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Epsilon Sector #1
Frontier: An Epsilon Sector Novella
Amalie’s the last unmarried girl in Jain’s Ford settlement.
Life on a frontier farming planet in the twenty-eighth century has a few complications. The imported Earth animals and plants don’t always interact well with the local ecology, and there’s a shortage of doctors and teachers. The biggest problem though is the fact there are always more male than female colonists arriving from other worlds. Single men outnumber single women by ten to one, and girls are expected to marry at seventeen.
Amalie turned seventeen six months ago, and she’s had nineteen perfectly respectable offers of marriage. Everyone is pressuring her to choose a husband, or possibly two of them. When Amalie’s given an unexpected chance of a totally different future, she’s tempted to take it, but then she gets her twentieth offer of marriage and it’s one she can’t possibly refuse.
FRONTIER begins with Epsilon Sector 2788 – the short story about Amalie – and continues it to be a full novella.
Life on a frontier farming planet in the twenty-eighth century has a few complications. The imported Earth animals and plants don’t always interact well with the local ecology, and there’s a shortage of doctors and teachers. The biggest problem though is the fact there are always more male than female colonists arriving from other worlds. Single men outnumber single women by ten to one, and girls are expected to marry at seventeen.
Amalie turned seventeen six months ago, and she’s had nineteen perfectly respectable offers of marriage. Everyone is pressuring her to choose a husband, or possibly two of them. When Amalie’s given an unexpected chance of a totally different future, she’s tempted to take it, but then she gets her twentieth offer of marriage and it’s one she can’t possibly refuse.
FRONTIER begins with Epsilon Sector 2788 – the short story about Amalie – and continues it to be a full novella.
168 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 13, 2016
12 people are currently reading
232 people want to read
About the author
Janet Edwards
32 books494 followersLatest release:- Adversary, the fifth book in the Hive Mind series.
Please visit Janet's website to get more information, and sign up for her newsletter if you'd like to be kept informed of future releases.SET IN THE HIVE FUTURE
PERILOUS: Hive Mind A Prequel Novella
TELEPATH
DEFENDER
HURRICANE
BORDERLINE
ADVERSARY
SET IN THE 25th CENTURY PORTAL FUTURE
SCAVENGER ALLIANCE
SCAVENGER BLOOD
SET IN THE 28th CENTURY PORTAL FUTURE
Set in 2781
HERA 2781: A Drago Short Story
HESTIA 2781: A Drago Novel
ARRAY 2781: A Drago Novel
SOL 2781: A Drago novel
Set in 2788, the year before the Earth Girl Trilogy
EARTH 2788: The Earth Girl Short Stories
EARTH AND FIRE: An Earth Girl Novella 1
EARTH AND AIR: An Earth Girl Novella 2
FRONTIER: An Epsilon Sector Novella
Set in 2789, the Main Earth Girl Trilogy
EARTH GIRL
EARTH STAR
EARTH FLIGHT
Set in 2789 directly after the Earth Girl Trilogy
EARTH PRIME: The Earth Girl Aftermath Stories 1
SET IN THE GAME FUTURE
REAPER
EARTH GIRL:-
◾Voted an American Library Association YALSA Teens' Top Ten title for 2014.
◾A Tayshas 2014 choice.
◾Kirkus starred review for a book of exceptional merit.
◾A Kirkus best book of 2013.
◾Booklist starred review for being outstanding in its genre.
◾Booklist Editors’ Choice: Books for Youth, 2013.
◾An Amazon.co.uk best Young Adult book of 2012.
◾A Kobobooks.com best Young Adult book of 2012.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 9, 2017
This book makes you see Amalie from a totally different perspective. It explains and recontextualizes some of her choices and motives in the main trilogy and shows us first-hand how crazy and different frontier life is to life in the established sectors.
Most of all about this book I love a new character it introduces, an outsider to the colony on Miranda whose predicament is dealt with admirably by the people around him. I hope we get to see him in a future story from the Earth girl 'verse :).
I gobbles this up when it came out and am looking forward to the next Janet Edwards story :).
Most of all about this book I love a new character it introduces, an outsider to the colony on Miranda whose predicament is dealt with admirably by the people around him. I hope we get to see him in a future story from the Earth girl 'verse :).
I gobbles this up when it came out and am looking forward to the next Janet Edwards story :).
decided-not-to-read
September 17, 2022Not so short a "short" piece actually.
Read a bit and oddly it felt too much Little House on the Prairie but sf and without the charm (charm is subjective), but without me being too interested in Amalie. Put it aside, no prejudice, just not something I want to or plan to read at the moment. Also, slow! (Hence not being that short).
Read a bit and oddly it felt too much Little House on the Prairie but sf and without the charm (charm is subjective), but without me being too interested in Amalie. Put it aside, no prejudice, just not something I want to or plan to read at the moment. Also, slow! (Hence not being that short).
March 21, 2016
This novella centered on Amalie and she is a great choice as a main character. I hope she gets a full length novel in the future as there is much more going on in Epsilon Sector. Kinda made me think of Firefly a bit in terms of a frontier lifestyle yet with so many tech influences ie horses going through a portal. :) I loved planet Miranda and the Moon Monkeys, the agriculture, frontier pains of limited education or medical help, etc. Several more great characters were introduced. Love Amalie even more after reading her prequel story although it makes her storyline with Krath in Earth Flight harder to believe!
September 19, 2016
Wonderful to read Amalie's backstory. A different corner of Janet Edwards' universe to explore this time, but the same sure hand to guide us around, with great characters and fascinating detail on some of the problems faced on a frontier world.
November 23, 2025
Quick synopsis
: Little House on the Prairie...in space!
Brief opinion : I really liked most of this book. Frontier life, farming stuff, all that. The only part I didn't like was the relationship drama, which unfortunately was about a quarter of the story.
Plot : Set on a planet that has only just been cleared of large, hungry animals by the military, humans are just starting to settle in. Most live on farms (growing both native and Earth crops), raise animals, etc. They work together as a community to make farms for new families, there's a general store, etc. Very "old west", but on another planet.
All girls are expected to get married when they turn 16 (because the world needs more people). Amalie turned 16 nearly a year ago, so she's an "old maid" and is being pressured to marry someone.
When the rich boy she likes asks her to marry him, everything seems great. His family embraces her, her family is happy... then the boyfriend and his family show their true colors and Amalie decides to change her life plans and not marry him. The story ends before we see the fallout of that decision.
Writing/editing : Both were good. The editing was especially good for a self-published book.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like : I really liked the whole setting/worldbuilding (literal world building! it was a new world, just being settled by humans). I liked the soldier character, even though we never really learned much about him (I assume he's a character from one of the other books).
I liked the relationship when it was as it appeared: Two young people in love. I rolled my eyes when the rich boy turned out to be evil, because OF COURSE a rich character will be evil. (Is that common enough yet to be called a trope? I feel like it must be.)
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. I'm going to pick up another book by this author.
Brief opinion : I really liked most of this book. Frontier life, farming stuff, all that. The only part I didn't like was the relationship drama, which unfortunately was about a quarter of the story.
Plot : Set on a planet that has only just been cleared of large, hungry animals by the military, humans are just starting to settle in. Most live on farms (growing both native and Earth crops), raise animals, etc. They work together as a community to make farms for new families, there's a general store, etc. Very "old west", but on another planet.
All girls are expected to get married when they turn 16 (because the world needs more people). Amalie turned 16 nearly a year ago, so she's an "old maid" and is being pressured to marry someone.
When the rich boy she likes asks her to marry him, everything seems great. His family embraces her, her family is happy... then the boyfriend and his family show their true colors and Amalie decides to change her life plans and not marry him. The story ends before we see the fallout of that decision.
Writing/editing : Both were good. The editing was especially good for a self-published book.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like : I really liked the whole setting/worldbuilding (literal world building! it was a new world, just being settled by humans). I liked the soldier character, even though we never really learned much about him (I assume he's a character from one of the other books).
I liked the relationship when it was as it appeared: Two young people in love. I rolled my eyes when the rich boy turned out to be evil, because OF COURSE a rich character will be evil. (Is that common enough yet to be called a trope? I feel like it must be.)
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. I'm going to pick up another book by this author.
May 31, 2017
Okay, now I want to re-read this series because I so did not pay enough attention to Amelie. I really felt for her. Everyone kept nagging her for being the only one of her age that was unmarried and I'm kind of glad the book stopped where it did because things were going to get a lot worse. Still, I'm happy she managed to do her own thing and would love to know where she ended up after the Earth Girl series.
August 29, 2020
The Earth Girl series has been my favorite YA series for a couple years now, but i only recently discovered the extra bits and pieces of this world. I was so happy to learn that Amalie got her own dedicated novella! She was one of my favorite supporting characters from the original series but since she was fairly shy and quiet we didn’t learn to much about her past and her motivations—Frontier was an amazing insight into her character which i loved reading.
January 27, 2018
Too short but delightful.
March 12, 2019
I still don't get how she ever ends up dating Krath though...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 26, 2019
Amalie's story is a bit sad and I want to cuddle a moon monkey.
August 23, 2022
Amaz Book
March 3, 2017
An interesting story about a 18 year old girl on a frontier planet where the men out number the women 10 to 1. it takes us through what lead up to her rejecting a prominent suiter and deciding on an off world education.
November 12, 2016
Edwards writes with a chirpy energy that has her heroine pinging off the page with a likeable can-do attitude I find very endearing. Amalie is the eldest of eleven children and is used to making do so her tough practicality shines throughout this story. Because the character is both engaging and believable and the worldbuilding is filtered entirely through her, I found the newly established colony plausible and engrossing. Edwards perfectly depicts a small community with the town gossip, the eccentrics, the misfit with too much money and the rough-edged type of boisterous behaviour in the bar where Amalie works that would probably come to the attention of the law enforcement authorities in a more established settlement.
I’m a fan of a story that steadily builds on a series of small, everyday details that finally collide in a dramatic event – and Edwards is very skilled at handling this dynamic. Alongside her struggle to find the right husband – and avoid the plethora of wrong ones – Amalie is also trying to ensure her father’s experimental crop is successful. The sudden drama that impacts on the situation works well in raising the stakes for everyone in the small community and providing a reminder that life in such a place is always going to be risky.
Edwards perfectly judges the pacing and narrative arc for this novella and brings the story to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. Those of you who found the Earthgirl series a delight and would like to once more experience this mostly upbeat, enjoyable world should track down this novella – it won’t disappoint.
9/10
I’m a fan of a story that steadily builds on a series of small, everyday details that finally collide in a dramatic event – and Edwards is very skilled at handling this dynamic. Alongside her struggle to find the right husband – and avoid the plethora of wrong ones – Amalie is also trying to ensure her father’s experimental crop is successful. The sudden drama that impacts on the situation works well in raising the stakes for everyone in the small community and providing a reminder that life in such a place is always going to be risky.
Edwards perfectly judges the pacing and narrative arc for this novella and brings the story to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. Those of you who found the Earthgirl series a delight and would like to once more experience this mostly upbeat, enjoyable world should track down this novella – it won’t disappoint.
9/10
October 2, 2017
I have very mixed feelings on this book and I'm not even sure what to rate it much less notes I should make about it. It wasn't the book I thought it would be and, because of that, I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed. However, what it was it did super well, so that was great. I did like seeing Amalie again and seeing how she grew over the story. I guess that most of my problems can be best summed up as different values and circumstances than what Amalie is going through, so I have a bit of a time understanding her choices.
March 24, 2016
4/5 stars
I have to admit, it was really interesting for me to read more about Amalie. I really like her as a character in the Earth Girl series, and this Novella solely about her wasn't bad at all. It was really interesting to learn more about her and the world she grew up in.
It added a lot to my understanding for her as a character, I really liked seeing her world through her eyes and it was really interesting to learn about what she was doing before the series itself.
I have to admit, it was really interesting for me to read more about Amalie. I really like her as a character in the Earth Girl series, and this Novella solely about her wasn't bad at all. It was really interesting to learn more about her and the world she grew up in.
It added a lot to my understanding for her as a character, I really liked seeing her world through her eyes and it was really interesting to learn about what she was doing before the series itself.
August 19, 2022
I really enjoyed this short novel. It's a prequel to Janet Edwards' larger series and, while avoiding being preachy, really made me think about how practical matters can shape society and gender roles. Good stuff.
Edit: I've read this three times, each time it gets better!
Edit: I've read this three times, each time it gets better!
April 8, 2016
I just really enjoy these stories. There is nothing too deep about them, but they work quite well. I appreciate having a better understanding of one of the side characters from Earth Girl. She's great!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews