8th March 2025

Grace Curtis manages to create a cosy sci-fi that's also dramatic, mysterious, and a mirror to today's world in the way that only the best novels can.

This is the story of an aging space hotel, on a cruise around the human-populated galaxy, and more specifically its crew members, and how this came to be their home.

It's a wonderful construction, with interesting presentation, and I really loved getting to meet all the characters, to understand how they fit together, and gradually to see the curtain peeled back on the universe that Curtis has created.

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20th April 2024

I bought this short novel after seeing the author recommended for fans of Becky Chambers. It’s not quite in the same space I don’t feel, but close enough that I still found myself enjoying it, particularly as I got more and more invested in the character and the world.

It is a book about climate change, to some extent, and so I had some trepidation at the start because the setting felt like it was going to be depressing. I think though that there is a narrative filled with hope despite the setting, which eventually comes to balance it out.

Although presented as a novella, it actually feels more like a sequence of short stories which are, in turn, sequels or prequels to one another, following the same character. That is to say, each chapter contains a fairly distinct episode in the character’s journey. This makes for a very readable structure.

I’ve added Curtis to my read list and will be looking out to buy her next novel soon.

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