Having read the comparisons to Becky Chambers who I am a huge fan of I had very high expectations going into this book.

I wasn’t disappointed I read the whole book in one setting and will definitely look out for further works from this author

It took me a long time to get into this scfi western. It reads almost like a string of related short stories, which means an ever changing cast, all but for the nameless protagonist.

I think for that reason it took me a good few pages to really get invested. Once I had though the story was good. I'd have personally liked a little more world building early on. The world reminded me very much of the anime Trigun.

Overall a fun Sci fi romp,even if I found it hard to care about the characters early on.

Frontier is set in the 29th century Earth. It’s a dry, desolate place that most humanity abandoned several centuries ago to conquer the space. Only a small fraction remained, a religious sect called Gaians who believe in the divinity of goddess Earth. No technology newer than 21st century (for some reason) is allowed and even the talk of space is sin.

Noelle, a scientist, wants to visit earth, the first time in three centuries, for humanitarian and other ideological reasons. With her as a security is Kei, a former army captain who has resigned from her post after a massacre. A romance forms between the women during the six-month travel through space. When they finally reach Earth, everything goes wrong. That’s where the book begins.

Stranger finds herself in a frontier town. She has no idea where she is, but she needs to find someone. For that she needs a communicator. But in the technology averse world, those don’t exist. So she travels, rather randomly, towards the only city where one might exist. On her way, she encounters people who either help her or try to kill her. She changes from Stranger to Courier to Darling, with no name of her own that she would introduce herself with, and no clear indication who she’s looking for, other than her love.

The book consists of encounters that are almost short stories from various points of view. Reader gets a good idea of what the life on Earth, or at least in that small part of it, is like. Some encounters remain one-off, some people appear again just when they’re needed. We don’t get the backstory of the main character until after the half-point, and only then does she get a name and we learn who she’s looking for.

This was a good story, easy to read and interesting. The atmosphere was a bit gloomy, and the main character remained distant, even in the chapters told from her point of view, thanks to the odd decision to not name her or give her any backstory until after the half-point—odd, because the MC really didn’t seem poetic enough to think of herself in terms other than her name. From then on, the book came to life in a whole new way, and Kei became a real person.

The world was interesting, a good combination of space travel and dystopian. But I wasn’t entirely convinced of the logic of the life on Earth. There was no new technology, and everyone seemed to be living on what they grew or scavenged, but there was petrol for 21st century cars—still in use several centuries later—and fabrics for clothes, for example. Only printed books existed, even though people didn’t leave earth until the 24th century—though it was interesting to think that Alexander Dumas and Jane Austen were still read a thousand years after their books were first published. And in three centuries, no one had rebelled and started creating technology that would make life better for everyone. An outsider was needed to save them from the ill-effects of their religion.

I didn’t feel the romance between Kei and Noelle either. They were an uneven pair, and it seemed Noelle only spent time with Kei because there were no other options. For her part, Kei’s devotion to Noelle fit her single-minded character, but not so much that it made a believable character motivation. There was the massacre she felt guilty about; saving her crew to atone herself would’ve been a much stronger reason. Now it went completely unused other than in her reluctance to kill people.

Despite my misgivings, I enjoyed the book. For a debut, it was excellent. It’s a stand-alone with a satisfying ending, but I wouldn’t mind reading more about Kei.

I enjoyed this story, though it did take me a while to get into it. The story is hard to pin down, with an unnamed main character, and a series of vignettes, brief encounters with characters and no certainty as to whether they're important and coming back into the story, or if they're just a passing note. So that left me feeling a bit muddled and confused. In the end, I gave up on trying to keep track of what might be happening and just allowed the story to go along, and enjoy it as it did. It's a sort of sci-fi western. I don't think it has such strong characters as something by Becky Chambers, but it was still an enjoyable read.

This is a terrific read,a queer space Western, perfect for fans of Becky Chambers. I know other reviewers have said the same thing, but anyone who likes the "Wayfarer" series will be charmed by this. It's very much a mood book, by which I mean if you are in the mood for something short and snappy, this would be a good choice. Also, I thought it had a filmic quality, I would definitely watch it on screen.

I will be interested to read more by Grace Curtis.

Thanks to Netgalleyand the publishers for proof.

i don’t think you understand i am obsessed. I really liked the western/science fiction mashup, the world building was great along with the overall structure of the story.

An enjoyable read 4/5⭐️

A little slow but otherwise a fun weird western with a sapphic cast and plenty of action. Hope it’s the beginning of a series.

Reading the reviews, I knew going in that this would be a strange book. I was hoping it would be my kind of strange, but unfortunately, it really wasn't. Since I realized I wasn't going to enjoy this, I decided to DNF.

The book is inarguably well-written, but what I want out of my books is emotion, and I didn't feel invested at all here.

This is the story of two lovers who return to earth to try and save it but are separated by resistant forces who don't want to be saved.

The protagonist, called various names throughout the book, travels from town to town and we get little cameos of different people's lives as a picture builds of the place that earth has become...a kind of Wild West environment, presided over by a power-hungry Deputy Sheriff, determined to preserve the status quo, and a lot of superstitious townspeople who are suspicious of strangers - especially ones carrying space tech.

It's a bewildering world but it's skilfully evoked and I was emotionally invested in the story by the end. I did request the book based on the comparison to Becky Chambers, and while I don't think it has quite the same warmth as her books, it was an engaging and well-written story.

Frontier is a fast-paced and vibrant sci-fi story with plenty of humour and light to balance out the darker aspects of the world. It took me a while to adjust to the style of this book, but once I did, I really enjoyed the ride.

We follow an unnamed (at least at the start) character through a future Earth that has become a sun-bleached wild west of analogue outlaws. She is on a quest to find her missing love, and as she journeys through the crumbling remains of a shattered society, she discovers the different ways people manage to scrape a living on the barren planet.

The story is told like a series of vignettes, and it can feel a little disjointed and hard to follow as the main character is unnamed and the third-person perspective jumps around a lot. It's also a relatively short story, and there were some parts that I wish were fleshed out a bit more (particularly the part around the Throat) as it was sometimes confusing as to what was going on or how the environment was arranged.

Still, every character, no matter how brief their appearance, is distinctive and interesting. Grace Curtis really excels at giving her characters depth in the shortest amount of space, and I would happily follow any of them into a spin-off story. I also really enjoyed the creative worldbuilding and the vivid descriptions that really suck you into every scene. I was never bored at any point, and the writing style had a compelling immediacy that kept me turning the pages right up to the surprisingly hopeful conclusion. I'd recommend it for anyone who's looking for a fast-paced SFF read with queer characters, a pacifist heroine, and a unique world.

From its opening pages, Grace Curtis’s debut Frontier is unashamedly a post-apocalyptic space western. Three ne’er do wells go after a piece of salvage – an escape pod that has crash landed nearby – and do not necessarily see eye to eye about how the spoils should be shared. From there, Curtis runs through a bunch of classic Western tropes, characters and genres while building up to an extended flashback and a bunch of revelations.
A Stranger rides into town. This Stranger is carrying what is possibly a forbidden weapon and is looking to find some equally forbidden tech. Before long she is causing havoc and moving on her way becoming, along the way, a series of other western archetypes – Traveller, Stowaway, Gun-for-Hire – before her history, her name and her mission is revealed. The landscape she travels across is a post climate-change affected Earth. Most of humanity had abandoned the planet years before with those left behind subscribing to a new Gaian religion that eschews new technologies. Being a post-apocalyptic society, the people live under the shadow of the High Sherriff and his violent deputy Seawall who is actively hunting the Stranger.
While Frontier is full of Western tropes – gunslingers, horses, railways, preachers – Curtis manages to put a little twist on each one. When the protagonist takes on a courier job, her cargo is not what she expected. When she agrees to help retrieve a valuable artefact it also turns out not to be gold or jewellery. These minor twists sit within a narrative that itself upends the expectations that the reader might have been building up about the world and the motives of its major players.
Frontier has some serious things to say but never takes itself too seriously. And all of its disparate elements come together to make Frontier the post-apocalyptic, sapphic, future-western with great action and an engaging sense of fun that many readers might not have expected or thought they were looking for.

While the narrator for this was really good for the audiobook of this, I just couldn't get into this story. It was too disjointed to really get into and I couldn't develop a connection to the main character. There were just too many unknowns and I just did not enjoy it.

wild west vibes in space. A great cast of characters, and a great world, but also i felt somethign was missing - like more could have been done with this story. The main characters dynamic and general vibe was really good, again i just wish there was more of it.
its a very unique and different layout to a book, and read very differently to anything I'd read before, but it was still very well done. There were some really lovable side characters too.
Connecting with the main character was tough given the style of the book, and her wants and general direction were not specified for a long time, but other than that i really enjoyed. Definetely worth a read if you fancy something different

A sci-fi novel! About space! That I enjoyed! I loved this. I loved our main character who we got to use as a conduit to see and understand Earth. I absolutely loved the religion and the idiosyncrasies – God hold you down – etc. That was great. The story of Earth and what happened to it was fab, the mission of the ship. The relationship with the Captain and her love. I cried a little bit at one point when more of the story was revealed. I felt the hope and despair of every character she met. This was just such an enjoyable read. I would not in any way call this a romance novel though it is about two lovers who are separated. I would say that the ending could have come slower and / or with more compromises? I don’t know if that’s asking for too much but I do like my fantasy worlds to have a bit more cruelty (writer inflicted) than in this one? It’s fairly gentle but, I’ll take it.
Also, I feel the first chapter was kind of predictable, but the rest wasn’t at all.
Huge thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

First and foremost, the world building in this book is beautiful in a destructive sort of way. The ravished earth that is described is one I could picture effortlessly and worryingly could be a possibility. But whilst this world building is a bit scary in a reality way, its the characters and the short stories in which we get to know each one that brings hope. Grace Curtis does such a wonderful job of making you feel intimately close to each character we meet, even for such a short time.

A sci-fi western with hope interlaced and eye-opening wonder sprinkled on top.

I was eagerly anticipating this book from the description: namedropping Mad Max, The Mandalorian and the Wayfarer book series, whilst adding that it's a queer romance with a post-apocalyptic sci-fi western backdrop, is enough to perk anyone's interest. Sadly, it didn't live up to those expectations.

There's a lot that I enjoyed, particularly how the descriptive name of how others refer to the protagonist changes with each chapter, only discovering their true name further into the book. Is this character The Stranger? The Courier? The Darling? The Lover? These are all labels given by others, which is a clever and intriguing way of drawing in the reader. Just who is this character? However, I must add that this was slightly confusing at the beginning as it took me a while to realise the stories were all connected.

Herein lies the core issue with this novel - despite lots of excitement in each chapter, the sprawling western vibe (which is executed well) somehow leaves a sense of plodding disconnection. There's usually a time jump between each chapter and for me, this left me trying to catch up for quite a number of pages. When happening repeatedly, this is a bit jarring.

And look, I have to be honest: if you're going to market a book as a queer romance, it needs to live up to that description. The two characters barely have any time together and when we do get the backstory, the plot has meandered so much that the payoff isn't as rewarding. I am hugely appreciative of sci-fi becoming more inclusive, but this felt like a marketing tagline that wasn't actually the core of the book.

There's a lot to like here. You do really get a sense of the world that comes to life with each description, as well as the laborious nature of the main character's quest to be reunited with their love on this post-apocalyptic Earth. There's definitely potential here and I look forward to what comes next for the author.

I inhaled this. It was so so good, I loved the changing name of our protagonist, the scrapes she gets into, her deep need to be true to her love and to keep going forward. I would have been happy with the seeming ending but am even more happy with the final ending. It was feeling futile for a minute there but ultimately ends with hope. Loved it.

It's pretty rare that you read a book where you don't know the Protagonists name until the second to last chapter. But Frontier is written so wonderfully that it doesn't matter. With whip-smart characters and a series of events that would border on absurd if it wasn't such a perfect setting, Grace Curtis shows us that sometimes the basics are over-rated, and there's something about just going with the flow.

At first, I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself into. An Earth struggling after the fallout of climate disaster, a main character we know literally nothing about, a plot that at first seems completely random. But the Earth has surprisingly detailed world-building, the main character is fascinating and intelligent, and the plot works itself towards a satisfying conclusion.

A kaleidoscope of settings, wacky characters and laugh-out-loud moments, Frontier is an easy read that anyone with an interest in sci-fi or westerns would definitely enjoy! And I look forward to see what Grace Curtis puts out next!

A massive thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the ARC.

A desolate planet, space-opera type book starring a wanderer trying to find her lost love (bonus: it's Sapphic). This was bound to be a book I tried to pick up and read as a lover of science fiction, romance/star-crossed lovers stories and general LGBT+ romances. It also contains a lot of commentary about religion and different 'classes' of people if we can call it that. All of this has the makings of a great book.

I really wanted to like this book. Sadly, I just couldn't get connected to the story at all. I tried listening to this and reading on my Kindle and neither version immersed me into this world as I had expected. The narrator did a great job and I feel bad for not connecting to the storyline despite her great work, but it just dragged on for too long into storylines I really didn't care for nor do I strictly remember anymore. The side-story of the religious bits were somewhat interesting and I think were making a broader point, but honestly I couldn't concentrate much past these bits.

Many thanks for the complimentary book (both digital and audiobook) by Hodder & Stoughton in exchange for an honest review, which I leave voluntarily.

I was hoping for post-apocalyptic queer gunslingers with lazer guns but all I got was confusion. Sadly for most of it I had no idea what was going on. I just don't think this was the book for me.