Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by slowreaderpeter
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.0
Gideon the Ninth was truly one of the weirder and more frustrating books I’ve read recently. There was so much to like about it! Great characters, unique magic system, cool and interesting world, very interesting setting/location, some excellent and varied humor. But there were a couple things I really did not care for.
First, the plot was barely a plot. That may be a bit harsh, but I can’t think of a nicer way to put it right now. It felt like the author took a lot of really awesome concepts, and then cobbled together a plot around them. What characters did in specific moments made sense, but their grander motivations for the novel often didn’t as much. The plot definitely felt secondary to the character and especially the concepts.
Beyond that, I really did not care for the writing. Grammatically the book was a bit all over the place. Lots of run-on-sentences, too many semicolons, commas splices, etc. At times it was a bit of a mess, and that made following the story quite difficult at times. The sentences being so long and fragmented into so many thoughts sometimes made it quite difficult to visualize what was actually happening in a scene. It took about 100 pages to get used to the writing, about the same length it felt it took for the author to settle into her own writing.
All-in-all, very unique concepts with some fun characters and an awesome location for everything to take place. But overall, I found this a bit of a mess and almost dropped it on several occasions. Personally, I doubt I’ll continue with the series.
First, the plot was barely a plot. That may be a bit harsh, but I can’t think of a nicer way to put it right now. It felt like the author took a lot of really awesome concepts, and then cobbled together a plot around them. What characters did in specific moments made sense, but their grander motivations for the novel often didn’t as much. The plot definitely felt secondary to the character and especially the concepts.
Beyond that, I really did not care for the writing. Grammatically the book was a bit all over the place. Lots of run-on-sentences, too many semicolons, commas splices, etc. At times it was a bit of a mess, and that made following the story quite difficult at times. The sentences being so long and fragmented into so many thoughts sometimes made it quite difficult to visualize what was actually happening in a scene. It took about 100 pages to get used to the writing, about the same length it felt it took for the author to settle into her own writing.
All-in-all, very unique concepts with some fun characters and an awesome location for everything to take place. But overall, I found this a bit of a mess and almost dropped it on several occasions. Personally, I doubt I’ll continue with the series.