made me cry – Carol's Notebook

The Floating Hotel is the Abeona, a spaceship hotel touring the galaxy. It's definitely light on technology. The Abeona itself is rather retro, with lots of wood and paper and pneumatic tubes There seems to be only one woman on the maintenance team and we never really know many details of how the ship works, just that it does and has been doing so for decades. Every chapter in Floating Hotel is written from a new character's POV. Most of them are staff or returning regulars, and each has a past, or purpose, that has led them to the hotel. We learn their backstories and see how they spend their days. The stories and characters gradually build a picture of the vibrant life on the hotel, while weaving in a few mysteries as the plot meanders along. I enjoyed the book, right up until the end. I wish the mystery portion could have somehow worked out differently or maybe been worked through...

Babel is a fantasy world of the early 1800s offering an exploration of race, historical imperialism, literature, and language. The Industrial Revolution is powered by silver working, magic involving silver and words and translation. We follow the four characters Robin, our main characters, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. All have been pulled out of their lives and sent to Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, known as Babel, to learn translation and silver working. Each is an outsider and they form a kind of family for each other, providing comfort and camaraderie, but also disappointments and arguments. Babel is engrossing. First, I do love words and meanings, and Kuang goes into details and long-winded interludes about language and etymology that some may rather scan past but that made the book memorable for me. The politics of language is fascinating. The characters grow and learn and reevaluate their outlooks through the book. It's hard to both love Oxford and hate the British Empire for...

Tag: made me cry

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

Babel by R.F. Kuang