A love story, in a way. Flint Murdock, a large man, rode into Little River, Territory of Montana, in 1887. He hired on as the peacemaker for the whorehouse in the Bighorn Hotel and Saloon. As he began to earn the respect of the sporting ladies, the local power brokers - saloon, sawmill, copper mine - were pleased with the relative peace that he imposed. Then, hired gun-hands begin drifting into town. Including two cashiered soldiers from Murdock's Cavalry days at Fort Laramie.
Size: 346 KB (64,043 words)
Genre: Western
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: Teenagers, BiSexual, Heterosexual
Review by Myrtus [other reviews by Myrtus]
Reviewed:
I like to, as much as possible, read a story with a blank mind, as if it was my first time discovering the genre of said story. After all, wasting my time making comparison is an utterly unproductive endeavor. Sometimes, I stumble upon a good surprise. Sometimes, I’m disappointed.
I can honestly say I enjoyed this story from the very first word to the last. Without being able to point exactly where “Frontiers” drew me in, I was able to see a gentler side of what I would call the “years following the growing pains of the west”; the years where society was no longer in danger of collapsing after every single crisis. Not to say that things were peaceful but enough to allow people to act as people once again. The good, and the bad.
As I wrote these words, I finally discovered an inkling of what made me appreciate this story above others of the same kind. It may have been the way Murdock, the main character, trudged through the different challenges that came his way. I can’t exactly know why, but I had in my head as I was reading the image of an iceberg, so big only the tip appeared and so stable that nothing could hinder his journey through the water that gave birth to it. Maybe it was the slowness that came upon him whenever danger rose, the stability he proved capable of whenever it was needed.
Now comes a conundrum however. On one side, I’m happy to see the story registered under “universe”. After all, as much as I like one story, two stories could be better! Seeing the future with his extended family, learning what happened in the army, and maybe even seeing if the man has a darker side could be pleasant. After all, while Murdock is not a saint, I don’t remember seeing him overcome by his emotions or acting upon impulses. It may also be that he never was supposed to be that kind of man in the first place.
On the other side, this story is for me one of those which left me deeply satisfied with the way it ended. Although it’s as open-ended as one can be, it is in my very humble opinion the good kind. The important things were resolved; the little ones were left up to us to imagine how they would have evolved. Not everything has to circle back to the beginning! Life is after all full of things that never get an answer.
All in all, I would recommend this story to everyone looking for a slower pace of life in what used to be the growing pains of a new civilization with a border (one might even say frontier) town as its center. If you’re only here for the bullets flying all around the place, you might feel it a little lacking.
