to the reader, the truth is slowly revealed. Finally hearing her backstory is intensely satisfying, as you finally learn what it is that she has fought, bled and crawled her way through the dust for.

Frontier is a story about endurance. Of people, of values, and of love. In the scorching heat and dirt of a dying earth, we are reminded that the things that matter will always persevere.

Thanks to the publisher and author for an ARC of this in exchange for a review!
This was a great book! I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump recently and this book was a series of interconnected short stories until around 60/70%, which I really enjoyed! Though the pacing was a bit slow throughout this portion, and some of the character choices were difficult to understand without any context about who these people are. The end of the book brought new context to those stories and raised the stakes, and the blossoming romance was a delight to read. I also liked how this book played with a climate changed earth, and how people adapted to that and kept the hope. Towards the end it does play with the idea of geoengineering a bit, which is interesting- and I liked how the science of that was described and how the ending was ambiguous. Overall, this book is a beautiful story of return, humanity and hope.

This book follows a woman first known as the Stranger as she navigates Earth, a planet that isn't her own as she tries to find her missing love. The story is told in fragments as she meets all different types of people and has dangerous adventures along the way making for an interesting and slightly confusing story until it all ties up in a satisfying way at the end. I liked the main character who was brave and bold and definitely made this book worth the read.

Frontier didn't quite hit the mark for me. However there was a lot to like and can see others having a better time with it.

I found the disassociated beginning of the book went on too long. The author doesnt tell us 'the stranger's' story, were dropped in to a space wreck on planet earth and we are invited to figure out what happened. But, I just needed to connect with someone in some way and can see what Curtis was doing, but it was that device that kept me from caring about anyone or what came next.

The last 1/3 had all the action of previous parts of the book, but with lots of emotion and connections thrown in to make me care. Had the book not been a short read, I would have probably DNF'd though and missed that chance. I wish we had had some of those emotional moments earlier.

Looking back, I like the plot and adored the lgbtqia+ rep in the book. I would consider trying future Curtis books. I would also encourage readers to not take my word for it as we all need different things from our books. This one might deliver for you, if you fancy a short Sci fi adventure with a mystery to solve.

A great SciFi when Earth reaches towards its end and some of its inhabitants travel to the moon and beyond to find another life. Eventually these look at the Earth and feel that it needs some help and so the action begins. Their space ship is shot out of the sky but two people survive and against the odds they do what they can. Satisfying conclusion.