shelbyfayy 's review for:

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

4.5

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-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

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This book shouldn't work. The world-building is threadbare and confusing to the point of illegibility, the characters' motivations and actions are sometimes nonsensical, the dialogue is both corny, hilarious, irreverent, and at times timeless and elegant. The true plot doesn't surface until about halfway through the book, and the ending leaves almost no questions answered, and sacrifices one of your favorite characters into a seriously morally questionable relationship. 

And yet I frickin loved it. I don't know what that says about me, but I did. It took me a minute to understand what the heck was happening, and even longer to recover from that horrendously cut-off ending, but once I did, I was in. I just wish Gideon was gonna feature more in future books.