IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth: I truly love a great first sentence. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence had a powerful first sentence, and this one grabbed me the same way. It immediately let me know what kind of world I was going to be reading about, set the tone for the story, and introduced the protagonist.
Gideon the Ninth is Tamsyn Muir’s debut novel, published in 2019, and could be described as a bit of a survivor slash overcoming the monster story. The story is almost entirely told from Gideon’s perspective with a little bit from the point of view of her necromancer, The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark. After several attempts of starting to run away at the age of four, by the time Gideon reached the age of eighteen they numbered eighty-six, but after Harrow receives a letter and invitation to Caanan House for a chance to become Lyctor, Gideon begrudgingly decides that she will go along to be her cavalier. There they meet with several other House heirs and cavaliers where it will be decided which one of them will become Lyctor, through a series of tests.
This book was an absolute joy for me to read. I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it from the writing to the character development, the plot, and world-building. It has everything that I look forward to reading about in a story. And I have to wonder whether or not Tamsyn Muir plays Warhammer or not. There are some parts that I found throughout the book that remind me a bit of it.
Starting with the writing, I will say that the author has a very strong voice and uses that well to demonstrate what sort of character Gideon is through the course of the novel. The word choices that she uses for description are very much in line with the sense of character that I get from who Gideon is as a person. She’s incredibly sarcastic, laugh out loud funny, and seems to have a certain kind of destain for authority that I can appreciate. I can’t stress enough how the writing in this story added further development to Gideon’s character.
With Gideon, it seems apparent to me that she wants nothing more than freedom from where she’s at after trying to escape eighty-six times by the time that she was eighteen and starting at the age of four. I find Gideon’s character to be incredibly likable and proactive. She’s confident, assertive, and quite brazen in most cases and some could even find her to be a bit rude. I’m sure that Harrow finds her to be a bit rude, but they don’t like each other that much, and I like the irony that the two of them are paired up with one another for the series of ordeals that they’ll have to face. She’s also very clever as she seems to cajole her way out of most situations with Crux it seems.
The other notable character in this book is Harrow. As Lady of the Ninth House, The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus is described as having pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering by our protagonist. It’s said to comprise 100 percent of her personality, and Gideon marvels that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years, wear black, and sneer with such ancient self-assurance. She’s also said to be moody and petulant. Her hands are wrecked, fingers riddled with dirt and oozing cuts with grit stuck between the wounds and beneath messed up nails. Tamsyn Muir paints quite a picture for the hero necromancer of this story.
There is a cast of other notable characters that are involved in the plot of the story. A man called Teacher, one of the priests that seem to be in charge of the place. And as I said there are other necromancers with their cavaliers that are competing for the position of Lyctor, to see who will be standing beside the Undying King.
The characters are the best part of this book, as they should be. But that doesn’t mean to say that there are any shortcomings by any stretch of the imagination when it comes to world-building. The tone that was set from the very first sentence is one that paints a bit of a dark picture.
This is a dark world with the King Undying, monsters, and necromancers filling up most of the cast. Words like: catacomb, rotting, scabby finger, osseous matter, knuckle knives, and jaundiced paint a clear picture for the stage upon which this story unfolds. The bulk of the story takes place in a decrepit, rotting, ancient house where the others gather to find out who the next Lyctor is going to be. The magic system is incredible. It’s a hard-based magic system that uses a force called Thanurgy to fuel the necromancer’s powers. Each House and necromancer seems to specialize in different sorts of magic. All of them being super cool. The one that stands out the most in my memory involves the story of one necromancer who would drain the lives of others to give life to their cavalier or others who needed it. This process has been said to be excruciatingly painful. Another necromantic force that sticks out at me involves absorbing the life force or spirit of someone who’s died and using it to fight. It sort of reminds me of how people learn things in The Matrix, except instead of uploading information it’s like they use the person’s soul and become possessed by the person’s spirit in a sense.
Without giving anything else away, all I can say is that I’m definitely looking forward to reading other books by this author and that this one was incredible. If you haven’t checked out Gideon the Ninth, definitely will have to do so. It’s amazing!
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