Frontier

I absolutely adored Frontier - it's rare that a book of two halves is equally wonderful in both, but I was utterly engrossed right the way through. I loved the Western-styled atmosphere of the first half, and the unspooling story (with grand world-building) of the second, once we learn more about the Stranger's identity.
I would happily read more books set in this universe - especially ones focussing on some of the little pockets of the world we fleetingly visit during the length of Frontier.
Frontier strikes a wonderful balance between an exciting, adventurous plot and a hopeful and moving emotional core. Whether handling emotion or action, Frontier remains hugely engaging throughout.
I'm really keen to see what Grace Curtis writes next.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

Frontier by Grace Curtis.

Thank you Netgallery and Hodder & Stoughton for an arc for an unbiased review.

This book was one that I blinked and suddenly realised I was 40% of the way though without realising it, and desperate to continue reading. So I had a quick refreshment break, before delving back in, and all too soon this was ending.

We don't get a name for our main protagonist until close to the end, although she is named Darling at one point, albeit because her name isn't forthcoming. So for a while, I had Darling associated with her until her real name emerged.
This Sci-Fi book is very much a dystopian type, with ecosystems in collapse. The landscapes are obviously desolate, with a lawlessness in many areas, but some that are ruled by ruthless Sheriffs or law enforcement.

Darling has to navigate this inhospitable and dangerous world, to find her love. Along the way, we meet a number of different characters. Some in turn become more important than others. We get glimpses into things that on the surface appear one way, but the reality is vastly different.

There was a surprising amount of humour scattered throughout the book, and I personally was grateful for it, as it helped eliminate some of the heaviness that might have occurred otherwise.
It wasn't a book that you could skim through. Because it was fast paced, running through a number of different locations and characters, you need to take time to read it carefully. I didn't mind that at all, but it could detract for some readers. Having said all that, some little things that you might not have thought much of become pretty important towards the end as it all begins to slot together.

I'd love to see another book in this world. The ending could certainly allow for it should the author so wish. I'm unsure if they've plans to continue with it, but I would definitely read it should they decide to.

A book I've already recommended to others, and would buy for myself and gift to others.

5/5 stars 🌟

Frontier, the debut novel by Grace Curtis, is a captivating exploration of universe building and an absolute page turner. Told from mutliple perspectives, our main character is present throughout, and is called many names: Stowaway, Courier, Tramp, Homeless Woman, Traveller, Guest. Everyone's perspective shows not only what they focus in on about our protagonist, but also where she is on her journey to find her person—to return to the one she loves.

One of the most expertly done aspects of this novel was the way it used other characters to tell her story. Not everyone is likeable but everyone is intriguing, everyone is interesting. I came to care for the side characters who only make a small indentation on the story: a child in need of insulin; a woman in need of resolution to stories—her own and one from a comic book; a boy who learned some hard truths about his faith. These people who made up a sliver of the Earth population showed so much about how the world runs, who's in charge, and why, without ever feeling heavy handed.

In addition to this wonderful way to portray our protagonist, the style of perspective switches lent itself to another key part of what I believe makes the world (universe) building so strong: the empty spaces. Not everything is explained. A lot is, but characters who live on Earth in the 2800s wouldn't comment on what makes it different from our current time, they'd only comment on what's unique about the events happening in their own time. Mostly, this means comments about our protagonist, but there are other things happening too. Other people with motivations and rich histories and backstories and lives. This enriched the world beyond what it would have been had we only seen it through the protagonist's eyes.

Woven into the perspective shifts we also get glimpses at galactic news, scholarly articles, book excerpts, and other small bites of information that help expand our understanding of life on Earth and beyond. I loved the idea that even after a full planet evacuation, some stubborn people would remain. And the religion that spouted among those who stayed—The Latter Day Saints of Gaia—made absolute sense. The Saints have a belief in climate change as humanity's ultimate punishment, and view those who left and anyone who uses space-like technology a heathen and a sinner. When the climate becomes impossible to ignore, it tracks that humans would turn it into a religion. Especially humans living under the thumb of the High Sheriff of New Destiny and his militaristic, power hungry deputy, Seawall.

Frontier is a must read for those who enjoy books about space, but also about Earth: saving it, and also recognizing the beauty that already exists. I know I'll be recommending this book to many friends, and will continue to read future novels by Grace Curtis.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for access to an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Frontier is a gorgeous, hilarious, compelling space western, featuring a mostly-unnamed lesbian with a laser gun and a mission to find someone she lost. This is an excellent debut and I literally need all of you to read it right now (but it’s not out until March, so maybe pre-order it instead)

The Stranger crash lands on Earth in a strange pod and so begins a love story. A funny, perilous, gripping queer love story about a person willing to go to the literal ends of the earth to find the woman she loves. This is one for fans of Becky Chambers (think of the warmth of Becky Chambers’ books and then apply it to Frontier because it’s got warmth in spades. Practically a furnace.)

I read this over two days and was bereft when I finished it, This is such an exciting, confident new voice and it’s set in an incredibly immersive world. 10/10.

[social media links to come]

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to Net Galley, the publisher and the author for allowing this.

Frontier is a really unique book. The author made some bold choices in the structure of this book and they have certainly paid off. I was intrigued to read this as the description sounded like Western in space. This is something I’m seeing more and more of lately and so far has been a great combination.

Frontier is set on Earth in the future. Ravaged by climate change and abandoned by most of humanity. A small group, followers of the Gaia religion remained after the great migration of humanity to live elsewhere in the Milky Way. Earth is now a post-apocalyptic landscape.

We meet a character whose name changes chapter by chapter based on the impression of those she interacts with. The Stranger, The Courier, The Homeless Woman etc. A bold choice by the author but one that actually works really well. I’ve seen this done badly in a different book and it left me confused and frustrated. This author has succeeded in doing this very naturally and it’s always clear we’re following the same person. Our protagonist is not from Earth but has crash landed and is desperately trying to find a way to her shipmates to see if anyone else, and especially her beloved have survived.

The format is almost video game like, our protagonist has a central mission she needs to achieve. Along her journey she interacts with different people and is given ‘side quests’ she has to complete for them before they’ll help her. This actually worked really well as it was always in service of the central goal. I was occasionally reminded of games like Fallout and The Outer Worlds while reading this. The structure allows the author to give you snippets of life for different people on this post-apocalyptic world without getting bogged down and it kept the narrative moving along quickly.

At one point in the book, a change happens and I did think the author had gone in a weird direction that rendered earlier parts of the book pointless. However the author quickly brought things back together in such an exciting and impactful way!

This is a very clever, very fun and exciting book and one that I will definitely buy.

In the distant future, climate change has reduced Earth to a hard-scrabble wasteland. Saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, gunslingers and horse thieves abound. Folk are as diverse and divided as they've ever been - except in their shared suspicions when a stranger comes to town.

One night a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years.

I absolutely loved Frontier by Grace Curtis!
The writing style was really good and I really loved the main character!
This book was such a joy to read and I could barely put it down!
I'm excited to see what the author writes next.
I definitely highly recommend this book especially if you are looking for a great Queer sci-fi read!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Frontier by Grace Curtis.
A western space opera, for fans of Becky Chambers.
For me, I found the book a bit slow to begin with but it did start to pick up and when it did I loved it. I wish some of the characters would of had bigger parts like Nana and Ken (that's just because I loved them). Overall though I throughly enjoyed it and I loved The Stranger. It was a beautiful love story full of adventure. I would definitely read more by the author and I would love a continuation of this book.

The cult of Gaia were left behind by humanity when they took to the stars. Fuelled by their belief in suffering under Earth's watchful gaze, all forms of advanced technology is officially shunned by the lawmakers and hardwordking folk of Earth. When a stranger crash lands, with a phase pistol and a highly advanced escape pod, it doesn't go without notice.

Part quest, part good old-fashioned episodic sci fi Western, 'Frontier' follows the Stranger on the search for a way to communicate. This is a warm, new take on familiar territory, that balances the horrors with a healthy dash of hope. With memorable characters, eccentric plot lines, and some great worldbuilding, this is a book I will be recommending.

This was a very enjoyable, fast-paced quick read. I was a bit concerned that it might not be my cup of tea, as the blurb mentioned gunslingers and love – Westerns and Romance being my least favourite genres – but it also mentioned a space ship and dystopian future world, so I decided to give it a go. And, was very glad I had.
The dystopian world is Earth, populated by the religious fanatics who decided to stay on the devastated near-dead planet when everyone else was evacuated. They wanted to remain close to the Earth God Gaia, and saw space flight as a sin.
The book opens with a crashed space ship, and the rather dodgy individuals who find it. They don’t last long.
Then we meet the main character. We don’t discover her name until well into the book – she is only given a designation relating to her activity in the current chapter: Courier, Stranger, Darling, Guest, Lover. We do know she is from off-planet, and is looking for someone (but not whom) and access to a communications device. Was she on the crashed ship? Is she part of a rescue mission, or in need of rescue? Why did the ship come to Earth, where it was clearly not going to be welcome?
Each chapter is another stage in the MC’s road journey. It is not always clear how she gets from one point to the next, but that does not spoil the story. She meets a number of different and quite unique characters. Some are given names, others just a designation. Most are helpful. They appear, then disappear, and for most we never know what becomes f them after they lose contact with the MC. The exception being Deputy Seawall – the baddie of the piece.
About 70% of the way through the book, there is a flashback which answers some of the questions about the main character and her quest. But, even at the end of the book, there are still many outstanding questions. The author is to be congratulated for not padding out the book. It could have been a lot longer – but really everything that needed to be said, was.
I can fully recommend this beautifully crafted book, with no wasted words, that claims your full attention throughout.

Thoroughly enjoyed this, it had a wonderful western style that worked really well especially as it wasn’t heavy on the sci-fi vibe.
We follow a mysterious stranger on a mysterious quest and I had so many questions, but the slow reveal was well worth the waiting. The whole thing came together to make an amazing love story, because obviously love is the best motivation for doing anything.
I think fans of Becky Chambers will adore this, I know I did!

I received an email inviting me to read this book, and with phrases like “gay space western” and “for fans of Becky Chambers” it immediately got my attention. They weren’t wrong. It is a gay space western for fans of Becky Chambers—I absolutely flipping loved it.

The story follows the Stranger (the Courier, the Stowaway, the Traveller…) as she journeys across Earth in an attempt to contact someone. At first very little is given away about who she is, where she is from, or who she is looking for and why. These details trickle through the more places she goes and the more people she meets.

We get a lot of small glimpses at such a wealth of world building throughout the book. A divide between the humans that left Earth many years ago and those who stayed behind. A post-climate catastrophe Earth and how humans have adapted to the world. A new religious world order and how and why it sprang from previous events. The tip of an iceberg of the larger world beyond the reaches of Earth in outer space. And so much more. It’s so rich and vivid and there is still so much left to be explored.

This book is most comparable to Chambers’ first book, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, due to its episodic nature. Each chapter is a like a little self-contained short story, all building a bigger picture of this Earth and those who were left behind. Threads and elements from all the previous chapters come back to add depth and plot and detail to the story in later chapters. I ate that shit up, it was so satisfying.

Every character we meet, for no matter how briefly, felt real and whole. That’s so often the key, for me, to a great book, and I envy writers who seem to accomplish it so easily. The first three characters we meet, especially, I seemed to know so quickly, in barely the first few pages of the book. And I remember them so clearly, because… well, spoilers. But every single character was so well-crafted, complex, and unique. There are my favourites who I love dearly (Hattie, Byker, Nana, Ken). There are the characters I love to hate (Seawell, mostly). And there are all the other characters in between, all adding to the world and the narrative and development of each other.

It was an easy read, always leaving me wanting more, but I paced myself in order to really make the book last. I didn’t want it to be over too quickly. By the time I reached halfway I was completely in love with the book and just hoping for a ending that did it justice. I wasn’t disappointed. The ending wasn’t too stressful or dramatic, but wasn’t underwhelming either. It was perfect, and continued to pull details from throughout the story to tie it all together.

I am more than a little excited for Curtis’ words to be out in the world and already can’t wait to read more of them!

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.

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 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.

A beautiful and stunning sci-fi debut which lore than earns it's comparisons with Becky Chambers. I loved every second of this.

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.

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.

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