Gideon the Ninth

[lunabee34]

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.



View all my reviews




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?

Comments

[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

[lunabee34]

Answers + more questions = my absolute fave

:)

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

[gloss]

Soooo messed up but also sincerely passionate! :DDD

[kore]

THE POEM, OMG

TALK ABOUT TRANSFORMATIVE WORK

[gloss]

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

[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)