Thank you so much to DAW Books and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of Floating Hotel in exchange for an honest review.

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis is heartwarming novel about the power of found family, the value of kindness, who we are, and what we are running from, all wrapped up in a mystery of political intrigue.

The book opens with Carl Kravitz, a stowaway, being offered a job abroad the Grand Abeona Hotel, a floating hotel housed in a spaceship that travels the stars. Many years in the future we are introduced to the ragtag crew of the Abeona, a found family full of misfits, former criminals, and those looking for answers to life’s bigger questions.

As the story progresses, we understand that there is much more going on in this hotel than meets the eye. The Problem Solver’s conference has introduced a cryptic new puzzle. There are some mystery guests that might just be spies for the Empire. There is a mysterious anti-imperial writer who is sending out notes against the Emperor and might have a connection to the ship.

When reviewing a book, I feel it is unfair to hold all books to the same standard. Floating Hotel is advertised as a cozy science fiction novel, but it also has aspects of a mystery as well, so I am going to review it on a number of criteria.

Characters | ✦✦✦✦✦
As I was reading, the thing that kept me most engaged was wanting to know the stories of each individual character. While they all have a role to play in the story on the Abeona, I found myself being more interested in their origin stories. My only complaint about the characters is that there are so many of them. It would have been helpful to get a list of characters in the front of the book, but I figured it out in the end.

Story | ✦✦✦✦✧
The story of Floating Hotel seems a bit mixed in ways that don’t seem intentional. There are the moments of “cozy”, especially when we are having a closer look at some of the characters and their interactions amongst themselves. There are the moments of the mystery and political intrigue that keep you guessing until the end. There is the puzzle set forth by the Problem Solver’s conference. These are all great stories, but it almost seems like they each could have been their own book within a series set on the Grand Abeona Hotel.

It did also feel like the stories could have been tightened up. Have you ever seen someone knitting and they make a beautiful scarf or sweater, but their tension isn’t right and it’s all too loose? It sort of felt like that.

Comfort | ✦✦✦✦✧
The characters in the book feel like talking to old friends, but the story itself seems too serious and dire to be fully cozy. If you are thinking of cozy fantasy books like Legends & Lattes, this book feels much higher stakes than that.

Science Fiction | ✦✦✦✦✦
I know this seems like a broad category, but I simply wanted to give the book credit for being an approachable science fiction novel. I enjoy science fiction, but it’s certainly my most read genre. I found Floating Hotel to be approachable while still being firmly planted in space.

Mystery | ✦✦✦✦✧
The mystery aboard the Grand Abeona Hotel is not one that I feel you could solve on your own. Unless I missed something, which I could have, there was nothing that would have pointed you towards the solution.

As I finished Floating Hotel, I found myself happy to have read it, but with the wish that it had been three books; a cozy slice of life aboard a spaceship, a mystery novel, and a space exploration epic.

Head over to your local independent bookshop to pre-order your copy! Supporting indie bookshops is incredibly important and pre-orders do so much for those early sales for authors which are vitally important. If you don’t know your local indie, check out the Indie Store Finder.

Book: Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
Rating: ✦✦✦✦✧
If you end up loving it try: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

This one is weird. Because if I rate it solely off of the feelings it gave me, it's a solid 4 stars. Something about it was just so comfortable to read. But, if we consider anything more than that, it's nothing more than 3 stars. Because the plot was so odd. Did I enjoy reading it? Yes. Can I tell you a single thing about it? Absolutely not. I know that some of that was probably intentional, but it wasn't my thing. I wanted more. And in all honesty, the ending of this felt so unfinished. I'm not sure what was missing, but something was. It almost felt like the author got tired of writing and quit. So while I enjoyed the way Floating Hotel made me feel (so cozy!), that feeling wasn't backed up with any real substance.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

This cozy debut science fiction novel tells a story of misfits, rebels, found family—and a mystery that spans the stars.

So fun and cozy and queer! Loved it!

Something new!

You know those science fiction novels in which there are four point-of-view characters, and each character gets point of view for a chapter, then we move on to the next? (I think Gibson's Cyberspace trilogy was the first time I really noticed it.) You know how you never know quite what's going on, and it's all very confusing? Well, in Floating Hotel Grace Curtis takes it to the max, and SOMEHOW, she makes it work!

Floating Hotel takes place on the Abeona, a hotel that is also a spaceship, so it floats through space. Don't expect a lot of technobabble -- the Abeona is determinedly retro-chic. For instance, the Abeona's messaging system is paper messages sent through pneumatic tubes. There are of course a whole bunch of people on the Abeona -- staff and guests.

Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of these characters, a different one each time. There is just one character who gets two chapters, and by the time that happens, you will be expecting it. This is much less confusing than it sounds. Each character mentions some of the other characters, just a few in the earliest chapters. Thus when one of those characters gets a chapter of their own, you're ready for it. I never found the story hard to follow.

It must be admitted, at the beginning I was not quite sure if there WAS a story. Because this story-telling approach is a slow way to introduce characters and setting, the first half is fairly slow. However, I came to see that a story had gradually crept up on me -- a mystery, in fact. And it was fun.

I would probably rate this a mere three stars were it not for the novel story-telling technique. I'm a Neophile, so I'm always intrigued to see something in a book that I haven't seen before. If you prefer the tried-and-true, you may not like Floating Hotel as much as I did.

Thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy of Floating Hotel. This review expresses my honest opinions. Release date 19-Mar-2024.

Thanks, Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review!
Although the POV chapters were too much for my taste I enjoyed each one, simply because the author has created very well-developed and distingly intriguing characters that drove the story forward and equally helped the development and the mystery building with each passing chapter until the very end of the story! The setting and the world-building are original and unique for the novel. Definitely a must-read!

ARC Copy...Had the feel (with a humorous + cozy touch) of an art deco era and style mystery crime drama only set in space with the tech and alien strangeness, which makes it interesting.

I can see myself keenly revisiting Floating Hotel, sooner rather than later. At first I was unsure about the novel's structure, with POVs cycling through the whole cast of characters. However, each character was so fully formed and distinct, and the story linking them all remained clear. I adored all of the characters, and - despite a big overarching plot with hints of mystery and even spy novels - Floating Hotel is at its core a character study. I really enjoyed reading this, although it felt very different to Frontier, and I'm eagerly awaiting whatever Grace Curtis writes next. As a side note: I also really enjoyed the mini-playlist in the acknowledgments, which somehow perfectly captured the vibe of the book as a whole.

Rating: 4.4/5

Spoilers

Review: A shifting POV is the novels complete ensemble from chapter to chapter. The hotel pops in and out of space time to ply in-system passengers with unequaled charm and presence. There is intrigue galore coupled with interesting back stories involving the crew.

The writing was excellent and the characters were very well built. The ending is fukin lame but let's hope Carl creates a new story line.

I was already a big fan of Grace Curtis’ work after reading Frontier earlier this year. Floating Hotel was just as much fun (while tackling some heavy topics) in a very different way.

The story unravels through chapters focused on different characters, which feel like delightful minisodes building up to the series finale and revealing the overarching plot. Despite the book handling a lot of different characters and perspectives with very little space to devote to each, I felt like I really got to delve into life and motivations of each character. I often found myself wanting to spend more time with them when I realised their chapter was nearly over. Daphne and Rogan were particular favourites!

4.5

This was a really good read. The way it's structured is perfect for the story that is being told. It's like a collection of short stories with different main characters, and there's a bigger story going on in the background of the short stories. And with that structure, it managed to be character focused while still having a thrilling plot. Yes, sometimes maybe it gets a bit carried away at being character focused, but it's not that big of a deal. The prose is a joy to read from start to finish, really playful without being annoying. It reads a lot like cozy sci-fi, but it's actually quite high stakes, and I just love that contrast.

This book has a unique structure, which is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness: each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, either a guest or a staff member of the Grand Abeona, a spaceship hotel orbiting around the galaxy, their stories interweaving and intersecting.

What's great about this is that for every reader there's at least one point of view character they'll enjoy reading about, but at the same time it's hard to get truly, deeply invested in anyone when so little space is devoted to each storyline. In this aspect the book would have benefitted from being longer, or from focusing on fewer characters.

I really liked the setting, both the hotel and the wider galaxy surrounding it - it felt well-drawn and realistic.

The book is a bit less cozy than I was originally expecting it to be: while the focus of the story is on hope and human connection, the stakes are high throughout, and it's set in an essentially dystopian future under a totalitarian government, with all that entails: murder, famine, death, the destruction of entire planets for the sake of harvesting resources... I would call this less cozy and more hopepunk. The world of the story is a place full of terrible darkness and injustice, but there is hope for a better future to be found in human connection, and in acts of kindness.

Overall, I enjoyed this very much, and I will be keeping an eye on future works by this author.

An oddly charming book. Not the ideal if you're looking for a swashbuckling space opera, but a quiet character study. This is likely a good fit if you enjoy character driven stories- it has a Becky Chambers flavor to its character centric narrative but it's a tale all of its own. Some pacing is a little strange but overall an enjoyable read.

I think this has an interesting concept, but the writing is a bit too clunky for me, this wasn't for me.

This cover is one of the most gorgeous of the year. Absolutely stunning. Amazing job, team!

The mix of exposition and dialogue felt off. It was like we had blocks of exposition, blocks of dialogue, and it just didn’t feel blended. And dialogue was used to give exposition as well. I wasn’t getting into it and stopped at 5%.

Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the ARC.