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Wednesday Reading: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
This was part of my Hugo reading; also, people were raving about it.
The Ninth House, charged with guarding an infamous tomb, inhabits a gloomy world barely capable of growing food to support its human inhabitants -- and that's saying something, because there aren't that many mortal beings around the place. The residents are necromancer priests and nuns, and most of the servants are animated skeletons. And then there's Gideon.
Gideon is a smart-mouthed, tough young woman with something of a talent for swordwork and a head full of lusty fantasies about pretty girls. In between martial arts training with the Ninth House's aging swords-master and reluctant bouts of menial work, Gideon reads naughty comic books, lobs dirty and sacrilegious quips at her betters, and plots to escape off-world to become a soldier. The main reason she doesn't get worse punishments for her sins is (at a guess) that she is the only young person left in the Ninth House except for the high priestess in waiting, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and someone will have to serve Harrow in the years to come, besides the skeletons. Gideon and Harrow have a mutual enmity fest going that dates back to infancy.
As the story opens, Gideon's latest escape attempt is foiled, and a message arrives from the Emperor God. The necromancer heirs of all nine Houses are commanded to come to the first House and prove themselves worthy of becoming his Lyctor. And because the challenges will be of both mind and body, each competitor must also bring their cavalier. And who will be Harrow's cavalier? Take a wild guess!
Once the candidates come together at the First House, the story becomes a crazed ride of a locked-room mystery combined with a haunted house Gothic. In fact, this is the first time since Marta Randall's The Sword of Winter (anyone else remember this?), with its murderer run amok on a storm-isolated island castle, that I have come across anything that scratches this particular itch for me. Gideon is encountering other people (and green vegetables) for the first time in her life, even as the body count mounts, and it's in many ways a wonderful experience for her. But she and Harrow come to realize that surviving will mean depending on each other, and the ultimate result of this growing trust is, as one critic pointed out, deeply dysfunctional (but also beautiful, in a sick sort of way).
Gideon has a wonderful narrative voice, rather as though Sha Gojyo (Saiyuki) had been reincarnated as a buff young gay woman: the story is told pretty much entirely from her tight third-person viewpoint.The world-building is sheer crack, with all the good and the bad that implies: are the Houses on separate planets? In separate dimensions? Who cares! But if you do care about this kind of information, you may find this book both slight and frustrating.
I enjoyed this an awful lot, maybe more than it deserves. The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, is due out this August.
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Oddly enough, I have very recently read the reissued Randall, which I enjoyed greatly.
Gideon the Ninth, Marta Randall, etc.
Auto-correct is very opinionated and usually wrong. *slaps it upside the head*
I was worried about reading the re-issued Sword of Winter because I liked the original so much (even though I now understand that the publisher made her do stupid things to it). You are the second positive review of it in this space, and I know you have some idea of what I like. So I need to get it, clearly.
(On a related note: oh daegaer, daegaer, will I ever love any thing again the way I still love Saiyuki? *cries*)
Re: Gideon the Ninth, Marta Randall, etc.
Oh, fandoms of the heart! They are always the best. Saiyuki is good at keeping the affections.
Do you know about