A Review of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I was about 100 pages into The Night Circus, which I had been told time and time again I needed to read if I loved The Starless Sea as much as I proclaimed to, when my other half finished Gideon the Ninth. As soon as they finished it, they insisted I read it and when I learned it was about a buff, kind of naive, lesbian and her pointy, angry, elf-like necromancer friend, I knew I had to listen.

I put aside The Night Circus (don’t worry, I’m back in it now) and finished Gideon the Ninth is a rip-roaring, spell-binding, heart-aching two days. When I say this book reached into my chest and pulled out my still beating heart and then ate it in front of me straight up Khaleesi style, it’s not an exaggeration.

Gideon is a fighter, in pretty much every sense of the word. She’s an orphan who was all but abandoned on a desolate planet under…shady circumstances, but she’s never let that stop her from being a badass. The only other person remotely near her age on the planet is Harrowhawk, the princess of the Ninth House, and stone cold bitch extraordinair. They hate each other, but, when a call is sent out for the necromancers of each planet, or House, to enter a competition that hasn’t happened in a millennia, Harrow and Gideon join, reluctant, forces.

The cast of characters that Muir manages to each give distinct personalities and backstories is insanely huge. Despite the host of characters, they all feel unique and they all play a significant role in the story and, thematically, help force Gideon and Harrow closer together.

There are some issues with pacing, I feel, in the second third of the novel, but it more than paid off in the end when, as I said, my heart was ripped from my chest. This blood-thirsty, gut-wrenching, bone-crunching novel got me so good in the “feels” I took a few days to not read anything else and let the story process. I legitimately think *SPOILER WARNING* that I was in some sort of mourning.

I eagerly await the second book in the series, Harrow the Ninth, of which I have already read the prologue for. You can find it here. The second person fucked me up emotionally, man, my heart isn’t ready for that shit. Now I just have to somehow survive until June without gnawing my own fingers off and trying to resurrect my fractured soul from the bones. Damn you, Muir!

PS: If Gideon and Harrow aren’t endgame at the end of this trilogy I will, first, grind my bones down into dust, and then sprinkle them in Tamsyn Muir’s cereal.