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A review by astrangewind
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

For a book described as "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space," Gideon the Ninth was an absolute slog.

Granted, I didn't think it was bad, but it faltered in places I wasn't anticipating.

The writing style was engaging, truly; I enjoyed Muir's sentence-level choices that made the action spring off the page, even if it was a bit reminiscent of a young millenial who spent their formative years on Tumblr. However, the flowery language in parts obscured the actual happenings; I often found myself having to go back a few paragraphs because I missed a character entering the room, or misunderstanding where Gideon is standing, or who is with her. Muir blurs the metaphorical and the concrete, which at times brought the world to life, but more often confused the hell out of me.

Worldbuilding also tends to fall prey to this same issue - so much extraneous stuff that it clouds reality. Surprisingly, though, Muir's worldbuilding is stunning, and I never felt lectured, which is astonishing, given the sheer breadth of the work; Gideon the Ninth is full of deep space travel and magic, medical science and conjuring skeleton armies, and on top of all that the religious and political complication. Muir effortlessly balances all of these things without overwhelming the reader with knowledge, and truly, the world she's built is endlessly fascinating, and the main driver for my wanting to read the next book despite my misgivings about this one.

And, oh boy, did this book absolutely crawl at times. Perhaps there would be some action, and then there would pages and pages of Gideon eating soup, or Gideon walking around the same labyrinthine house that's already been described to death, or details on Muir's made-up necromantic theory. During the final climax, obviously the lulls becomes fewer and more far between, but boy, is it a pain to get to that point.

Speaking of really boring and confusing aspects of this book, there is an overabundance of characters. If I have to write a separate note about who the characters are, I'm going to be minus to the book. Granted, Muir tries very hard to make it less difficult; all the House necromancers and cavaliers have surnames associated with the numerical House they're a part of, and vignettes about their personalities are repeated so often that it gets drilled into the reader's brain.
And by the end of the book, it gets a lot easier to remember, because nearly all of them die.
However, alternately referring to characters as their House number, adept / necromancer / cavalier / some other title, their last name, their first name, their altar ego, or in relation to some other character, the distinctions Muir made between them become totally useless. Additionally, once you introduce that many unique characters, you need to rely on stereotypes, and lean into them hard, even though they're stereotypes that you made up: Palamedes is the Smart Guy; Dulcinea is Terminally Ill; Coronabeth is the Hot Extrovert; Ianthe is the Boring Twin. All nuances to their character fall to the wayside once this happens.

Once we get to the climax, hoo boy, somehow it's still horrendously boring, even though there's action happening all over the place. Everyone has a secret; everyone has a deus ex machina moment; everyone tries fighting the Big Bad and fails, until they succeed; repeated ad nauseum. Aggravating. I finished it so quickly because I just wanted it to be over. It just felt gratuitous that everyone had time to sit down and tell everyone their horrible secret that would have been incredibly pertinent a few hundred pages earlier, maybe, but since we're at the end of the book we have to infodump, I guess.

Also, I thought the ending was a bad choice, and also incredibly predictable
once I learned the name of the second book
, but that might just be because I recently read a sci-fi book with a similar premise, broadly speaking. Less necromancy, though.

Also also, the only really lesbian thing about it is that Gideon thirsts over Coronabeth. If you think this is going to be an enemies to lovers thing between Gideon and Harrow, don't get your hopes up! I certainly did!
And I don't think the lesbian romance really counts if they're the same person.


OK, yeah, I'm going to read the second book. I heard it was much better than the first, anyway.
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