I received and ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Having heard only vague but lovely things about Frontier, I was very excited to see Floating Hotel come available, and I think Curtis very handily lived up to her budding reputation and the Becky Chambers comparisons.

I adored the narrative structure of this novel, much to my own surprise. Having each chapter from a different POV, with little exception, sounds incredibly difficult to pull off, but Curtis does so with fluid elegance and believability. Each chapter’s narrator feels distinct, but somehow the reading experience isn’t disjointed whatsoever. I absolutely loved the experience of spending a little time in so many people’s heads: seeing characters we’d got to know through narration filtered through the eyes of others, or jumping into the POV of someone unexpected, or who you’d been hoping to inhabit. Moreover, you will wholeheartedly love everyone you spend time with, however short, in a way that is fundamental to themes of the novel. Curtis writes with such astounding empathy, and her strength of imagination goes beyond the interior lives of others…

…Floating Hotel also features, for such a short and character driven novel, some extremely impressive, inventive, and honestly fun worldbuilding- all of which is delivered so seamlessly, you hardly even notice it. The more immediate setting feels like its own lovable character, and despite being short, the pace of this book is pleasantly leisurely: with a few twists and turns along the way. Curtis’ prose is uncomplicated, and often very lovely. Early on in the reading experience, I was inclined to think of this novel as “cosy sci-fi,” but as the stakes were revealed I wondered if it could truly be described that way! Still, as someone who has never read a cosy murder mystery, I feel like this book might have something of that atmosphere- real stakes, but with a beautiful backdrop and a pervasive sense that everything is going to be okay in the end. (Mostly.)

Speaking of the end… I suspect that this is going to be a mostly personal opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt, but I wanted a little more out of the resolution- which is why this is a four star read for me. I appreciated the thematic implications, absolutely, but with so many moving parts to the story, I was really holding out for everything to line up in a beautifully satisfying and surprising way- and yet, the mystery, if you’d call it that, resolved pretty much precisely according to my suspicions, and not in a “aha, I’ve picked up on your clever clues!” way, but more in a “yeah, I figured that made the most sense” way, which was disappointing. If the moments where everything came together were as graceful as the rest of this novel is, I’d award it five stars in a heartbeat. And maybe Curtis’ consistently excellent prose and canny ability to conjure up atmosphere actually lets her down here- an underwhelming ending wouldn’t be nearly so noticeable in a less impressive novel.

Ending aside, Floating Hotel is utterly worth your time. It’s beautifully written, and beautifully imagined, and beautifully human, and I’m fairly confident I’ll seek it out again for a reread sooner than even I think.