Tamsyn MuirGideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth is a book about a swordfighter named Gideon who is my favorite literary character of all time. Gideon is so witty, so funny, so charming, and such a thorn in Harrowhark’s side. Harrowhark is a necromancer, while also being the main ruler of the Ninth’s planet. Both of these characters are harboring a few secrets of their own, but they are both so unsure of their pasts and their futures for so very many reasons.That is, until one day the Emperor has invited all eight necromancer heirs, from all eight loyal Houses, to compete in unknown trails to possibly ascend into something that will make them immortal, but the costs of losing can very well be their lives. No necromancer can compete without a skilled cavalier by their side, and Harrowhark has no choice but to get Gideon to help her and save the future of the Ninth House.But once Gideon and Harrowhark arrive on the Emperor’s planet, they soon realize that the tasks are going to be much more mysterious and much more difficult than anyone could have predicted. Especially when cavaliers and necromancers from the other houses start getting murdered. Gideon is not only tasked to help Harrowhark, she also has to ensure that she keeps breathing herself, while also trying to figure out who is doing the unspeakable things to other competitors.Tamsyn then leads us on this beautiful adventure, where twist after twist occurs so seamlessly that you can’t help but feel completely enthralled. The writing is so beautiful, so intelligent, and so very impressive. And the way the entire story is told is so very transportive! I mean, this book has one of the scariest settings I’ve read all year, but I felt like I was right there battling for my life, with a goofy smile on my face. And the atmosphere and constant chill while reading? It’s unparalleled and truly an experience like no other.I love this book for many reasons, but I also love it because it’s over the top, and has so many one-liners, and it’s painfully romantic, and the girl gets the girl at the end. And it’s what’s I’ve been waiting my whole reading life for. This is a better, and way more unique, and 100% more impressive version of what straight, white dudes have been publishing in SFF forever. I keep seeing people say that they feel this book is too confusing, the characters too over the top, and the world too complex, but I just don’t feel that way at all. This is the story my sapphic loving heart has been searching for in epic fantasy my whole life. Gideon the Ninth is my f/f loving, literary loving heart’s anthem, and I plan to play it on repeat forever.This book has the best enemies to lovers romance I’ve ever read in all of my years. Yeah, you read that right. In my whole freaking life, this is my favorite. I’m talking OTP for the rest of my days. I didn’t exist before this ship sailed in this first book. And this book also has such a central theme of trust, and what it means to put your trust in another. Also, what it means to be trustful, and the privilege of having someone put their trust in you, unconditionally. And this book also has an amazing discussion on power dynamics and imbalances, and how important it is to be aware of these things while putting your trust in yourself and in someone else, simultaneously.Overall, this really just felt like the book I’ve been waiting my own personal eternity for. This felt like the book of my dreams and my hopes. All I want is ownvoices lgbtqiap+ books, with f/f relationships, with cutthroat girls putting themselves first, but allowing themselves to be vulnerable enough to maybe let someone else get to see a softer side of them. Almost like I’ve been reviewing books for five years now, preparing myself to read and review Gideon the Ninth, even though I know no word combination or sentence structure I could ever come up with could do it justice for this story. Basically, I know this book isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you feel like you have similar reading taste to me, then I implore you to give this one a try. I mean, if the tagline “Lesbian Necromancers in Space” isn’t going to sell you, hopefully my emotional, bleeding heart self can. This book means everything to me, and I hope you enjoy if you pick it up.

**SPOILERS**This book isn't a bad book, but it's not a great one either. The great failing of it is in its character Harrowhawk. I get that she's not exactly supposed to be likable- but she's damn well insufferable. And not in a fun, anti-hero way. Just obnoxious in an out and out obnoxious way. Also, a fascist, slaver way.The weird skirting around enslavement and slavery also put me way, way off. Like, I would have expected Gideon to be a hell of a lot more pissed off about it- and every chance she could've had for the revenge she obsesses about is passed on due to 'sentiment'- or not capitalized on in the least. It's an unfortunate dynamic to have sentiments for a slaver. Especially now, with where we are in the real world, there's not much redemption to be allowed for fascists. This book goes to great lengths to allow it. There's a lot of work put into trying to work all that out, and it doesn't pan out for the author. Granted, I'm only 3/4's through the book, but the cavalier way it's been treated so far has annoyed me so much I had to put the book down.It's clear where the plot is going- and it doesn't sit right with me that one half of the relationship was literally abused and tortured by the other half. There's enemies to lovers and then there's abused slaves to abusive slavemasters lovers. Uncomfortable is putting it mildly. I also know how it ends, and it's just bad. Real bad. The sacrifice is infuriating.Basically, I expected it to be much, much better- and it could've been, except for Harrowhawk. Seeing that the sequel is all hers just about did it for me. I don't think I'll be revisiting.

I was really ready to adore this book. Humanity has spread through the universe and (at least part of it) is currently ruled by a necromantic god-emperor who apparently at some point resurrected humanity from extinction (or, at least, a sizeable portion of it?) The Emperor instituted Nine Houses, ruled by powerful necromancers, each with its own character and bailiwick. The empire is tottering, shot through with rot and decay (as you’d expect from an empire built upon necromancy) and most of the Emperor’s champions, super-powered necromancers called Lictors, have fallen over the myriads since the founding of the Empire.And yes, “myriad” is the right word here, used frequently in the book in its archaic meaning of “a unit of ten thousand.” My inner word-geek squealed in delight at this.And our heroine spends most of the book running around wearing an almost-kinda black trench coat, totally ‘80s mirrored shades, and a rapier. And she spurts ‘80s quips like a gay action-hero.This, ladies and gentlemen, is Grade A Brian bait.But…You knew there had to be a “but,” right? Brian only giving three stars to a story that looks like it was based on notes by Clark Ashton Smith but strained through ‘80s action and anime tropes? That blurs the line between sci-fi and fantasy? What gives?What gives is the plot. It’s a mess. Our heroine is enslaved by a sadistic necromancer princess. Their relationship is… plot-convenient? It’s not so much that I didn’t buy it, but rather that I picked up the wrong signals. Our introduction to their relationship felt less like the opening to a romance/buddy cop thing and more like setting the stage of a nasty revenge. Rather than helping us to like both of these characters and straining at the antagonism that separates them, I started off hating the princess and never really warmed to her.These two are summoned by the Emperor to a conclave of the scions of the Nine Houses (each accompanied by a body-guard/champion and no one else) to a decaying palace on a distant world. Once they get there and we’ve met the other scions and their attendant cavaliers, things devolve quickly into Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians.Things are made worse by the antagonisms of the various scions. Instead of working together (something that should be the obvious move once you understand the rules of the game, since it’s nearly impossible for anyone to succeed without cooperation), they assume (for no good reason I could discern) that only a few can rise to Lictor in spite of being told outright that it’s the Empreror’s dearest hope that they all achieve that status.But you can’t really blame the scions, because the Emperor himself set this up in an incredibly stupid way. Shuttles we are told are “valuable” are tossed into the ocean and sunk instead of merely being flown away. The rules are poorly explained and even more poorly enforced. Once the secret of attaining Lictorhood is understood, the most devout house of Emperor-worshippers declares that such a thing is blasphemy and does its best to prevent anyone from becoming a Lictor, to the point of actually attempting to murder the other scions.It’s a neat premise described with excellent word-smithing that falls utterly apart if you poke at it at all.Still, it’s a fun read for all that. Just understand that this is a romance/mystery/thriller sort of thing, much more Ten Little Indians meets Jane Eyre in space with skeletons than Dune. Also, it’s of the more prudish sort of romances, where things never get to the point where fade-to-black is necessary. Don’t let the frequent references to dirty magazines and the course language of our protagonist fool you on that point, either. This romance is headed towards a union that is purely symbolic and spiritual, so if you’re looking for torrid lesbian shenanigans, this ain’t your book. If you’re cool with all that, and turning off your brain to avoid “fridge logic,” there’s a fun little romp here for you.

Brilliant, Bizarre and slightly surrealIn a Empire literally powered by death 9000 years ago the Emperor undying discovered the power of necromancy and gifted it to the Necro Saints or lyctors who founded the nine houses that rule the empire numbers down and the emperor losing his eternal war a call has gone out to the houses of the empire for the best necromancer and Cavalier ( the houses Champion and best swordsman/woman) to travel to the site of the first house and to face a series of challenges for the prize of becoming the new generation of Necro Saints.Unfortunately for the Ninth house there Cavalier is a a overgrown mummies boy who can’t wield a sword in steps Gideon, Orphan , swords-woman and smart ass and teenage nemesis to Harrow, necromancer and head of the ninth to survive they will have to put aside there enmity and find a way to work together.This is science fantasy or what would have been once known as Space Opera which is to say there are big ideas but little explaination on how everything works, hand to hand combat is still the go to solution and in a universe of space ships swords are still a thing. So this is closer to the Star Wars end of sci fi rather then Star Trek let alone the Expanse.There’s a good bit of humor in the story mainly through Gideon POV she is snarky and sassy and quick with the one liners one of my favorite protagonist in recent memory. However I wouldn’t call it a comedy maybe a dramedy? It’s dark and there’s a murder mystery at the heart of it and more then a few horror elements it is about necromancers after all but between the humor and the fact that there is a far more decent human beings in the story then the book cover would suggest, and while it is loud and brash it’s also quiet and contemplative at times or as much as a story that moves at breakneck speed can be its not dark and depressing indeed it subverts a lot of the horror tropes as it goes along and has a lot to say about fidelity, honesty and love.It’s obviously only the start of the story we don’t have more then a glimpse of the world building here, how necromancy works are who are the enemies the emperor has been fighting for 9000 years. I will say it buy it try it for yourself don’t be put off by the Grim Dark vibes it’s not that and while it does have pulpy elements the tag line Lesbian Space Nuns doesn’t really do it justice either while queerness is a strong element in the novel especially Gideons and is made pretty obvious from the start with a few straight up dirty jokes the romance aspect of the novel is subtle beautiful and really well done and while a very important part of the story doesn’t overwhelm the only other sci fi/ fantasy novel that handles this as well would be Sol Majestic another quirky brilliant sci fi novel though very different in tone and direction and plot another book and author I can’t recommend enough. TrueLy this has been a banner couple of years for sci-fi and fantasy debuts and Gideon the ninth proudly continues and elevates that trend magnificent.

Without a doubt, the worst book I've read in a long time. It was so bad, I decided to stop reading after trudging through a quarter of it and forcing myself to read every line of every page in utter bewilderment and disgust.Lazy, uncouth, American terminology. Such as "frigging marry it" "old as balls" "sucks ass" and so forth. Wholly unnecessary and incredibly off putting.Vague, non descriptive, puzzling. Complete and utter drivel and I am surprised it was even published let alone the fact that there are sequels.There are much better authors and books out there to read about science fiction.Adrian Tchaikovsky who wrote Children of Time and the sequel Children of Ruin. Absolutely mindblowing, utter ingenious and will become classics in science fiction in my opinion.Also, The Expanse by James S. A. Corey. The books are far better than the series, absolutely extraordinary and I simply cannot put them down. I will be sad when I finish them.Save yourself the money and bother. Click away from this as fast as possible. I'm absolutely gutted that I not only wasted my time on it but £7.91 on it also. Could have purchased something much better and probably cheaper for that amount.

This book was described to me as “lesbian necromancers in space.” I knew very little else about it, but that description intrigued me enough to make me pick it up. I was expecting a fun read and ended up with it being one of my favourite books of the year to date.As far as I can tell (some of the world-building is deliberately opaque), it’s set in our solar system thousands of years into the future, where each planet is ruled by different groups of necromancers, ably supported by swordspeople known as Cavaliers. The story focusses on Gideon Nav, who arrived on the Ninth House (the term “house” seems to be used to refer to both planets and their ruling families) in mysterious circumstances as a baby and has grown up as an indentured servant, with constantly thwarted dreams of escaping and joining the intergalactic military. She despises the Ninth House, which is basically a gloomy death cult, and in particular, its heir, the immensely powerful necromancer, Harrow.The Emperor, head of the First House and most powerful necromancer of all, who’s been half absolute ruler, half god for thousands of years, summons together the heirs of all eight other houses, along with their head cavaliers. For all those thousands of years, the emperor had eight supremely powerful necromantic lyctors (one from each house) fighting on his behalf. Now he wants to give the current heirs the opportunity to ascend to Lyctor-hood, but they need to prove their worth. When the hereditary Ninth House Cavalier Primary refuses to attend the gathering and flees, Harrow forces Gideon to serve as her new Cavalier, despite their hatred of each other.All of this set-up and plot takes place over the first few hundred pages of an extremely long and complex narrative. I won’t go into detail about what happens next but it’s a busy mix of quests and challenges, a murder mystery, a horror-style plot, and lots of rivalry, friendship, plotting, and romance between the various lyctors and cavaliers. There are all sorts of twists, revelations and mysteries. The combination of these various elements and the way that aspects of several other genres are mixed in with the basic sci-fi setting made it a really interesting and refreshingly different read. It also does a good job of interweaving some very dark elements with some very funny ones and lots of action with some more cerebral scenes.It’s worth mentioning that it’s quite a complex read, for three reasons. Firstly, beyond Gideon and Harrow, there are about 15 people who could be seen as main characters, or at least very important secondary characters, and they can be tricky to keep track of. Secondly, there are lots of necromantic terms and concepts to get your head around. And thirdly, as touched on above, there’s a lot of world-building, but very little info-dumping. You’re basically expected to work out what Houses and Cavaliers and the Locked Tomb and everything else means. Most of this becomes clear as you read, but the first few hundred pages require a lot of guess work and reading between the lines, and even by the end, there were some concepts I wasn’t clear on (like, what’s “the river” that the emperor is over?). I much prefer this end of the confusion spectrum to having everything spelt out and working it all out was half the fun. That said, just a little bit more explanation of concepts and reminders of characters might have been helpful at times.As the “lesbian necromancers in space” line might suggest, the main character is into girls and there are some nice romantic elements. But it was quite refreshing how this wasn’t a big deal. No element of the plot is about her coming out, struggling with or hiding her sexuality, or facing homophobia. Neither is the fact she’s female any impediment either to her joining the army or serving as a Cavalier, or even worth commenting on in that context by any of the other characters. She’s a talented swordsperson on a mysterious mission who just happens to be female and a lesbian. Indeed, in an otherwise grim universe, there seemed to be little issue with people’s sexuality or gender roles across the board.This is such an unusual and weird book that it’s hard to pin down exactly what made it so interesting and enjoyable, but I’d thoroughly recommend it and can’t wait for the sequel — particularly after a really quite shocking ending.

The thing it does that I cannot bear is that the third person narrative bits switch between Fancy Gothic Fantasy Prose and Extremely Informal Goofs - to paraphrase a couple of pages i read earlier before having to quit forever, "Ever the intrepid scholar, she perused the great dark libraries at length, discovering ancient horrors.... the way her parents died was a bag of ass and it sucked they were so mega-dead now"It doesn't even seem to be used knowingly for comedy, and I'm sure for a lot of people it's really normal, but for me I just struggled to stay immersed from one line to the next. I kept thinking why are they so versed in recent Earth culture, is the frustrating narration implying something, would a 17 year old powerful necromancer really say that to her slave, how many times is a conversation going to wearily snap to a punchline like "because I completely ****ing hate you!"?I suspect the actual plot, from what I've gleaned, is also not for me, but since I didn't read far enough to see for myself I can't comment. Mind you, I think she nailed the awfulness of a spiteful and petty teen, which just reinforces my need to never read about her having sex with her slave in space.

I wanted to love this book. I truly did. It had such great reviews and hype about it. The cover is awesome. The blurbs are enticing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for me. Do not get me wrong, I love sci-fi, I love space, action, death, otherworldly Gothic world building, lesbians with great big swords – all of it. It’s just that this book did not live up to its claims.I’d hardly call the characters lesbians, well, they might have been, or they might have been a couple of young women exploring the vague notion of angsty Victorian female romantic friendship, so caught up in each other for their owns sakes that everyone else is meaningless to them - while coming across as hating each other.There wasn’t much space either. Aside from getting on a shuttle to go to another planet for a few pages and then ending up on some other thing floating about the heavens for another couple of pages at the end of the book, there is rarely any space at all.Gothic Palace – whatever it was, it might have been a palace. But what is described is a crumbling, relic of something that has various sections, some appear grand, others have come out of a 20th Century science laboratory or the art sketches for the video game Dead Space. In fact, a lot of the action sequences in the book reminded me of the OTT violence and gouts of blood and guts that fly around in those kinds of video games. Maybe that’s what the author was aiming for, I’m not sure, but it didn’t work for me in novel format. Dead Space is a great game BTW.This book also tried to be funny. It was a dark humour, given the subject matter. And I guess it worked, if you can suspend disbelief enough to think people crack jokes and make quirky hand gestures and facial expressions while desperately fighting for their lives against amassed necromantic nastiness. Fair enough, we are supposed to suspend disbelief and imagine necromancers, reanimated skeletons, evil Lords, soul siphoning, serious people really wanting to seriously hurt others, traveling in space etc is real – that isn’t hard, but for me it didn’t mix well with quirky humour. I got over it very quickly. There were many eye rolling moments – oh, her arm has withered, eyes fallen out, guts dangling by a thread being dragged 20 foot along a threadbare carpet and she still can crack a joke with a wink? That kind of eye rolling – awesome.It took me a good while to get into the book. It felt like nothing useful happened for the first 150 pages aside from getting on a shuttle and going to another planet. We could have started on the planet and not lost much. It got a little more exciting about 200 pages in. But then it devolved into a quite convoluted very hectic fight fest with people dropping dead all over the place. When I got to this part, it reminded me of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – a far less in your face creep fest.Lots of people clearly love this book. Perhaps they love its attempt at being Avant Garde, or its OTT nature, or the fact there is a supposedly hot chick with a sword. If you are after a solid lesfic dark scifi read with fantasy elements (like I was – based on the blurbs), you may very well be disappointed. I did have to push myself to finish it, when normally I’d devour even a vague lesfic scifi like someone starved of lesfic scifi (because we are). I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of the series.