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togidemi's review against another edition
5.0
hey uh what the fuck
Listen, I know "lesbian necromancers in space" is such a meme to promote this book, but that alone already got me in its claws. However, gotta be honest - the start was kind of a slog for me, even when Muir's writing should've been just up my alley. (The people I know who've read this were divided about how... meme-y the prose sometimes gets. Guess which camp I fall into.) (Clown camp, motherfucker.) I can't quite pinpoint exactly why either, though I suspect it's because so many names - long-ass names like Harrowhark Nonagesimus - and weird worldbuilding got thrown at me at once in the first few chapters and I didn't really feel up to untangling them. It would've remained one of those books that I knew intellectually I would've liked, but didn't push on with, if I didn't have a friend to kind of indirectly egg me into continuing to read it. (Thanks a bunch, Leet.)
Sometimes some books just need time to completely wreck my life. (The best case would be me DNFing We Need to Talk about Kevin because I got so bored at the start; picked it up to give it the good ol' college try again and it DESTROYED ME for a solid week after finishing it.) I suppose this was the case with Gideon the Ninth as well. I was fighting myself to keep pushing through the intro and frankly the slog of the middle, but once happen and the book lowkey switches tracks to a murder mystery... BOY. BOYYYY. It took that long to get me to tell the people of each House apart, and then I really began to appreciate the worldbuilding.
A lot of the book's power, though, rests in the relationship of its protagonists. I never had complaints about Gideon and Harrow from the start, they were really, really solid characters since the beginning and quite frankly they kept me going during that period where I didn't feel super into the book. I really have to shout Gideon out for being the character who sounds so much like my own internal monologue, god. THIS is how you fucking write frenemies to lovers. I'm destroyed. I'm undone, my dudes. I would've liked to read other things before moving on to the sequel but not when this book ends like that.
TL;DR didn't quite like it even if i should have, but past a certain point it just got better and better and better and now i'm pasting five star stickers on it and tamsyn muir is somehow one of my favorite authors purely because her work just precision-targeted so many specific buttons in my brain???
Listen, I know "lesbian necromancers in space" is such a meme to promote this book, but that alone already got me in its claws. However, gotta be honest - the start was kind of a slog for me, even when Muir's writing should've been just up my alley. (The people I know who've read this were divided about how... meme-y the prose sometimes gets. Guess which camp I fall into.) (Clown camp, motherfucker.) I can't quite pinpoint exactly why either, though I suspect it's because so many names - long-ass names like Harrowhark Nonagesimus - and weird worldbuilding got thrown at me at once in the first few chapters and I didn't really feel up to untangling them. It would've remained one of those books that I knew intellectually I would've liked, but didn't push on with, if I didn't have a friend to kind of indirectly egg me into continuing to read it. (Thanks a bunch, Leet.)
Sometimes some books just need time to completely wreck my life. (The best case would be me DNFing We Need to Talk about Kevin because I got so bored at the start; picked it up to give it the good ol' college try again and it DESTROYED ME for a solid week after finishing it.) I suppose this was the case with Gideon the Ninth as well. I was fighting myself to keep pushing through the intro and frankly the slog of the middle, but once
Spoiler
the Fifth murdersA lot of the book's power, though, rests in the relationship of its protagonists. I never had complaints about Gideon and Harrow from the start, they were really, really solid characters since the beginning and quite frankly they kept me going during that period where I didn't feel super into the book. I really have to shout Gideon out for being the character who sounds so much like my own internal monologue, god. THIS is how you fucking write frenemies to lovers. I'm destroyed. I'm undone, my dudes. I would've liked to read other things before moving on to the sequel but not when this book ends like that.
TL;DR didn't quite like it even if i should have, but past a certain point it just got better and better and better and now i'm pasting five star stickers on it and tamsyn muir is somehow one of my favorite authors purely because her work just precision-targeted so many specific buttons in my brain???
abake113's review against another edition
3.0
3.5⭐️ Liked Gideon. Couldn’t tell if they liked each other or not. Hard to get through at some points. Not sure if we will continue this series.
cjmacolivine's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
bookishbaddie22's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
bonzoobel's review against another edition
had to bail gang. these were the most grueling 200pages of my life i simply couldn't continue. i dont care how much everyone loves these books but 400 pages of contextless competition? no thank you dawg. yet another book with zero exposition. also the first third is stake-less which i feel.. is vital in a book like this. what do you MEAN gideon tried to escape multiple times. never succeeded. and then multiple authority figures saw, talked to her, and then simply left??????? feels like a manufactured problem if ive ever heard of one. also the writing is weird in a bad way i did not enjoy the formal religious language mixed in with the most ridiculous, childlike cursewords . also there are way too many epithets for every character which wouldn't be bad if they were more clear about. Who Exactly They Referred To.
seedtea's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
mieleiele's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0