Floating Hotel Review

Floating Hotel is a scintillating novel where energy and vibrance take various forms. 

Floating Hotel is a metaphor for how society simultaneously should and should not be. Peppered with kindness but also ignorant privilege, textured by introspective characters, and language that mediates the entire energy of the text, Grace Curtis is awfully clever in her second novel. 

This book took me back a year: I was a student of English at the University of Glasgow, undertaking a module titled Fantasies of Energy. The module’s focus looked at energy from production lines to the energy of language, to what is and isn’t said, to the energy of human maintenance. Floating Hotel ticked every element that I learnt on this module last year. It is a text that should be studied in disciplines of English. 

Set in the Grand Abeona Hotel, the finest accommodation in the galaxy, serving the loveliest of dishes, with the sweetest service, offering the very best views space has to offer. Year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last work in sub-orbital luxury – and a magnet for intrigue. 

At the centre of the Abeona’s mysteries stands Carl, one-time stowaway, long-time manager, devoted caretaker to the hotel. It’s the love of his life and the only place he’s ever called home. But as forces beyond Carl’s comprehension converge on the Abeona, he has to face one final question: when is it time to let go? 

Written in third person, each section of the book follows a new character in the hotel, beginning with Carl. Curtis gives us the backstories of each character and how they came to be at the hotel. This was a tactful way in building her wider world… or galaxy one might say. From discarded popstars who’s careers spanned the length of time that an average piece of clothing from Shein would, to sacked aristocratic assistants, the Abeona is a home for all. It caters for luxury stays but also offers a home to the people who have seemingly been discarded from their original social circles. Energy and waste converge in all manner of ways in this text. 

Through these various perspectives, energy is the main focus. One of sci-fi’s main themes focuses on energy: either the production and consumption of it, or what is unsaid about energy. Curtis approaches the broad theme of energy with expert nuance. References to imperial exploits in coal and oil fields that ultimately lead to the implosion of planets echoes our contemporary moment and the oil crisis. Curtis ties together the colonialist behaviours of continual extraction to energy. The Empire with its imperial spies and aristocrats who are obsessed with cosmetic surgery satirises some cultures that populate the upper-middle and upper classes. Where energy goes remains unsaid. Whether that be the mined coal or the deep-drilled oil, the reader can only assume that the energy is produced by the proletariat for the bourgeois. Another powerful aspect to Curtis’s writing: she does not overwrite. Ever. What is said speaks to the here and now, as well as our potential future. But what is unsaid is just as important. 

Take, for example, the energy that powers the floating hotel. Where does it come from? The maintenance energy to keep the ship afloat too. That’s why the setting is such a fantastic metaphor. Hotels require constant maintenance, constant labour. This is all energy – human energy. Through the introspective nature of this book, we see that maintenance labour all around. Or else, how would the floating hotel ooze constant luxury? With energy there is usually waste. Again, the setting of the hotel makes metaphor of this. Toenail clippings, empty glasses, even dead bodies have to be tied up in this novel. This probes the question of, where does our waste really go? In a hotel, guests expect someone else to deal with it, for someone else to clean up the mess as if it was never there. The same can’t be said for nuclear waste or the tons of rubbish countries pour into landfill every year. 

Energy is also conveyed in the mediation of language. Curtis pays acute detail to each sentence length, the energy of each character’s dialogue. This was most notable in Daphne’s dialogue. Daphne has a stutter. The confidence in her syllables grows during her time at the hotel, after she is sacked as the personal assistant to a spoilt female aristocrat. Energy is everywhere in this novel and takes many forms. 

This novel is so layered, dense, with texture all around. Utterly clever and impeccably thought out. Floating Hotel must be studied by disciplines of English to be truly appreciated. 

That being said, I loved this book for its cleverness and warmth, which is something that so many sci-fi texts lack. But I did not feel myself desperate to pick up and read this book and binge it. I enjoyed reading it in segments, allowing myself time to process each perspective. But maybe that’s the way this text should be read: slowly, steadily. 

Floating Hotel is a stellar work. Bouncing with energy and critical of it too. This is a must read.