This novel is a lesson in genre-mixing, and in how to stick an impossible landing. So for today’s Vox Book Club discussion, I wanted to go through some of the foundational tropes in Gideon the Ninth and talk about how they work and why. (Plus, trying to summarize a plot this complicated any other way is a fool’s game.) That’s part of why I always summarize this book as “lesbian necromancers in space.” It feels a little reductive, but it also comes as close as anything can to gesturing at all the trope-swirling glee going on here.
The combinations really shouldn’t work, but somehow they do. Sometimes I imagine Muir as a cackling mad scientist in a lab, grabbing beakers labeled “enemies to lovers” and “in space” and “ that incel meme about studying the blade” and swirling all their contents together. One of the things that makes Tamsyn Muir’s fantasy novel Gideon the Ninth so deeply satisfying to read is the giddy joy it takes in playing with different genre tropes. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath-but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.The Vox Book Club is linking to to support local and independent booksellers.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders. She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.Īfter rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. “Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original.” - The New York Timeson Gideon the Ninth “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” -Charles Stross on Gideon the Ninth Harrow the Ninth, the New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station. Includes 40+ pages of original content, including a never-before-available Locked Tomb short story.
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