I really enjoyed the narrator of this story and I think she was really effective at giving a Western vibe through the characters voices which I found clearer through the audio than when I was reading. She had a diverse range of character voices so it was clear to know the difference between the characters even when listening on the quicker speeds.

Frontier is set in a World where the land and resources have become desolate due to climate change. The people who left to space with the hope of a better life are seen as evil while those left on earth pray to a Saint.

It follows The Stranger, one of the first survivors from space to crash land on Earth in hundreds of years. It is told from multiple POV’s of those who encounter her. It took a little while to get used to this type of story telling and the mystery surrounding who she was searching for, but I was suitably intrigued to find out who she was looking for… and it’s a very cute storyline! Additionally, all the characters within the story who are met along the way have really interesting stories, from a tortoise to a preachers kid.

Parts of this reminded me of The Stand by Stephen King/Mad Max/ with the images of desolate land and some praying to a Saint.. raiders/thieves while those in space are looking for a way to save the planets.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this in advance.

This book wasn't for me. I prefer shorter chapters and one central character so I found myself getting a bit bored. I had to speed it up to 2.5/3x to get through it. The writing was good though but just didn't connect to the story and characters.

Give me more SciFi like this NOW!

Sapphic SciFi mystery

Frontier follows our main character as she searches for a beacon in order to contact her missing love after crash landing on Earth together. Earth is broken, starved and messy.

Each chapter starts off from a different characters POV, then blends into the MCs POV. The MC is known by how the POV character sees her along her journey. So she is known as ‘The Stranger’, ‘Darling’, ‘The Guest’, etc.. until we slowly unravel the mystery of how she came to Earth and where her love is. Most characters don’t come back, so it can be a bit confusing meeting so many people, but once I understood the formula it was really entertaining to see what the MC was up to next.

Frontier felt like a space western, with gunslingers, small dusty towns and relentless sheriffs.

I read this book as an audiobook and the narrator did a wonderful job with all the characters. It was easy to follow along and I felt myself getting immersed in the story.

I’m a huge sucker for sapphic SciFi so naturally I gave this 5 stars. Would make a fantastic TV show or movie.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free audio ARC in an exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton audio for sending me a copy of Frontier for review.

This is a hard one to review for me to be honest, because I was definitely more interested in the premise of the story than the actual story itself.

Things I enjoyed:

• The world building was excellent. I loved the barren lands and the way the planet was portrayed. The desolation and lawlessness of it all was truly how you'd expect it to be under the circumstances.

• The characters were such a mixed bag, and had a lot of potential.

• The overall story was interesting, with all the different scenarios and goings on tying it together from one point to the next.

• I liked the idea of our MC being a dozen different people depending on who she met on her travels. "Stranger" "Courier" "Tramp" etc — we don't actually know her name til a good 2/3rds in.

• The Tortoise

However, when all was said and done, I found it really hard to remain invested. I didn't feel a connection to our MC until probably 3/4s of the way in. I don't want to spoil things, but I can see how this was an intentional plot device, but it just didn't work for me.

I think the story was interesting, and I really liked the ending, it was very sweet and full of hope in this otherwise pretty dour world, but I very much struggled to engage with it because I'm definitely a character driven reader. The plot was thick with action, that cannot be denied, so it might work better for people who are more plot driven!

I loved this novel! I found the concept original and compelling and was particularly intrigued by the 'cult' of Gaia. The characters are also well-built and rounded and all of them are definitely fascinating, from the little tortoise to the seamstress, and to the main protagonists (and definitely the music people!). The plot wanders a little bit in the first part of the book, but both characters and scenes are so vividly described that you don't mind finding out more about this future Earth while waiting for all the loose ends to rejoin to the main storyline.
The narrator does a great job with the audiobook. The only downside is that the chapters are quite long, roughly 1 hour each, but if you don't mind stopping mid-chapter, it's not a big deal.
I also liked the ending and its hopeful vibes!

Frontier was a debut fantasy story take place at post apocalyptic Earth story with dystopian Wild Western vibes only it. Actually this story intrigued me and brimming with all components I normally loves.

The story started with strong kicked and I truly engaged when the stranger from outer space whom suppose become MC come. But then this mysterious MC isn't share much about herself or her mission at most part of the plot. We navigated this rich worldbuilding from her eyes and some people who come along her ways. This people have their own pov and sharing stories. Some important some like small fragments at plots. I found this type of storytelling isn't suited me. The journey plot feel dragging, little to offer and take too much time to get straight into the mission. It is confusing and make me easy to lost my focus to gather information pieces by pieces. The mystery was take very long time to revealed.

The audiobook version is helping alot to get through the story. I love the narrator's voice with many different characters voices to perform during convo. This book isn't for me but maybe suitable for readers who love journey sci fi story with multiple pov and slow burn mystery.

Thank you Netgalley and Hodder&Stoughton for provided my both copies. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

frontier by grace curtis 🌌

thanks to netgalley for an arc of this book which will be published on march 9th. described as for fans of becky chambers, I had to request this and I'm so glad I did!

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

a cosy, sapphic space story & mystery with wonderful worldbuiding. set in a future where humans have had to move into space because of climate change, which follows a woman searching for her girlfriend after they crashed into earth on a research trip. we follow her as she learns about earth and the people who refused to leave while fighting to get her girlfriend back. it has wonderful character building of the main character, and fascinating side characters who have stayed on earth and how they live.

Frontier. I could stop my review right there because, in so many different ways, it is completely apt. This book has a very different feel to many Sci-fi books. But I liked the slower paced pared back feel. I really enjoyed listening to this Sci-fi/western/ stranger rides into a town/devastated Earth/love story set around a search to regain an unexpected love who has been lost. The stranger’s story is revealed in a number of vignettes, slowly revealing her character and the reason for the search. Often uplifting enough to make you smile, only to be dashed by the harshness of some of the books characters. Sad though that is, it seems in keeping with the harsh reality of the frontier setting. Don’t stop listening/ reading till the end though, as don’t love and the stranger always win out in these type of westerns? Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton Audio and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

I've been really enjoying Becky Chambers' Wayfarer's series and saw that Frontier was recommended as a similar read. I thought Frontier was a lot of fun, there was drama, laughs and some parts absolute chaos. I really enjoyed how the characters POVs were formed, and how we got to see all of the little insights to each character from using this method.

The audiobook chapters were rather long, which for me personally made it feel like there was no right time to pause the book as the momentum would be lost, apart from this the audio was top quality and the narrator was fantastic.

Frontier is a multi-PoV Love story of a mysterious stranger trudging through a healing post-apocalyptic Earth, in search of her beloved. However, and as much as it pains me, this book was not for me.

Starting with the pros, Frontier has some of the most rich world building I have ever encountered in a sci-fi book. In here, we see a version of Earth that went through environmental collapse 300 years ago and that is slowly healing. I found interesting that even though technology is not a strange thing for most people, the author invented this religion centred around Gaia that served to justify the western aesthetic and why most people avoid technology in general. Really, if I were to give a score based on worldbuilding alone this would be a easy 4.5/5. The main character's dynamic, once introduced, is also another pro. They have such a sweet and endearing chemistry. A pity we did not see more of it.

As for the cons: The plot took a long time to take off and once it got in motion it was a bit too late. To give some details, up until 40% in I was very confused on what was going on and it was not until the 75% mark that I started to be invested on the main character's quest. The plot also leaves some to be desired, with it being mainly about the journey of the main character and not much else.

I would also like to mention that the chapters on the audiobook are extra long (about 1h each) which can make at times can be a bit draining having to keep focus for that long. Despite that, Lauryn Allman did a very solid job with the narration of Frontier and I loved their different voices during dialogues. It was such a joy to listen to the audiobook.

All in all, I would recommend Frontier to people looking for a sci-fi book with strong worldbuilding, multi-PoV (sometimes unreliable) narration and some very light plot.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton Audio for providing an audiobook ARC of Frontier.

This audiobook was a very quick read/listen. I love a good sci-fi with a twist and this was definitely that.
The narration was great and the book well written.
Some parts were a little lost on me, but I'll be getting a physical copy as I always tend to enjoy books more that way.

Having never read a space western before (or any western before, let's be honest) I wasn't too sure what to expect with this one, but I love me a queer space opera so we're still very much checking enough boxes here.

I loved the setting and the background for this - we get that good bit of almost post apocolyptic-esque planet and two groups of people with wildly different mentalities coliding together. If I had to pick, I'd say this was my favourite element and what I was listening for throughout. We get to see more of how the planetary situation plays out through different people's scenarios and I really enjoyed that.

That being said, I struggled to connect to the characters as much as the world. Our main character's given various different monikers that sum up who she is in that situation but, as a result, we don't get as full a sense of who she is or get as invested in why she's there. Personally, the journey and the stakes would have sat even higher for me if I'd have been able to care more about the characters (though I did enjoy the side characters we met along the way.)

I listened to the audiobook and the narration was great, it kept me engaged and worked well with the vibe of the book. Ultimately that vibe wasn't as for me as it could have been, but this was a fun time nonetheless.

Blurbed as Becky Chambers meets a Western, Frontier is actually a space opera about a post climate change earth featuring cult religions, untrustworthy law enforcement, and outlaw shenanigans. The story is non-linear and sometimes a bit confusing or patchy but I happily consumed it. An easy read for a bit of dystopian themed but chaotic drama. Audio narrator is good.

I hope people read the reviews because I think it’s an enjoyable read but misrepresented and will get bad press because it’s not what people thought.

I DNF this one.  I was really disappointed as it was sold to me as similar to Becky Chambers who is one of my all time favourite authors and I am always looking for something to fill the gap in the market between her releases.

For some reason, I just did not connect to the storyline.  I kept having to rewind the audiobook to try and work out bits I was missing.  Maybe I'd feel differently if I was reading a physical copy, but as an audiobook this one was simply not for me.

A veces los esfuerzos publicitarios que se hacen en el mundo editorial confunden más que ayudan en la promoción de los libros. Frontier, para mí, es claramente un western crepuscular situado en el futuro, en una Tierra abandonada a su suerte por el imperio galáctico y manejada a su antojo por una religión obcecada en la antigua grandeza del planeta. Pues nada de esto aparece como tal en la publicidad, haciendo referencias a Becky Chambers o Sam J. Miller, grandes escritores sin duda pero que no parecen un referente especialmente acertado.

Las elecciones que hace para llevar a cabo la narración de su historia Grace Curtis pueden ser bastante controvertidas. El hilo conductor de la historia, es la búsqueda de una persona. Pero la autora decide no identificar a la buscadora y contar el viaje a base de retazos de historias donde este personaje no es la protagonista. Así consigue una sensación de extrañeza y un alejamiento que no sé si es lo que más le conviene a la historia, pero que es muy llamativo. Muy del estilo del tropo del forastero que llega a la ciudad y no deja de encontrarse problemas.

Las distintas situaciones en las que se va encontrando la extraña son descorazonadoras y bastante representativas del escenario planteado. Una Tierra abandonada, con las consecuencias del cambio climático, con una religión sectaria y unos representantes de la ley abusivos. En general el tono de la novela es bastante triste.

La labor de la narradora del audiolibro es encomiable. Lauryn Allman consigue impregnar toda su locución de ese tono nostálgico y desesperanzado que es la base de la novela.

El último tercio de la novela cambia los recursos que se estaban utilizando, algo que puede ser demasiado tardío para quien no haya conectado con la novela desde el principio y descolocar a quien si haya entrado en el juego. De nuevo, una decisión arriesgada por parte de la autora. A mí personalmente esta parte final es la que más me ha convencido, pero puedo entender perfectamente que algún lector no haya llegado al final del libro por las sensaciones de lejanía que se provocan en los dos primeros tercios.

Frontier es una novela melancólica en la que resulta difícil entrar. Atrevida en su planteamiento, recuerda en algunos momentos a Cántico por Leibowitz y a Stark Holborn, pero con un camino propio.

I feel pretty guilty, because I approached this knowing that the more space-opera loaded a sci-fi novel is, the more I struggle to resonate with it, but then again I'm the weakest at resisting a pretty cover, so here I was.

Frontier is marketed as a space western, which feels pretty appropriate. Set in the distant future, our planet has been reduced to a massive wasteland (hello climate change!). In this version of our world, it has led us to being ruled by sheriffs, horse bandits and lawbreakers once more, but what they've all got in common is that they get suspicious when a life pod falls from the sky and brings the first visitor in three hundred years to town. And this person is who we follow on her quest to ... well, for a long time we don't even really know what.

Curtis did a good job at capturing the essence of the western genre and applying it to a science fiction setting. I liked her version of the world – there was a surprising Red Dead Redemption feel to it, a video game that stood out for its immersive Wild West setting. The wasteland is dominated by the corrupt lawlessness of it and I always thinks it's funny when visions of the future feel like a past long gone, with in this world technology as we use it today being pretty much abandoned.

The lone stranger trope was too dominant to keep me emotionally engaged. So the thing is, the stranger who falls from the sky one day remains a stranger to us readers, too. As she traverses the wasteland, meeting kind and cruel people alike, she receives a variety of nicknames that never let us fully comprehend her. The one thing we do find out with certainty is that she is here to find the woman she loves, who is somewhere on Earth. They're connection gets revealed to us bit by bit, which is something that might work for some (and as a general idea appeals to me, too), but for some reason kept me at arm's length the whole time. To me personally, the mysteriousness of her character didn't go well with an emotionally sentimental agenda.

It would have been fun to find out a bit more about how the world ended up like this. With so little technology and medical help, how did people manage to survive for that long if the climate is that harsh as well? Getting to technical isn't the aim of this novel and probably would have ruined the vibe of it all, but this is the Star Wars kind of "science fiction" that isn't very much concerned about the science. It's reminiscent of novels like Ocean's Echo or Becky Chambers' work, so if this is your kind of thing you're likely to have a good time with this!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an Advanced Reading Copy of this to review!