A review by lolajh
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

adventurous dark funny mysterious slow-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

My favourite book and series ever. Endlessly rereadable; I find more and more parallels and foreshadowing with each reread (especially after Nona) and it becomes more and more apparent about how long Tamsyn has had this entire series thought out my god she’s so clever. The writing style and pacing and the amount of events described so cryptically rather than intricate, thorough narration definitely takes some getting used to, but it’s all there for a reason so that Tamsyn only reveals exactly what she wants to when she wants to, and that’s what makes this book so rereadable! There’s a lot of dialogue, a lot of high fantasy and science fiction themes that takes some getting used to, but, boy, when you finally can understand it all, you are able to piece together everything, the plot, the characters, the unanswered questions,  when you get through Act Four, to Chapter 31, for relationships to solidify and mysteries to be solved. Among the confusion that is mostly to do with the writing and not the plot itself (a much better thing to have critiqued, I’d say), there's such good in this book. A mysterious plot of murders happening in a haunted castle in space, a variety of categories of the intriguing magic that is necromancy with so many loveable characters to represent each 😫 I love every single person in this book.

Gideon and Harrow are just about the most well-written female characters ever. Both snarky, sarcastic, traumatised lesbians that are so pure and loveable beneath it all I love them so much 😭 How Tamsyn has written them so beautifully, so perfectly complex I do not know.

One thing that I got slightly tired of is the mention and practical character trait at this point, of Gideon exercising. It happens way too often for far too long each session; the expression of her “keeping going until she’s spent” is just a very unhealthy relationship with exercise and I believe Gideon’s strength could still be conveyed without her exercising being described as this. And it is glossed over, not at all referenced to be something unhealthy, which can definitely be a dangerous thing to convey. I still love Gideon, but do find myself skipping over mentions of her exercising because it can be a bit triggering at times and makes me a tad bit uncomfy. Act Three and onwards she does turn into so much more than just a “hot butch lesbian”. She has emotions and reactions that haven’t really been shown in the book; anxiety, fear, worry, selflessness, all things in which the events at Canaan House motivate her to feel. Her whole “strong and confident” thing is really a front she has used to protect herself from being hurt her whole life when she’s had no friends and no one to truly care about, so when that wall is brought down by herself and Harrow and others like Palamedes and Jeannemary, she becomes so much more of a character to root for, more than just what I first perceived to be a cocky, narcissistic, one-dimensional character.
The fact that she mostly just felt bad for Harrow and felt at fault for her parents’ deaths very much made me so emotional. I love her so much.
Gideon is ultimately a big softie, an emotionally raw human being underneath everything whilst also being an amazing, entertaining main character. Opening her character arc with her being a confident warrior with no worries or fears, and eventually having that front fading away when she is exposed to things that no human could possibly experience and act the same way, by making her have emotions, by making her have inconsistencies with her character, she becomes so much more real, so much more than an attractive butch. 
It is actually so so so sad the things that happened to her. It’s so easy to gloss over because how she reacts to trauma is very different and much less obvious than Harrow’s reactions and coping mechanisms to trauma. Gideon bottles things up or doesn’t address them externally and sometimes even internally (girlie romanced a girl that ended up being a walking corpse possessed by a crazy murderer). Her feeling guilty for Jeannemary and Isaac’s deaths provides such insight into her character, into how much she cared for for the kids and how much pressure she puts on herself to use her ample strength for good.
Gideon really means the word to me.

Harrow’s development was amazing too. After having hardly any insight to her true character for the majority of the book, when her backstory and past with Gideon is finally explained, when her behaviour with Gideon is finally explained, it becomes more than just a petty rivalry between these two. They have some traumatic history with each other, and their rivalry leads them to knowing not a lot about each other.
it's true enemies to lovers (I wish Gideon and Harrow would kiss please Tamsyn please)
So when they finally are civil, when they bond, when they work together and fight together and for each other and become true allies, everything else clicks into place. They are soulmates, and their story is perfect. This book? It’s perfect. It is so worth the rereading and struggling to understand what the fuck is going on.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings