Gideon the Ninth

6/10/2022:

me anytime i read something that's not gideon the ninth: i wish i were reading gideon the ninth

me reading gideon the ninth: yay

The Most Book Of All Time

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2/14/2022: just comfort-read the quotes page and like. this is my favorite book. to end all books. i dont know why i read other books. i dont know why i ever do anything other than reread this book. i always have tlt in fond periphery, but anytime i read the actual words on the page i get this like stomach-sinking-into-ass sensation of realizing i’m in horrible life-ruining love with someone i just glimpsed across the room at a dinner party. like, you happen to me all over again. it had to be you, i was made for loving you, etc. sappy love songs are for me and my relationship w the locked tomb series only. happy valentines day.

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i've adored taz's work--professional and otherwise--since i was twelve years old, so i feel like a proud little sister reading this book, in an inappropriately parasocial sort of way. still, loyalty alone doesn't net five-stars. i bought gideon when the book came out, but found it hard to push through to the first act until a good half a year and change later.

in some ways, this is an actively antagonistic read, so much so that i found myself angry at the first bit. i generally hate high fantasy (GOT, aragon, dragon age--boring as shit, eat me). while gideon is half sci-fi, the beginning does that high fantasy thing i hate, where it prattles on in gobbledygook lore so unforgivingly that the context doesn't help. this is obviously better than the alternative--immersion-breaking infodumping, which i hate even more--but it's not like it's a binary decision, and both feel equally and irritatingly navel-gazey to newcomers. on top of this, everyone has names like blootybloodimus the sixty-ninth, and the characters all come at you so fast that you don't commit them to memory until they're gone. (do yourself a favor and write notes on the dramatis personae page.)

gideon also suffers from some marketing errors. it's pitched in such a way that it sounds like a sweeping space opera, but it's actually a locked-door mystery in a haunted house with an underground abandoned laboratory. very similar to [b:And Then There Were None|16299|And Then There Were None|Agatha Christie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1638425885l/16299._SY75_.jpg|3038872] in the [b:The Haunting of Hill House|89717|The Haunting of Hill House|Shirley Jackson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327871336l/89717._SY75_.jpg|3627] house, but everyone is a sexy, morally-ambiguous, magic catholic lesbian. or palamedes. if i'd known that from the start, it would've been much easier to keep my attention on the straight-and-narrow through to the inciting incident.

HOWEVER, now that i have finished the book, i wouldn't change it for the world. in some ways, the casual lore-dropping at the beginning is just the start of the confusion, so lean into it. enjoy it. put on noise-cancelling headphones and enter a state of psychological flow. the prose is so gorgeous and so clever and so opaque that my little adhd brain gets stuck like tires up a mudslide, and i thank god for every minute of it. (it is worth noting that i read it either with constant interruptions or falling asleep; my partner, who i made read it and who loved it, did not find it so confusing, despite his own adhd brain.)

but there is joy in being dumbstruck!!! and you get some answers eventually. and new questions. and then you get to obsess and theorize and puzzle and that's where the fun is. all of the best books make me obsessive, that's how i know they're mine, and i'm considering killing someone in the publishing industry for an ARC of harrow. you can talk about promises to the reader all day long, but gideon puts its money where its mandible is. a lot of people talk about genre mish-mash in its marketing, but it's more of a carefully woven genre tapestry, and the mystery thread is the core.

though i found the lore-introduction graceless, the lore itself is endlessly endearing. necromancy!! bones!! cannibalism!! greco-roman catholicism?? face paint!! there's something for everyone. all of it's for me. especially with a good dash of sci-fi mixed in.

also the lesbians are so, so good. you rarely get to read lesbians that get to be as good as this. if you keep finding yourself reading lesbians and thinking, "this is cute praxis, but why don't wlw get to have epic romances like het couples or those two men sitting six feet apart on the CW?" this is your read. finally, some good fucking food. what pacat did for mlm, taz does for wlw. lesbians hardly ever get their proper fantastical, you-jump-i-jump due. or rob reiner and nora ephron style rapport. or enemies to lovers arcs. in gideon, they get all that and more. i can't even tell you how much the necromancer/cavalier thing is up my alley. it’s the kind of dynamic you get a craving for, the kind where you stroke the interactions on the page, because how could two people be so good together.

everything about this book is perfect. it's such a mentally-taxing read, and i'm slow as a car wreck, but still this book made its way onto my sparse list of favorites with only slight pause. my household has already pre-ordered two copies of harrow, because neither of its members want to wait to share. i want this book to blow up to be devastatingly popular and made into a movie and i want people on my tumblr dash to write 5+1 griddlehark fanfic for a good decade. what a fuckin debut. thank god for this book.

АВТОР/КА ЯКОГО БІСА!!!! (люблю Ґідеона й Гарроу)

13.12.24

Ґідеон Нав спакувала свого меча, свої черевики, свої сороміцькі журнали та втекла з Дому Дев'ятих. (дякую Віват за цей шматочок <3)

So fun

At the beginning of the book, and for 3/4 afterwards, you do not know anything about anything, and, often, neither does the MC. Even when she does think of something, it is rarely expanded on, just like in real life. When she thinks of her goals, she thinks 'I want to do this, it'll be great, much better than right now, not 'I, XXX of XXX, want to do this, y, because many years ago someone did something and it lead to...' that many authors use to insert information.

The mystery was needed, and it was the only thing that kept me reading through several hundred pages of very little happening. The payoff at the end was amazing, but I almost put it down so many times. I would never blame anyone for not getting far enough, the book is over 600 pages, and the answers doesn't start until page 550 at the earliest.

This was a series I for some reason where scared to start but I finally did in december of 2022. It was a really good story and kinda annoyed it took me so long to get to it. Definitely a series I'll continue with!

Hot damn, but does this book live up to its many rave reviews. The main character, Gideon, is one of the best protagonists in anything I’ve read for a long time. She’s a foul-mouthed, dirtbag, horn-ball, sword fighting lesbian goth with a necromancer named Harrow for her best frenemy.

The galactic emperor calls Gideon and Harrow to represent the Ninth House in an important ceremony. This means traveling to a dead planet full of walking skeletons so that they can learn how to ascend to his right hand, along with members of all seven other houses. Problem is, someone keeps killing house members in new and gruesome ways, and Gideon and Harrow have to put aside their differences to stay alive and keep one step ahead of the killer.

Muir builds a fascinating world that feels incredibly unique, all while telling a good old-fashioned murder mystery. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Made me sad. Still need to read book 2.

DNF at 60%. *sigh* This book had such promise.

It started out strong and intriguing, but the world-building left a lot to be desired. What made me quit, however, was that I could no longer tell most of the characters apart. I didn’t know who was whom or why I should care. They were all having an argument and I had no idea who was whom or what the differences were.

It was also somewhat predictable, which was driving me crazy. Apparently, Harrow and Gideon become an item? I called that from the friggin’ beginning of the novel. Goddamn it.

Granted, I’m frustrated with irl problems. But a book that takes place in an alternate universe should not have references to

Mean Girls or other pop culture references. I also didn’t like the use of internet speak, such as “Gideon noped out”. You’re writing a book, not a roleplay or chatting online. I took that to mean that they had internet culture like they do in real life, but now I’m not so sure that the book supports that hypothesis. Moreover, I’m not sure that, if Gideon had internet access, she’d have used it so frivolously.

I felt like the characters came off somewhat flat and, as I said, predictable. Nothing really surprised me very much after a certain point.

I hate when I dislike a popular book like this. It makes me wonder if I read the same book as other people.

I really enjoyed most aspects of this book, but so many things just didn’t connect or felt disparate looking back. The entire interstellar/space aspect felt like a last minute add-on and the overall story would’ve been the exact same without its inclusion. The ending, for me, was a *really* big let down—3 chapters of endless fight scenes with just, bones flying and a big construct with tentacles and sword play…it got old quickly (but I recognize that’s also personal to the kind of things that hold my attention as a reader; protracted fight scenes are often boring to me).

On the plus side, the irreverence of Gideon Nav and the interactions between some characters was super. I loved the shitty teens & Magnus, for example. A solid 3.5/5

Viendo que tanta gente no lo ha acabado me hace desear haber hecho eso tambien.

El primer tercio del libro no es salvable. Es aburrido, es cliche y a la vez es confuso.

El segundo tercio es muy bueno, 5 estrellas.

El final es muy peliculero, bien descrito pero meh.