This had a slow start.

It certainly improved the further I read with good characters and some hard core science fiction.

Unfortunately I just felt it dragged on and became very repetitive.

Was just glad when I finished.

Excellent space western - underdogs vs evil corporation, with an unknown menace to decipher. Loved it.

From the moment I started reading this book, I felt it was hard to follow. Not a lot was explained very well, description wise. I did however, enjoy the story. It was unique, but felt unpolished. Although I will read the sequel, if there is one because I do believe that authors get better from their first novel.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2020 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2020/01/2020-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Stars: 5 out of 5

There are books that you anticipate and count days until release… and end up disappointed sometimes. Then there are books that you pick up at a whim, just because you were browsing NetGalley offers and nothing else seemed more appealing… only to be blown away by the story and the characters.

This is one of those books. I requested it because I was in a lull and a story about giant robots sounded more appealing than anything else I saw at the time. I ended up staying up all night to finish it. Then I bought a copy as soon as it released and made my husband read it. He loved it.

Steel Frame is a unique story that borrows some interesting concepts (Giant piloted robots that might or might not be self-aware!) and manages to tell a compelling narrative with them. It’s a story of loosing everything and slowly crawling back from the abyss, assembling yourself back piece by piece until you almost feel whole again. Interestingly enough, this process happens both to our protagonists and the villain of the story as well. I loved that parallel.

It’s also a story about prisons and prisoners. Rook, our protagonist, is a convict who agreed to sell 10 years of her life to a corporation in exchange for a reduced sentence. Heck, most of the people operating the huge starship Rook ends up on are prisoners, even if some of them don’t realize it – they are shanghaied beyond the edge of the explored space, far away from any commercial routes, on a ship that will never be able to escape the strange anomaly it came to study. Even the antagonist’s main motive is to break free from the prison that held it for millennia.

But this concept is not all doom and gloom. This story is also about finding friends and a place where you belong and about making a conscious choice to defend that new place even if that means risking your life.

Oh, and giant robots! I grew up on Neon Genesis Evangelion and giant robots that work in sync with their pilots (or jockeys how they are called in the book) are right up my alley. I loved how they are depicted in this book. I love that the author defined the rules by which they work (rules of physics, but also rules of law, rules of custom, and so on). I love that all jockeys, no matter what faction they originally belonged to, adhere to a few cardinal rules. And that when one of them is broken, it causes real, almost physical shock to all of them. Because to break a rule like that, you really need to be a monster.

A could wax poetic about this book for a few more pages, but I don’t want to give any of the story away, and I want readers to experience this new and complex world for themselves. I want them to experience Rook’s first encounter with the Juno, as well as their first sync. I want them to see for themselves the high stakes battle for survival in the alien prison. I want them to hear the giant ship groaning as it tears itself apart.

Buy this book. Read it. Ask for a sequel. Because it needs one!

PS. I received and advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love the concept of the book and the summary but just couldn’t get more than a couple of chapters into it. It was hard for me to get into the narrative and to wrap my head around what the novel is. There’s a definite focus on getting the reader into the visuals of the setting and the writing is solid, but the focus on small details took away from me understanding and investing in the characters.

very rarely do i find a book that rattles me along at a 100 miles per hour, this book did! twists and turns, with almost believable sci fi. A cross between robocop and pacific rim, big assed robot killing machines, terrifyingly big guns, and insane pilots, adds up to a story of satisfying originality

Fast moving tale, where you (well I did) invest in the main character (and get a few surprises).

Starts off like a space POW story, morphs into Military SF, then into Mecha, then into scary Alien takeover, but running through it all is a believable emotional link between the protagonist and friends,

Really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it.

Really enjoyed the book was gripped from the start was a little bit miss leading in places but I enjoyed it none the less worth a read enjoyed not knowing where it was going

Steel Frame confused me so much! I was reading and reading and reading and still had no idea what was happening or who my protagonist was. I didn’t finish this book and I stopped after 80 pages because it was exhausting trying constantly to decipher what the author wanted to tell me. Really, I don’t even have an idea of what this world looks like.
I was excited going in because the synopsis sounded great but this book was not what I was expecting and clearly it wasn’t for me!

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for review purposes.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. There were parts and pieces that made me really want to like it, and then there were also parts that I found myself having to reread multiple times to catch on to what was happening.

The basic premise held a lot of promise, and the over-arching story was cogent, but it was easy to get mired in the details.

There were a lot of past events that were hinted at, without being described, that felt like they were vital to the character development that left me feeling as though I only had part of the book instead of the entire thing.

Overall, I'm not disappointed that I got an advanced copy from NetGalley, but will need some time to decide whether this is a book I will recommend to friends.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. The story of prisoners who are basically commodities that are sold and traded as military pilots is a good one. The author failed to clearly describe the situations that happened throught the book. The reader should not struggle with keeping the actions and actors straight.

It had been a while since I last read a sci-fi book. I believe the last one was Skyward, which I thought was AMAZING. Maybe that's why I couldn't commit to Steel Frame. That and a few other things.

Here's the bit where I usually write a little about the plot, and the global point of the book. But... I couldn't even understand that. At all. I ended up DNFing this after 100+ pages/approx. 300 pages, and by then, I still couldn't understand what the book was about.

Sure, there's someone named Rook, who's part of a jockey team, that flies shells and they go somewhere fight someone/ something ?

What are jockeys ? -> Jockey fly shells.
What are shells ? -> Uh... Bird-like exo-skeleton ? That's what I understood, and I'm pretty sure that's not correct.

So many things are not explained. The reader is thrown into the story, with no explication whatsoever. You read about a group of people who are cons for something. Then they have to go somewhere (a ship ?) where they get recruited by a company to do something. And couldn't understand what that something was. Just as I couldn't understand the world the author tried to build. Where are we ? What's the main character backstory ? What are shells ? WTF is going on ?? On top of that, I didn't realize that the main character is female until I re-read the synopsis on Netgalley.

So many questions are popping in my head while reading, and there's never an answer to them. Maybe there are later in the book, but honestly, if I can't understand what's going on within the first 100 pages of a book, I'll just give up.

There was so much potential for it to be a great book, but it just lacks too much background information for me. Maybe it's just my understanding of the book that's messed up, though. It has happened before that I read something and DNFed it for not understanding the world building, and other people just loved it.

As far as I'm concerned, I'd say that more work needs to be put on this book.
Steel Frame releases on August 22, so if you want to make up your own opinion about it, you can already pre-order a copy on the usual websites !