Elise reviewed Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
At Times Thrilling, But Mostly Fine
3 stars
Content warning vague plot points
The next book we read for book club claims to be "Moby Dick meets Gideon the Ninth," so I suppose I'm glad I finished reading this before we crack that open. This was a faily compelling little... I hesitate to say space opera? We think that's the right word, it certainly had as many moving parts as a space opera. Certainly enough court entrigue, dashing nobles fencing each other like they're all named Inigo Montoya. In Space.
An overwhelming amount of snark pervades the first quarter of this book, and a less overwhelming but no more welcome degree of it persists throughout, cheapening dramatic moments and taking me out of the experience. Very similar to the feeling I got watching Guardians of the Galaxy, which is never a good thing. Muir almost seems afraid to let us take the characters and setting seriously sometimes, which is tragic, because it's a lovely setting! A millenia-old space-faring society of monarchic necromancers! A God-Emperor that hardly anyone has seen or heard from in all that time? A homeworld covered in sea and the only extant building is a gigantic skycraping tower so old that it's in ruinous, gothic decay? That's the good 40K vibes. That's metal as f**k, dude.
When the writing gets out of it's own way, this was a very compelling book. There was a specific moment where a duel breaks out in the third act, I had to jump up and down and wiggle it all out, I was so excited! The character writing was well done at times. Seeing the arcs of growth for Gideon and Harrow was rather gratifying- up until the end, which we feel was a total anticlimax. (I really don't like it when it's portrayed as a good or neccessary thing for victims to forgive their abusers, even if it was totally justified in fiction.) There was quite a lot of lesbian yearning without any payoff, which generally I'm against on principle, but it worked well here.
The back and forth dynamics of the different noble houses playing off each other, the turn into a who-dunnit mystery halfway through, the backstabbing, paranoia about backstabbing, stalking, megastructure exploration, Roadside Picnic-esque anomaly untangling- it all comes together about halfway through the book and almost sticks the landing. We really started to get along with this strange world that we as the audience barely get any idea of outside of a few small, decrepit, dying parts of it. It was a very evocative experience and created a desire for more- at least until that ending. Has me second guessing whether Muir is going to go somewhere I want to read about with the next book.
Mostly, I'm glad I read this book just to know what all the hubbub was about. I had friends recommend this to me after bringing up other books I've read and liked, and while this wasn't my favorite, it was relatively well-executed and engaged me as a reader. There were some moments that felt cheap or cheapened by Whedon-esque quips, but after the first act or so it becomes readable and generally gets better from there. I'm not sure we reccomend it in and of itself but it's useful just to be able to understand where others stand.
