A review by bluejayreads
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

adventurous dark
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.75

When I picked this book up, I didn’t really remember what it was about. Someone somewhere said it was good (potentially someone back on Goodreads when I still used that), and at this point that’s enough for me to give it a shot. 

And whoever it was that gave me that recommendation was right: It was good. 

I haven’t read a whole lot of science fantasy, and going into it I didn’t realize it was science fantasy. Due to all the necromancy and such, I assumed it was fantasy. But it’s not – these necromancers are in space. Except for one transit scene, the entire story takes place on the cold and dark planet of the Ninth House or the overgrown flooded ruins of the planet where the trial happens, so the fact that these necromancers are spacefaring necromancers doesn’t much affect the plot. But it does add an interesting element to the science fantasy world. 

Honestly, everything about this spacefaring necromancer universe was awesome. I’m always down for a weird and creepy religion, and the Ninth House seems to have cornered the market of making religion weird and creepy. I’m pretty sure they have the same beliefs as everyone else in the solar system, they just take it to wonderfully insane levels. The two planet settings that we get to see in this book are also fantastic. I loved the dark, damp, barren world of the Ninth House, living mostly underground in a giant crack in the surface of a cold, dark planet. And I loved the sun-drenched, flooded, overgrown magic of the mostly-abandoned planet of the trial, which was a completely opposite aesthetic of the Ninth House planet but somehow just as creepy. 

And also, I loved Gideon. She’s stereotypical in many ways – the teenager unhappy with her situation and plotting to run away, the protagonist who’s super good at swordfighting, full of stubbornness and sass. But I enjoyed her a lot regardless. I do enjoy highly skilled characters, so she definitely had that going for her. She also had an asshole streak, which could have been annoying, but she was mostly an asshole to Harrow who really deserved it, so I found it endearing. 

That said, I did have a few problems with the book. The biggest one was the dynamic between Gideon and Harrow. I knew it would evolve through the book, but it changed weirdly fast. It seemed less an evolving relationship and more a flipped switch because the story wouldn’t work without the dynamic changing. My second issue was the sheer volume of secondary characters in the test – one necromancer and one cavalier from houses two through nine, plus three priests who were overseeing the thing. Seventeen secondary characters are way too many to keep track of, and until the major players became clear, I had a hard time managing them in my head. They were remarkably solid, though, considering how little page time many of them got. 

The plot was significantly twistier than expected. It turned out to be a great big puzzle of magical ability and exploring the abandoned overgrown building where the test was held. I enjoyed it very much. It also raised a ton of questions and provided very few answers. I assume there will be more in the next book. 

I will definitely read the sequel. The plot of this book seems completely done, but I want the answers to those questions. I also am not entirely sure if I’m happy with the ending of this one and the context of what happens in the next book will help me decide how I felt about the ending of this one. I have a suspicion that what I want to happen won’t actually happen and I won’t like book two nearly as much, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. 
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