Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A Book Review

Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”

Sometimes, I read books that make me love them for no other reason than that they make me laugh constantly. It’s a rare thing, because I normally go for more serious things that are trying to say something. Which, as I can now hear Gideon saying, makes me “a bit of a douche”.

I started on Gideon the Ninth with really no expectations, beyond knowing that a lot of people loved it, and the very unusual “lesbian necromancers in space” that I’d heard to describe it. It’s raucous, hilarious from the start, and has some of the best character descriptions that I’ve read outside of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Example below.

The man who’d put the sword to her neck was uncomfortably buff. He had upsetting biceps. He didn’t look healthy; he looked like a collection of lemons in a sack.

While the comedy got me in the door, the growing number of mysteries, the characters that you love to hate, and then hate to love, kept me around until the finish. And what a finish it was! I had guessed at some of the mysteries correctly, which is rewarding as a reader, but some of them surprised me too! Tamsyn did a fantastic job of seeding these throughout the story in a way that created engagement, excitement, and a natural tension.

There were some plot holes, sure, or some things that could have been explained more, but I honestly didn’t care. If the novel had been twice as long I would’ve been thrilled to spend more time with the characters, the witty banter, and the world that Muir built.

So was it a bit fluffy? Yes, but it still made me tear up twice and laugh an unknown number of times. Was it a good book? It was fantastic. Will I read the others in the series? They’re already on hold at the library.

I highly recommend Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir if you’re in need of something fun to read.

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