Floating Hotel, by Grace Curtis

I picked up Floating Hotel thinking it would be the newest in a string of cozy fantasy/sci fi books. Generally my expectations for these are relatively safe, since the purpose of this genre is more about comfort and safety rather than being boundary pushing. Interestingly, Floating Hotel ended up being neither of those things, and it’s very much the better for it.

Elevator Pitch:
The Floating Hotel follows the crew and guests of the Abeona, a luxury space yacht that’s fallen on hard times. Managed by a former stowaway, most of the crew has a secret or two, and the guests aren’t much better. You’ll flit between perspectives each chapter: from the former child music star working as front of house to the sous chef with organized crime connections back home, to the chain smoking academic who is famous for taking money to give kids As. In fact, you’ll only ever return to a single character’s mind: the once stowaway and now overworked manager both starts and ends our journey with the Abeona.

What Worked for Me
This book was a real treat to read. I think its bigger accomplishment is how Curtis manages the balance between the rotating points of view and a larger plot. The story starts almost as a slice-of-life story, with the biggest plot point being that the yacht isn’t raking in the money it once was. Then slowly, starting with breadcrumbs, a much more serious story begins to unfold. A dire warning from an old friend. A rhythm that suddenly changes how the staff are operating. A guest that seems a bit off. And before you know it you’re no longer enjoying a cozy story about a lovable crew of yacht employees and instead find yourself neck deep in something altogether more dire than you thought. It’s a story that is most certainly not cozy considering a few of the POVs we get. It never quite hard commits to a thriller or space opera plot either though, because you’ll cut from something really dark happening to the staff movie night organized by the bellhop who has a fondness for censored and illegal films.

The individual characters are also a delight, and Floating Hotel really wouldn’t work as a story if the character work wasn’t solid. The book won’t be winning awards for how deep and complex they are, as each feels a bit over-exaggerated. Not quite a caricature, but close enough to one that it avoids pesky claims of realism. But each of them is interesting and fun in their own way, and I found myself pulled into each of their orbits just in time to be passed off to someone new. It was a bit like perusing a box of chocolates. My particular favorite was the professor who is on the ship for an academic conference, who has a ‘takes no shit’ attitude that I truly aspire to emulate one day.

What Didn’t Work for Me
Honestly, precious little. I had a ton of fun with this book. I could see some people getting frustrated that it doesn’t fit neatly into any category. Like the hotel itself, the book lives in a bit of a liminal space, floating between styles and expectations right when you start to nestle in and get comfortable with the direction it’s taken. It’s also not going to be great for Science Fiction fans looking for detailed worldbuilding. What’s there is fairly generic, but that didn’t get in the way for me.

But really, the biggest criticism I have of it is that it wasn’t transcendent. It didn’t fundamentally shift the way I envision the genre, or have prose that knocked my socks off. But if my only complaint is that it wasn’t one of the absolute best books I’ve ever read, then that’s a pretty ringing endorsement in my book.

In Conclusion: this book is a real joy. It floats between genre and tone a bit, and features not-quite-realistic characters who each have their own beautiful quirks.

• Characters – 4
• Worldbuilding – 2
• Craft – 4
• Themes – 3
• Enjoyment – 5