Having not read any of the previous in the series I did wonder if I would struggle.
It hit all the spots although was a bit confusing in places with all the names thrown at you.
I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable space opera and cannot wait to read more.

The good news is that Gravlander is a great read, and even if it's set up for a serialized continuation, it does a good job of completing a sub arc in one novel. The bad news, for me, anyway, is that while the main character is set up as a prodigy surgeon/doctor, her medical adventures are pretty much limited to stuffing people in an autodoc and injecting them with medical nanites. That might not be entirely fair as a criticism, considering that readers of proto-sf a hndred years ago might say the same thing about antibiotics and vaccines, but I'd hoped for something more in the line of James White's Sector General series.

OK, let's let go of that, because it doesn't really matter. The story here is about the remnants of post imperial society being crushed by the Unity corporation, well not just post imperials, but anyone not under their control.

Our gal Josephine Lutnear is young, scarily talented as a surgeon, which makes her overbearing and the senior surgeons pissy, and deeply scarred by the trauma of seeing her parents killed and then growing up in the hyper-military Ghost Fleet with a military hero for an adoptive father. It chafes and she wants freedom, so when a raiding party from the Timcree, a subsistence culture tries to steal medical supplies, she brokers a deal where they get the supplies, the fleet gets much needed fuel, and she gets to go treat the plague that's ravaging the Timcree.

Only the Timcree are way too stubborn and superstitious to accept help from a human.

There's a lot of good cultural work in this, as well as an engaging main character. Ultimately, Jo winds up as medic on a small independent freighter, which ultimately winds up on the wrong side of the Unity corporation, and we all know how that works out, maybe not.

It's a good first book in a new series, and my only regret is that Jo will wind up more revolutionary than medic, which would have been fun in its own way.