lunabee34 | Gideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really, really liked this book.

The protagonist reminds me a lot of Murderbot (if Murderbot were angrier and more foul-mouthed). I would love to see Gideon and Murderbot interact.

I love the world building; there's a part where Gideon thinks a decoration of human teeth is human and beautiful, and I love all those little touches that make the world she inhabits so alien and strange.

I am very much ready for the next book.

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Wow.

This is so damn good. It's very funny and very emotionally affecting and a very good mystery.

I love how much is left unexplained. I still don't understand exactly what the deal is with the Emperor and what he was in danger from all those years ago. Dying to know who the pretty girl in the tomb is. Really want to understand who or what Gideon is; it's hard not to suspect that the note she found actually refers to her or to an ancestor. Who was her mother, and why did she end up in that air shaft? How did she survive the nerve gas? Cytherea says something toward the end that makes me suspect reincarnation is at play (something like "you all never learn even though we do this over and over again" and the way that Gideon is apparently super badass with a sword despite being told over and over again that she's merely mediocre). What happened to Gideon's body and to Cam? I am not discounting that Gideon will come back in a subsequent book. If she can be reunited with her body, Harrow will find a way.

Don't spoil me, but does Harrow the Ninth live up how awesome Gideon the Ninth is?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rydra_wong

Don't spoil me, but does Harrow the Ninth live up how awesome Gideon the Ninth is?

IMHO: an enthusiastic YES.

I now want to reread Gideon (not least because I am EVEN MORE CONFUSED about various mysteries, in a happy way), but I think I liked Harrow the Ninth even more -- it's the opposite of the common slightly awkward/weaker second-book-in-a-trilogy.

It builds on Gideon the Ninth to do some wild and pyrotechnic stuff with structure, and as

lightreads commented, it deploys a bunch of fannish modes of storytelling in a fascinating way.

From:

lunabee34

Oh yay!

That all sounds fabulous. :)

I am looking forward to reading it even more now. *sits on hands until pay day*

From:

rydra_wong

As someone else commented, it's also a rare case where having read the first book actually makes you more confused for much of reading the second than someone who hasn't.

There's a "... wait, WHAT???" effect which I found delightful.

From:

lunabee34

Oh, I love books like that!

From:

kore

It actually reminded me of Borges in a lot of ways, if Borges were into lovingly described lengthy arias to bones, LOL. But the methods of Borges, and other post-structuralist fantasist types, and fanfic are pretty similar I think -- but that would involve spoilers.

From:

kore

it's the opposite of the common slightly awkward/weaker second-book-in-a-trilogy

YES, definitely. The author could have just written Gideon the 9th over again and raked in the money and acclaim, but instead she really expanded how she plays with structure and narrative and meta, and once I got into it, it was great.

From:

rydra_wong

Yeah -- personally, I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, but Harrowis when I sat up and went "Oh HE-llo, this is REALLY interesting."

From:

kore

Yes! I stayed up all night to finish it (LOL whoops) but after that first false start, I was just GRABBED, and it's always so neat to see an artist really taking off like that. That's also pretty amazing because this could have suffered from second book syndrome AND middle boo of trilogy syndrome too, couldn't it? And it just soared.

From:

lunabee34

Yes, the second book and the second movie often pale in comparison to the first and third. I'm glad that's not the case here.

From:

lunabee34

Oh, y'all are really selling it!

Yay!!!!

From:

kore

Again without being too spoilery, hopefully, it's also all about narrative and stories and how we make stories and stories making us and transformative work. Not that reading it's a slog, a lot of the writing is really beautiful. Harrow is very, very Gothy.

Also if you read it you will cry buckets over some bad poetry that you were laughing at in the beginning.

From:

lunabee34

Awwwww yis!!!!! Crying buckets is my very favorite passtime.

From:

gloss

AHHHH I'M SO RELIEVED YOU LIKED IT!

Ht9 absolutely does live up to Gideon! It's different, and strange in its own way, and answers some of the questions you pose here but in ways that just open up the wider world and generate more questions.

:DDD

From:

lunabee34

Answers + more questions = my absolute fave

:)

I liked it so so much. It is just delightfully weird and messed up.

From:

gloss

Soooo messed up but also sincerely passionate! :DDD

From:

kore

THE POEM, OMG

TALK ABOUT TRANSFORMATIVE WORK

From:

gloss

HAHAHA I loved that aspect SO MUCH. Beyond the telling, really! <3333

From:

kore

I can't believe how something that was BAD and LOLTASTIC and kept on being so for most of the work was literally transformed into something beautiful and heartbreaking that made me sob. Now I want this in hardcover.

I know Gideon was really divisive, but I think Harrow is going to be one of those books most people think is disappointing and then it's realized as genius years later. But the people who love it are REALLY loving it. (My people! My intense narrative-obsessed people!) I could be wrong tho, the Jason Sheehan review for NPR (don't look, Lunabee!) really nailed it. Muir makes Nabokov's metafiction look like a dryasdust box of bones.

(SORRY NOT SORRY)

From:

princessofgeeks

I wanted so much to like this book!

I am so glad you did.

From:

lunabee34

Awww, I hate when I bounce off something everyone else is digging.

I hope you like the next big thing. :)

From:

princessofgeeks

Well, I loved Murderbot so that's tiding me over for now.

From:

lunabee34

Lord do I love Murderbot. And Emma loves Murderbot, too, which makes me happy. I know it is completely stupid and irrational, and I try so hard not to do it, but it gets me when she bounces off something I really love. LOL It's good to have a thing we both unabashedly love.

From:

princessofgeeks

I know!!! I was so delighted when the younger Princeling loved Ancillary Justice and we could talk about it.

I have shared a lot of stuff with my boys, going back to HP and LOTR and all the MCU movies. It's so fun.

The last thing I did with one of them was, back in the winter the older boy went with me to Knives Out which was so fun.

From:

lunabee34

Emma really liked Knives Out, and that made me happy.

She hasn't attempted the Leckie yet, and I'm kinda afraid she won't like it. It's pretty dense.

From:

princessofgeeks

I can rarely predict what books the younger Princeling will like. I was so surprised and delighted that he liked Ancillary Justice since usually he is all about the sword and sorcery.

He loved all the Five Gods books by Bujold, for example, and has been waiting impatiently for more.

But I couldnt' get him interested in the Vorkosigans.

No idea how it works for him. Recently he read Empress of Timbra and really liked it.

From:

kore

I LOVED Gideon, loved her book, and immediately pre-ordered the sequel. I had to put Harrow down a little bit after starting it, because I found it really frustrating. I picked it back up again yesterday, though, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a lot more complex and cryptic than Gideon (as is Harrow). I love Harrow the character a lot. No spoilers, but it's one of those books where you have to be really aware of dropped clues and hints.

From:

lunabee34

Oooh, thanks for the tip. I will pay careful attention and not let myself get ahead of myself in my haste to know What Happens. LOL

From:

elfin

In some ways I didn't like Harrow the Ninth as much as Gideon the Ninth, but in other ways it was amazing!

I don't really think it's spoilery to say that Harrow the Ninth is from Harrow's point of view, and I just didn't click with her like I did with Gideon. But the way the story unfolds is awesome, and very mind-fucky and twisty, and I loved that aspect of it.

From:

lunabee34

*nods nods*

That makes sense.

I can't wait to get a glimpse of what Harrow thinks of Gideon; that's going to be awesome.

From:

kore

I loved Gideon (the person), but my little Gothy teenaged fucked-up self was Harrow, LOL. (If someone dropped a hat I would make a Harrow mixtape full of Dead Can Dance and lots of Dancing Ferret Discs deep cuts.)

From:

lunabee34

Heee.

*pets bb you*

From:

kore

I actually had a GIANT jangly collection of old cross necklaces I picked up in thrift shops and I tended to wear them ALL at once, like a big noisy breastplate, plus I had triple ear piercings and a bunch of costume jewelry rings my mother had worn in the sixties. (No makeup tho, and my hair has always defied dye and sprays.) And an attitude you could hammer out iron on. Plus I was obsessed with Artaud and Rimbaud and Baudelaire and Camus and a whole lot of other dead French guys with 'tude. And I had supple knee joints and lumbar vertebrae that weren't squashed. //sigh

From:

lunabee34

I had a bunch of old jangly crosses that I had hung all over my bedroom like a vampire's lair. IDK why. I thought they were pretty. LOL

From:

kore

OMFG, same "aesthetic" thing. I think at that point I was a die-hard atheist! I don't think I had even met another Goth then! And yet, there I was, with my Cure CDs and a video dub of the Crow.

From:

elfin

Ha! I was a little smartass Punk who just wanted to seem tough.

From:

kore

Aww! I think that would be Gideon. Gideon would love the Sex Pistols. I wasn't into punk so much back then, that came a bit later, but I LOVED post-punk -- Joy Division, the VU, New Order, Wire, PiL, Sonic Youth....someone stop me before I do a mixtape AU of Gideon and Harrow as mundane AU college freshman roommates torturing each other with their musical tastes. Harrow would be one of those people who listened to des Prez and the Goldberg variations on harpsichord, with all the repeats. Gideon would find a copy of that awful Switched-On Bach album and blast it.