Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

Book Review

Nadya Mercik

Hotels are intriguing places, even when they don’t have anything to do with sci-fi. The Grand Hotel Budapest or The Continental from the John Wick series, for example. They simply draw you in. Think of all the versatile characters that are brought together – the whimsical, capricious, rich, mysterious personalities hiding under false names, staff from cleaners to managers. Sometimes, the hotels have their special rules. And, of course, all sorts of conundrums and emergencies tend to happen. Hotels are a rich soil for dramas and crimes, psychology and characterisation.

Now add to this that the hotel is a massive spaceship travelling from one planetary system to another across the galaxy, where the eternal Emperor rules with an iron hand and stifles any attempt at rebellion or thought that humans aren’t the only sentient ones in the universe. For a certain period of time, as the hotel crosses Deep Space, there is no connection to the world, so you can’t reach for help or escape. Plus, it tends to harbour people with less than exemplary pasts. Here you go – you have the Floating Grand Abeona Hotel.

We first observe this place when the hotel arrives at Hoxxes, one of the exploited worlds to be wasted. There are many such across the galaxy – planets rich in resources that are mined till their depths are bare, and then humans move on to a different place. It doesn’t make for a good living, but that’s what people of this world have. Carl, one of our protagonists, however, isn’t content with his lot there, so he smuggles himself onto Abeona in the guest shuttle. By the end of the day, he is found by the hotel manager, Nina, and expects to be thrown back to the planet’s surface. The thing is, Abeona has already departed, so Nina offers him a job instead. Forty years later, having tried himself in all sorts of positions, Carl became the new hotel manager after Nina died. By now, the hotel is struggling to stay afloat as things have begun to crumble, and there aren’t enough resources. However, Carl still tries to keep the impression and provide as much luxury as he can to their guests. It’s on his shift that more unusual things start to happen.

Mysterious missives in the form of sonnets reach employees and guests alike. One of the guests suddenly disappears, though none of the shuttles or pods has gone missing. The scientists attending the annual Problem-Solving Conference are made to sign an NDA and are given a code to decipher instead of talks and presentations. Rebels and Emperor forces are looking for the cryptic persona of Lamplighter – an incognito who has been sending radical disclaimers about the Emperor and their rule for years and is finally connected to the hotel.

Grace Curtis populates Abeona with a wide assortment of people, but one thing they all have in common is that they all have something in their past they run away from or try to forget, as well as their flaws and passions. You might not sympathise with all of them, but you are going to love them this way or the other. Perhaps, about a third into the novel, before the narrative got spicier, I actually thought that I would happily read this book even if it didn’t have the encompassing arc of the mystery in it. The personal stories of staff members and guests are engaging and interesting by themselves. In a way, Floating Hotel is a conglomeration of smaller stories – each valid, each very much human, perhaps each worth of its own novel. And it is a great benefit for the main arc, too: having so many different perspectives allows us to see more of the Empire and its flaws, because be they rich or poor, guests or staff, they have all suffered from the rule in this way or the other, they all come from different corners of this world. It creates an immensely rich canvas, and sometimes, you get this feeling of getting down to breakfast in the hotel and observing them all as if you are part of the story yourself.

As the mystery of the missives and Lamplighter gradually unfurls, we have a chance to look closer and suspect many of the staff members – each time inconclusive. The imperial forces finally give Carl an ultimatum to find them the culprit, but when the situation looks critical, suddenly, the Problem-Solving Conference comes in handy. The ending might not be exactly something you are used to from a locked-room mystery like that of Agatha Christie, but personally, I found it utterly satisfactory because it is filled with kindness, compassion, extreme selflessness and devotion.

Those who like allusions to other novels would find the figure of the eternal Emperor somewhat familiar from Asimov’s Foundation cycle. Though we never see the monarch, it’s interesting to observe how they influence the lives of the characters. The Lamplighter is less proactive than Hari Seldon, but in the end, it makes for a different kind of story – a cosier and, in many ways, more uplifting one.

I will pay closer attention to Grace Curtis’ works from now on, because the author excels in creating the atmosphere and populating it with funny, flawed and very likeable characters, which makes for an engaging, immersive story.