#grace curtis

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2026: FLOATING HOTEL by Grace Curtis.

Wow! I've been interested in this yeah okay mostly based on cover since the hardback release, but my policy is paperback, so I Preordered and then I Waited and then I thought Good Travel Daisychain From ELSEWHERE EXPRESS, and now here we are.

The synopsis itself didn't send me (lots of stacked ~intrigue adjacent~ questions), but!: The book wound up being somewhere between Becky Chambers (cozy space found family, ensemble-style) and Imperial Radch (reckoning with empire and exploitation and class and decay) with a sprinkled garnish of This is How You Lose the Time War (opposing spies)(also shout out to the spies for Bringing The Violence™, their brutality was the perfect amount of fucked up leavening to counteract the cozy for me).

I have already yelled once about Goodreaders Missing The Ensemble Point, and! also!! I think Curtis did a phenomenal job of getting Deep into all her points of view in the 15-to-20ish-page chapters. Stylistically all the characters felt distinct and different, she crammed in a lot of backstory for everybody she spotlit without it feeling overwhelming or info-dumpy, and what she revealed in each chapter added nuance and subtlety to the Full Cast Dynamic. I also teared up at the ending, which is what pushed me from a wobbly four-to-fourpointfive star rating to straight up five.

I think this will hold up well on a reread, especially once you know who's [REDACTED] (and I'm curious to see how knowing people's origins changes things in earlier chapters, for Rogan and Sasha especially). Great masterclass on "your POV character will Notice Certain Details And Not Others," especially because we got to see so many of them side by side. I had an amazing time, excellent service, friendly staff, hugely recommend!!

[edapparently]

Was World Book Day yesterday, so here's some of my favs from the past year!

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

I'm sure I've mentioned this one before, but I've just re-read Frontier (after finishing Floating Hotel, and also mulling over my own post-apocalyptic idea) and GOD I love this book so much. It's short and sweet and reads like a Fallout game, back when Fallout was good.

If you're in the mood for sci-fi flavoured sapphic post-apocalypse fiction (which bounces around a great cast of characters) I would HIGHLY recommend.

[murderbot-moodboard]

I'm currently reading a book called The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis, and this part made me think of Murderbot (and is also rather an autistic mood in my opinion).

Ephraim smelled blood.

But it didn't bother him. Not at first, anyway.

Ephraim knew that people were not as solid as they liked to pretend. Mostly, people were liquid; great bags of pulsating liquid held together by a perilously thin membrane of skin, electrified with just enough thoughts to provide the illusion of sentience. All day long these intolerable beings, so arrogantly certain in their solidness, would leak. They would leak spit and piss and semen and vomit and, yes, blood, all day long. And then what? A wipe of tissue? A half-hearted rub with a sponge to spread the filth around a bit?

It was Ephraim's pleasure and his purpose to spend his days erasing every trace of human presence from the hotel.

Though he held the title of Head Roomkeeper, Ephraim thought of himself as a cleaner. Cleaning was most of what he did, and he was good at it. He had a pencil mustache, sharp cheekbones and a poised compact body like that of a dancer. When he was younger, Ephraim had been called sensitive. A sensitive young man. People usually meant it as a veiled insult, mocking him for being easily upset or overwhelmed, but Ephraim took pride in sensitivity. He was alert to the world around him. His nose, in particular, was keen as a naked nerve, and often caught things before his eyes did.

The Floating Hotel was published in 2024 and is sci-fi with [whatever the mid-century Modern equivalent of "steampunk" is] vibes, but might be more accurately described as a human-interest drama set in space, with a cozy storytelling style that nevertheless mixes in political and social commentary and a bit of mystery and intrigue. It feels a lot like sci-fi books written in the 1950s-60s or so, but with current social sensibilities, and political commentary that feels subtly but definitely relevant to someone enduring current US politics. I haven't finished it yet, but I've been enjoying it a lot more than I expected when I picked it up.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Queer Book Character Tournament Round One

Arthur Delacey- Gwen & Art Are Not In Love

Sebastian Walsh- The Entanglement of Rival Wizards

Reid Giordano- Fire Season

The Stranger- Frontier

Voting ended onApr 15

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Arthur Delacey- Gwen & Art Are Not In Love by Lex Croucher

Sebastian Walsh- The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch

Reid Giordano- Fire Season by K.D. Casey

The Stranger- Frontier by Grace Curtis

[wearethekat]

March Book Reviews: Idolfire by Grace Curtis

One of my anticipated new releases for this year. In Idolfire, two women are drawn together in a quest to seek a locked magical city in an epic journey across the continent. Kirby is looking for her village's lost goddess to uncurse her people, and Alaya must find an object in the city in order to take the throne of her powerful city-state.

I had previously read Curtis' Floating Hotel, which was engaging but didn't have much in the way of plot, and I was interested to see what she'd do with a book with more narrative heft. And the answer seems to be: write wonderfully vivid characters. Both Kirby and Alaya are described as very specific people, enough so that I could easily pick them out in a crowd. Kirby is awkward and earnest, with knobbly ears and a gaudy splash of freckles, and comes from a tiny, isolated, fading village. Alaya grew up as the disaffected scion of an ancient, powerful city-state, convinced her cousin is going to take the throne instead of her, and you can totally see why her last girlfriend broke up with her. (And yes, Idolfire is a sapphic romance, if a quiet and understated one.)

The plot, as the book's editor apparently said, is mostly camping, traveling rough across the continent. But I'm not the biggest fan of hiking wilderness survival based plots, and I found it engaging enough. It's not just walking--there's pirates, a mad boar, an ancient underwater tunnel, a child seer. Any number of cities and towns of varying characters. A brainwashed young soldier who keeps following them around, trying to get revenge. And not to spoil the ending, but it's a lovely, bittersweet touch.

Recommended particularly for classic fantasy fans, especially those who'd enjoy a subtle sapphic romance. Read this book if you liked Godkiller or Hall of Smoke by HM Long.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 1C

Choose a book:

Nimona by ND Stevenson

Frontier by Grace Curtis

Voting ended onMar 1, 2025

Book summaries below:

Nimona by ND Stevenson

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

Graphic novel, fantasy, adventure, humor, secondary world, young adult

Frontier by Grace Curtis

Saints and preachers, librarians and horse thieves, lawmakers and lawbreakers, and a crash-surviving spaceborn vagrant searching for her lover on a scarred Earth.

Earth, the distant future: climate change has reduced our verdant home into a hard-scrabble wasteland. Saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, travellers and gunslingers and horse thieves abound. People are as diverse and divided as they've ever been - except in their shared suspicions when a stranger comes to town. One night a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. She's armed, she's scared… and she's looking for someone.

Love, loss, and gunslinging in this dazzling debut novel by Grace Curtis. For fans of Sam J. Miller, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Becky Chambers, Frontier is a heartfelt queer romance in a high noon standoff with our planet's uncertian future, full of thrills, a love story, and laser guns.

Science fiction, Western, romance, postapocalyptic, adult

[gealach-in-a-misty-world]

ARC Review: Heaven's Graveyard, by Grace Curtis

Cod became an archaeologist to chase the ghost of her hero, Aleya Ana-Ulai. History may have written Aleya off as a myth, but Cod is determi

Cod became an archaeologist to chase the ghost of her hero, Aleya Ana-Ulai. History may have written Aleya off as a myth, but Cod is determined to prove she existed, even if it means sifting through relics for the rest of her life. Then a message arrives summoning her home. Cod's former teacher has found something monumental: the ruins of an enchanted city, slumbering beneath the soil. This could be the breakthrough they've always dreamed of. But with war brewing, rival powers circling, and ancient magics stirring underfoot, their discovery soon becomes far more trouble than it's worth. Even Cod starts to wonder if some things are better left buried.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Grace Curtis's Heaven's Graveyard is a fantastical murder mystery set some two thousand years after Idolfire, the author's first foray into fantasy. This one's more of a science fantasy mix as we see a world that completely forgot its magical roots and developed similarly enough to ours. Idolfire is referenced heavily, but the novel works well enough on its own, giving tantalizing hints that prompt the reader to go back to it, wondering how much of what is referenced is true and how much is fiction.

The book offers fascinating insights into archeology and the pull of ancient history as we follow Coda, a young academic on a mission to prove that her favorite piece of folklore is a real story. The novel kicks off when she gets called back to her hometown and she's forced to start an investigation, confront her own tumultuous past, and see her troublesome ex-girlfriend again. In the background, whispers of a war between countries don't really reach us, as the worldbuilding relies somewhat on knowledge of the previous novel. The story careens towards a high-stakes final confrontation and wraps up everything nicely.

But at its core, the book is about Coda's inner journey from a person who flees from conflict and has trouble with making connections in her everyday life. She reads as neurodivergent in some ways, and the book doesn't magically fix her, but it gives her the tools to better live.

Heaven's Graveyard is a lovely read.

✨ 4 stars