Lotte - ★★★½

I’m not the biggest fan of low-plot stories. I read one Becky Chambers book and didn’t hate it, but I generally need stuff to be Happening in order to keep me engaged. I had a similar issue with Legends & Lattes, though as I listened to the audiobook I could just let it happen without having to really focus. Oftentimes with cosy books, you can miss a couple of minutes and you won’t miss much of the story.

I really enjoyed the setup of this book. You’re pulled in with the story of the hotel manager, which in turn introduces you to several other of the crew. Each new story explores the origin story of the crew member, as well as their current life on the ship. Throughout all this, a mystery is introduced, which keeps you on your toes and gives you a reason to keep reading.

The strongest part of the novel for sure are the characters Curtis introduces. Carl is my absolute favourite and I would have enjoyed to see more of him in the book, but there are plenty more characters I would have loved to find out more about. This book is mostly character driven, and it does a really good job at making you like its characters.

Overall, this type of story still isn’t really for me, but it was executed well enough that I enjoyed my time reading it. Especially near the end, I struggled to put it away!

Peter - ★★★

Some books you read because you’ve wanted to read them forever, because they come highly recommended, or because they’ve won awards left right and centre. Other books are just thrown into your lap at the right time and you figure ‘why not?’. Floating Hotel is in the second category. It is perhaps not the type of book that I might otherwise have read, but it’s good to get out of your comfort zone every now and then.

Although… Floating Hotel is very much a comfort zone-book. It is an aggressively light read. I’ve read a few ‘cozy’ stories, lately, and Floating Hotel falls squarely in that corner of speculative fiction.

Each chapter of Floating Hotel follows a different staff member of the eponymous floating hotel as they go about their duties for the day (often derailing as the story progresses), while giving us that particular staff member’s story for ending up in the interstellar hospitality business. Each of them a misfit in their own world, they have come together as a found family under the kind leadership of supremely inoffensive hotel manager Carl.

There is a through line in Floating Hotel, but at times, the book almost feels like a collection of character-driven short stories. In fact, the through line (lines?) are probably better not thought about too much. You’re certainly not reading Floating Hotel for the plot.

So what are you reading it for?

I think Floating Hotel’s main attractions are probably its likeable characters, its unpretentious style, its gates-open-come-on-in storytelling. It’s the kind of book that takes no processing at all, a brains-off and go-with-the-flow experience.

I mostly enjoyed Floating Hotel, but it is not really my cup of tea. The story is set in a distant future, but it is a typical sci-fi-as-a-setting book. The same stories could easily have been told in a fantasy or even real world setting. It leans heavily into well worn tropes, without much variation or subversion. They’re well executed, but Floating Hotel really never surprises you (nor, I guess, does it intend to). It has loveable characters, but none really sparked for me. Overall, as someone who likes to take something from every book that they read, Floating Hotel is just a little too shallow.

Then again, I feel like Floating Hotel knows this. It does not pretend to ask or answer big questions. It is quick, short, easy. Floating Hotel is the kind of book that could have easily irritated me, but it never did, and I think that is because Curtis knows to keep it simple.

It is the one thing that sets Floating Hotel apart from the likes of The Long Way Round to an Angry Planet, which is far more ambitious, but falls flat a little when it tries to answer big questions and (in my eyes) fails because it is just not the type of book for it.

Overall, I think Floating Hotel is good at what it wants to do - though what it wants to do is just a bit too simple to really get me excited.

While Grace Curtis’ Floating Hotel didn’t necessarily deliver on the cozy, low-stakes story it promised, I still really enjoyed it for what it did offer: a beautifully interwoven character study with an interesting mystery and an equal mix of bitter and sweet vibes.

Floating Hotel follows a large range of characters, most usually only getting one PoV chapter, through a series of events aboard the luxury space hotel they all live and work aboard. The structure was one of my favourite things about this novel. Rarely have I seen so many different points of view used to such great effect to tell a greater story. It’s fascinating to see characters through each other's eyes and captures the found-work-family vibes admirably. Sometimes you love the people you spend most of your life with, and sometimes you can’t stand them, and sometimes tragedy strikes and you band together to deal with it in the best way you know how.

If you’re looking for a straightforward, happy ending, Floating Hotel probably isn’t the novel for you. But I will say by the last page I felt a sense of emotional catharsis. It made sense given the events of the novel and felt earned.

Grace Curtis has earned a spot in my sci-fi rotation and I eagerly await whatever comes next. If you think you’d like a character-driven sci-fi set in a hospitality environment with a backbone of mystery and unusual narrative structure, I recommend giving Floating Hotel a try.

Thank you to DAW and NetGalley for an advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

The Abeona, a luxurious floating hotel that travels across planetary systems captured Carl's heart as a boy. He snuck aboard and was taken under the wing of Nina, the then-manager of Abeona, until Carl himself takes up that mantle years later. While the Abeona caters to some of the most wealthy and spoiled echelons of society, Carl and his eclectic staff have each found their refuge and home on the Abeona as they each want to restart their lives for their own reasons. The story follows several POVs as we explore the relationships between Abeona's staff and customers set against a background of interplanetary political intrigue.

I have complicated feelings for cozy sci-fi stories because I always end up enjoying them, but that is usually after struggling through some boring stretches, and the stories do not stay with me for long after the fact. This one fell in the same category. I appreciated the multiple POVs but found that I did not care for some characters and wanted more of others. The cozy part of the story also meant that plenty of mundane day-to-day activities were given a lot of metaphorical screen time, while the political intrigue was not deeply explored.

I will say though, that I got mild Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel vibes and I thoroughly enjoyed that.

Thank you to NetGalley, DAW and the author for this advance reader copy. I leave this review voluntarily.

Floating Hotel is a cozy spaceship-ride through the cosmos. As the titular floating hotel moves along its route, we get to look into the lives of its many staff members and how they came to be there. We also get gradual hints about a couple of larger mysteries surrounding the ship and the empire it operates within. These mysteries provide just the right amount of tension to keep the pages turning, while the character focus keeps the story feeling personal. Much like many of the characters, many readers will want to spend more time on this wonderful ship. This is one to savor.

Unfortunately not for me. I found the writing to cause me to lose interest. While each new chapter presenting a new character in theory is a great idea, it didn’t quite capture my excitement and I felt more disconnected from the story.

The Grand Abeona Hotel is a luxury establishment that travels in a year-long circuit of the Milky Way, stopping at certain planets along the way. Its staff come from throughout the galaxy, and is made up of runaways, misfits, and malcontents; nonetheless, the Abeona is known for its exemplary service, wonderful food and fantastic views.

Carl arrived on board when young, and never returned to his home planet.(He would not have been able to anyway, as its resources were stripped and environment destroyed to fee the ever-hungry Empire.) The then Manager, Nina Windrose, took Carl in, and over the years Carl worked most staff positions, and rose to the level of Manager after Nina’s death.

Their clientele is typically wealthy, but every year there is a conference held aboard; this year The Problem-Solvers’ Conference are meeting and staff is busy getting ready for the influx of academics. The purpose of this year's conference is secretive, with professors having to sigh NDAs so they can solve a strange code whose purpose and origin is not revealed.

The Abeona is also, by nature of its guests and circuit through the galaxy, home also to plots, intrigues and espionage, with Imperial spies regularly travelling along with regular guests.

Author Grace Curtis focuses on several characters, devoting alternating chapters to their perspectives, and through these we see the workings of the hotel, as well as the thoughts of some of the guests. Curtis also intersperses the narrative with subversive dispatches from the Lamplighter, who questions and points out problems with the 500-year-old Emperor, who stifles all dissent and questions, including the idea that there could ever be any kind of life other than human (not even single-celled) in the galaxy. Imperial spies currently on board are convinced that one of the staff is the Lamplighter, and are eager to apprehend the person.

We gradually get the sense that there may be merit to the Imperials' belief, and that the Professors' work on the code may be pointing to some uncomfortable truths about the basis of the empire.

I greatly enjoyed this novel and its quirky cast. I was charmed by the humour, gentle emotions (despite a few grisly scenes), and the kindness exuded by Carl to everyone. In turn, the profiled staff members each had interesting, and in some cases tragic, backgrounds, but managed to work together fairly harmoniously, despite the emotional baggage each carried.

I was a little surprised by one of the reveals, however, as I wasn't sure that there had been quite enough groundwork laid for it, but this is a relatively small complaint. I loved the atmosphere Curtis created, and I came to care a lot about Carl, Uwade, and Professor Mara Azad, and the fate of them and the floating hotel.

Thank you to Netgalley and to DAW for this ARC in exchange for my review.

This was one refreshing sci-fi novel that cleansed my palate and saved me from my reading slump. It has come to my rescue right on time with an immersive world building and too many lovable characters. Floating Hotel tells the story of a spaceship hotel wandering around the universe picking up and dropping customers at a regular interval in different planets. We follow the story from the perspective of different crew members and each chapter dedicated to a different member which creates a wholesome reading experience. It all starts with an ordinary hotel managed by a dedicated and diverse space crew but without even knowing what is happening, it turns into one hell of an Agatha Kristie quality mystery where we start looking for a spy who is spreading propaganda against the empire. The story, narrative and all the characters have a special magnetic pull that holds you down until you turn the final page and even though the ending was a bit underwhelming, I enjoyed it thoroughly and glad to have discovered it.

Grace Curtis writes about an old-fashioned Floating Hotel(hard from DAW) that is really a starship traveling on a regular route between a number of star systems. Grand Abeona Hotel is crewed by refugees who somehow found a place on board and each has their own personal story. it has decayed from an elite hangout, to a place for the wealthy and for conferences it still has bellboys and regular keys. The empire, ruled by the same emperor for five centuries, is starting to decay, with worlds being strip-mined and various institutions have started to use force. The person writing Lamplighter dispatches may be on board and that has attracted spies who happily use torture. The background tales are absolutely fascinating and I would hope this tale finds its way to some award lists.

Thanks to NetGalley, the Publisher and Author for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I truly adored each and every character, and fell in love with the the floating hotel, the Abeona. I appreciated how the book manages to be cosy but compelling. Pretty much every chapter is told from a new POV and were well written and plotted.

Floating Hotel is a great fit for readers who enjoy slow-paced, science fiction stories with a focus on unique settings, found family dynamics, and queer representation within a hotel community.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and I ended up really enjoying this book. It felt really original and charming.

I really enjoyed getting to know this cast of characters, especially as their lives intertwine. I also enjoyed learning each characters' past and about the mystery on the floating hotel. It is a pretty slow moving story, and I got a little bored in the middle. I've come to the conclusion that cozy fantasy/sci-fi isn't my favorite, as I need a little more of a plot, but I still liked this book overall.

This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart


Review copy was received from NetGalley, Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

3.5 hearts

Floating Hotel is written with many different characters each having a section with their story. The beginning though was all Carl starting with a historical section then moving into present day. I enjoyed that and that format helped me get into the story, and understand the world building .

The next section though had other characters. Some were employees of the hotel and some were guests. This felt more disconnected to the plot. It was good for world-building and appreciating the found family at the hotel. It also brought in the dangers of outside forces.

I was kind of lost in some of the different character sections and enjoyed the story more when it came back to more plot with Carl and a few other main characters. I enjoyed the different character vignettes but it made the story feel longer without movement on the plot.

I found it a charming story and it eventually got there. I could have used even more depth on the plot as we got on the characters and world.

If you’re interested in science fiction that isn’t “science-y”, this may be a good book for you. It’s a blend of mystery-thriller-noir in a space setting. As the title indicates, this book is set in a space hotel, the Grand Abeona, which is something like a cruise ship that takes its guests on a prescribed route through the stars. The book is told through a number of characters’ perspectives, beginning with Carl, who’s been hotel manager for forty years.

Everyone at the Abeona had a different name for Carl. To the kitchen staff he was Boss, to the reception, Mr. Manager. To the chief technician he was always Honey. The pianist called him Mr. Abeona, though this was not technically his name. None of these titles were Carl’s idea, but it was one of his policies to let people address him as they wished. Things went smoother that way.

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
The story centers around an anonymous protester/activist who posts articles criticizing the government. The government is trying to silence the Lamplighter while the rebels want to find the Lamplighter and keep them safe.

In addition to Carl, who is struggling with the ship’s declining revenues, other characters include Uwade the concierge, Dunk, the sous chef, Rogan, the lifeguard, Angouleme, the ship’s pianist, and Professor Azad, a linguist attending a problem-solving conference. As I’m writing this, the book is reminding me a bit of the 80’s show, The Love Boat, except without the cheesy love stories (that will either be a pro or a huge con for you). It would make a good TV show. Many people are not who they say they are, and most of the staff in the hotel are running from something.

There’s a lot to like in this book, but the frequent narrator changes kept me from getting invested in the story and characters. I really liked Dunk but he had very little connection to the larger plot. The resolution of the story would have been more meaningful had there been more focus on fewer characters.

However, violence and torture detracted from its “cozy” vibe. Curtis seems to be playing with the idea that this ship is an ideal place for guests and workers alike, while the Galactic Empire is its dark underbelly. But the violence was disturbing to me and felt out of place.

Fans of the Becky Chambers novels may appreciate this book, which is much more character study than cohesive story. I enjoyed some aspects of it but can’t strongly recommend it.

Note: I received an advanced review copy from NetGalley and publisher DAW Books. This book published March 19, 2024.

Floating Hotel is the story of the staff and a few guests of the Grand Abeona Hotel, a floating cruise ship if you will in space. I enjoyed learning the back stories of the different characters and would have enjoyed more depth into many of them. It seemed each time we were really getting to know one of the staff and how they ended up on the Abeona, we ended the chapter and went on to the next person. There wasn't much going on through the first 40% of the book and while it picked up pace towards the halfway point, it lacked in getting us to a satisfying conclusion.

A floating hotel travels from planet to planet in a universe ruled over by an Emperor who wants to control everything his subjects think and do while the aristocrats take advantage of the people that do all the work to keep things moving. It's the story of the very different cast of characters that call the hotel home and keep it going despite diminished circumstances.
It's an intriguing story and I liked the characters, but there are so many people and so many different little bits of stories that it loses focus. I kept getting pulled into the individual characters' stories and liked how it ended up tying the little found family together with the main plot and the overall universe it takes place in, but it's so scattershot because of all the stories it tells that it couldn't keep my attention.
It feels a bit like a script where each character's story is an episode. And it would probably make more sense that way because there's room to breathe in between the diverse moods of the different chapters.
Overall, it's an intriguing and very human story in a fantastical setting that got a little too big for its own good.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and DAW for the read!

Carl started life on a planet that is being mined of all its resources. One day when he was 12 years old he saw the Grand Abeona Hotel up in the sky. He managed to get himself up there and has spent the last 40 years on a circuit around the universe working his way up to management of the luxury hotel in the stars. The book has an interesting cast of characters who help run the hotel along with memorable guests. The book takes place in a universe where the Emperor aggressively squashes any mention of possible aliens, so everyone is a descendant of the extinct planet Earth.

A wonderful, fun, and surprisingly enthralling novel about found family, space exploration, and belonging. Honestly, what's not to love?

The Floating Hotel has a charming cast of characters that immediately draw you in. I loved reading such a cozy story. There's puzzles to solve with this one, and the setting is just gorgeous. I can't wait to see what the author does next.

A cozy and intriguing story, I loved the setting of the slowly deteriorating hotel spaceship with all its old grandeur. The cast of characters was also well written and colorful!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with a copy of this book!

"Cozy" is code for "boring" in this intergalactic romp.

I had high hopes going in, but they were quickly dashed at the quarter mark. Every chapter is written from a new character's POV. It's supposed to build the idea of the crew being a found family, but at most, they seemed to tolerate each other. I would barely get a grasp of a character's past life and future ambitions before the chapter ended, moving on to someone I couldn't care less about.

The author tried to build a plot between the character's stories, but it was a half-baked storyline. The hints at rebels and secretive groups were just that. Hints. The author was too busy introducing a whole character in a ten-minute chapter for the plot to be held up consistently.

This story could have been a great addition to the cozy sci-fi world if it had focused on either fleshed-out well-written characters, or a crazy intergalactic spy organization hiding in plain sight with few key characters trying to flush them out. Instead, the author tried to fit both and ended up with a forgettable novel.

Thank you, NetGalley and DAW, for the advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.