Book Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Posted on April 7, 2020 at 10:49 am by Gene Ambaum

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Tor, 2019. 9781250313195. 448pp.

This book is hard to describe. Interstellar travel, a crumbling civilization, necromancers from nine Houses competing, along with their cavaliers, to become immortal. There’s magic, gore, sword fights, monsters, a mystery, puzzles, and oh so many skeletons. At its center is the smart-assed, plain spoken, sweary cavalier Gideon from the Ninth House. She hates the necromancer she’s supposed to protect (with good reason), she’d rather abandon her house to become a soldier, she’s in lust with a very weak but wildly attractive necromancer, and she’s trying to fit the role that she’s been forced into.

I cannot tell you how much fun this book was. It was a nonstop, death-obsessed, no-idea-what-was-going-to-happen-next novel that reminded me why I loved all the goth kids in my high school. (I’ve just finished the next book in the series, Harrow the Ninth, too, which will be out in a few months. Great sequel. It will make absolutely no sense if you don’t read this one first, and it will help to totally trust Muir as a writer, too (which you will after you read this book). It was as unpredictable and hard to classify a ride as Gideon the Ninth, which I thought impossible.)