This was an instant 5-star read for me. Loved the worldbuilding, loved the characters, loved the prose. I also found the 250-page length really refreshing for the scifi genre - the story felt strong and complete despite the shorter than normal word count. Grace Curtis has fast become a favourite author of mine!

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.

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.

I adore Grace Curtis' writing! I read Floating Hotel and immediately picked this one up as well. I loved the premise of a space western, and the execution was flawless. The story follows one woman as she journeys across an Earth that has been mostly abandoned, inhabited by those who see technology as a sin that brought about climate change and distruction. My favourite aspect of the book is that each chapter is from a perspective of a character who interacts with the woman as she travels around, so for the first half of the novel we only know her as others do - as 'The Traveller', 'The Stranger', 'The Passenger', etc. The worldbuilding was also really interesting, with the contrast of the lives of those who live in space vs those still on Earth in the desert. Curtis' writing is beautiful and I found myself moved to tears on several occasions.

Simply terrific front-to-back! When a mysterious stranger from space crash-lands back on an Earth long-since abandoned by all but Gaia-worshipping remnants, she must make her way through settlements to find a way to send a message to the one she holds dear... For starters, Curtis' prose is sublime and immediately enthralling. As a debut novel, I'm already desperate for her next book, just to read more of, well, anything! It makes each new intriguing scenario the stranger encounters a joy to read about - excellently written while never being too much. It's fun! Always painting a fantastic picture of the strange environments we encounter, the prose injects instant character into each new individual we meet. Each chapter is almost episodic, and the best way to ingest Frontier would perhaps be a chapter at a time... if you can tear yourself away for that long! Each new stop on the stranger's journey centres a diverse cast, exploring how their own little stories come to intersect with the strangers', with everything culminating in epic fashion as the stranger reaches her destination. By the end, we too have gone on that journey, and I'm left thinking about all the little adventures along the way - the spectrum of moods, the little tales of humanity in a harsh world, the way individuals intertwine - and left with a bit more hope myself.