Five books into my Sapphic Book Bingo and I decided it was time to finish reading what seems to be the most well-known sapphic book by a large margin, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. (Please correct me if I missed any other major popular sapphic literature.) I read this under the premise that it would fill the "bodyguard" square.
This is my spoiler-free review. A more spoilery analysis... might come at a later time, although I found that this book didn't fire off my own creative synapses as much as any of the other books I've read for this challenge so far, so maybe not. Either way, let's start with the basics first.
Story Premise
Gideon Nav is a member of the House of the Ninth, one of nine planets serving the Lord Undying. The culture of the nine houses focuses on the usage of necromancy as their primary means of power. Gideon herself has no necromantic ability, but this does not prevent the Lady of the Ninth House, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, from making use of her in other ways (as a slave).
Gideon has attempted to escape from the Ninth for nearly her entire life, but her latest attempt has been waylaid by a major development among the nine houses: The Lord Undying has called for an adept and a cavalier from each house to travel to the planet of the First House in order to undergo trials to see who are capable of becoming the new Lyctors, immortal beings of untold magical and political power.
Harrowhark has every intention of becoming a Lyctor herself, but her only cavalier has flown the coop. As such, she hastily chooses to train Gideon in the ways of a cavalier, Gideon already being her most capable swordswoman. Gideon is reluctant, but also sees how this might be her only means of escaping the house she's been chained to, so she agrees to the plan.
As it turns out, though, no one is really prepared to face exactly what is waiting for them at the First House...
Dysfunctional worlds
This book was absolutely not my thing. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
Now, there were aspects of this book that ended up picking at my personal issues and anxieties, much like a lot of the other books I've been reading for the bingo. However, though this led me to criticize the other books for not handling their topics in what I thought would've been healthier ways... that's not a criticism I have of Gideon the Ninth, even though the stuff that happens in this book is much worse than what happened in the others.
Gideon's universe is not an ideal universe. It's actually a fucking awful universe, and I think the author is well aware of that fact. Similarly, all of the characters are deeply dysfunctional, and I think the author is well aware of that, too. Nothing about this story could be said to serve as a model for how to live an ideal life. And... I think that's the main difference between the problems in this book and the problems in the other books. This is not an idealized kind of fantasy.
However, this does not change the fact that imagining oneself in the world of Gideon the Ninth is an anxious and miserable experience from start to finish. I get that this adds to the intrigue factor for people who don't have the kinds of anxieties I do, but I do have the kinds of anxieties I do, so I was just anxious and miserable about it.
But to be fair, the book is more than just an exploration of different ways to be miserable. It also has some other qualities.
The other qualities
Other than misery, I feel like Gideon's writing pursued and successfully achieved three other primary goals:
- Worldbuilding. Gideon the Ninth, I feel, is speculative fiction before any other genre. It takes a central worldbuilding premise of "what if the universe was centered on necromancy" and it does absolutely everything that it can with that concept. Not just how magic works, but in how it affects the culture and viewpoints of the people. How it seeps into the very architecture of the buildings the characters are confined within.
- Snark. The tone of the writing is, I would say, something very modern and internet-influenced. It bluntly presents the horrors of the world for what they are, then uses sarcastic humor as a coping mechanism in response to it. And it is funny, and it does provide some relief in the middle of what would otherwise be an unrelenting torrent of awfulness. But that's what a coping mechanism is for, it doesn't change the fact that it's a coping mechanism, and so the fact that this is the only relief that can be found in this world just kinda compounds how awful everything is.
- Action. Gideon is a fighter at heart, and when dire situations arise, that's when she's in her element. As soon as the adrenaline hits and we get her view of the world from a fighter's perspective, we get all the martial elements in a great level of detail.
So I do think that these are individually complex tasks to handle, and yet the writing successfully achieves all of them. The issue, for me, is... I don't like misery, I'm not interested in aspects of a physical setting, I'm not interested in murky aesthetics, and I'm not interested in action. All of these things are turn-offs for me. I'll accept snark, but it's not something I'd go out of my way to seek out in a book. It's not something that makes up for three other major unpleasant aspects for me.
But if these things sound like they'd appeal to you, sure, give it a shot. I dunno. Just be aware that none of it is my ballpark, and I can't tell you how well this book handles these things compared to other works. (But I doubt there's many other books that juggle all of these things simultaneously with each other.)
The Romance
So... I would not say that Gideon the Ninth is a romance book, and I wasn't expecting it to be one, because all the marketing stuff pointed towards "fantasy". However, I knew it was a sapphic book, and so I was expecting there to be romance elements of some sort present in it.
In short, Gideon (the character) shows an appreciation of women and flirts with a few women over the course of the book, but I would not say that there is a full-on romance plot or subplot anywhere in the book.
There is... a kind of close relationship between her and one of the other characters by the end of the book, and it could be described as romantic when viewing it a certain way, but I personally don't see it as a romantic relationship. I view of it as more of a "sisters-in-arms" kind of relationship, which I think is an understandable relationship to have in a story where the entire universe is practically an active war zone.
Again, it's not an idealized kind of fantasy. I don't think the intention is for the reader to desire any of the kinds of relationships that exist between the very troubled characters of this book. I think the relationships are there for the reader to empathize with, to be grateful that these characters share any kind of positive connection with anyone in this hell, regardless of how brief those feelings are, regardless of how painful those relationships might be otherwise.
But my interest is in exploring everything positive that a romantic relationship can be, and in the end, this book didn't really have anything to offer me in that regard. This isn't a criticism--just an acknowledgment that this book and I are pursuing different goals.
The Mystery/Intrigue
This is a section I include for every book I review, but since GtN is spec-fic, I had more of an expectation for it to include this kinda stuff than the more laid-back contemporary romances I've been reading.
Well... it's got enough intrigue, I guess. If you're not anxiety-ridden like I am, there's plenty plot twists and danger to keep you on the edge of your seat. As the story gets more intense towards the end, a ton of stuff happens. More stuff than I could keep up with. It was kinda overwhelming, and I'm not sure if that was part of the intention. But it could've easily been.
But one observation I had in the middle of it: I felt like a lot of the plot twists from the middle towards the end of the book had to do with the necromancers coming to realize that necromantic magic was capable of things that they never expected to be possible. And like... that's a surprise to the characters, but to me, who doesn't know anything about how magic works in this unknown fictional world, it was just another bullet point on the functionality of it on top of all the "basics" that had already been shown beforehand. I didn't feel like I'd been given enough time to internalize the basic mechanics to be surprised when those mechanics were overturned.
And not just the necromancy, but I think I began to feel that way about all the "revelations" more generally, the more of them started to pile on top of each other. The excitment of the plot twists, to me, wasn't based in overturning false expectations I had built about how the world and its characters worked, which is the kind of plot twist I prefer. The excitement was based more on the fact that the implication of nearly every plot twist was "Oh, someone's about to die right now, huh."
I'm not going to say it's a bad thing. It's fine. It's just not something I can really praise the book for being unique or clever about, even if I do think it's a clever book in other ways (mainly the humor).
A note on the book's popularity
I've long understood that popularity is not equivalent to quality, not indicative of quality. Nonetheless, I'm frustrated by the concept of popularity because it is conflated with quality far too often, and often this leads to me being frustrated with the popular works themselves (even when they weren't trying to be popular).
When I asked my friends for suggestions of sapphic books to read, Gideon was the only one that got recommended more than once (other than The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics), and it was the only one that was seemingly recognized by the majority of my friends in general. In addition, checking the book on Goodreads, I noticed it had orders of magnitude more ratings and reviews than any other sapphic book I looked at.
To be blunt, I was suspicious, particularly since I wasn't familiar with the book myself until it was recommended to me. This is not the kind of popularity a book garners all by itself, not a book with such a specific and eclectic tone and focus. So I asked my friends what the deal was, and soon learned that the author Tamsyn Muir had a history of writing fanfiction for Homestuck.
I don't have an issue with this. Homestuck drew in a lot of talented creators, and even though those creators got a boost just by being attached to a name that was already popular, I do think the creators themselves were often skilled as well. And I think Muir is a good writer, even though this book isn't for me.
What frustrates me is that I know there are other equally skilled creators out there, with just as eclectic a focus as Muir, but they didn't receive the level of credit and accolades that GtN received, and never will receive it, because they happened not to be caught up in a massive cultural zeitgeist while it was still happening.
Maybe it's something every creator has to accept on some level, and either find an existing community to latch onto in hopes of finding bigger numbers that way, or just forget about achieving that level of reach. But I don't think the ability to make those kinds of connections is a part of good creativity, and I wish capitalism wasn't a thing, and I wish we had better methods of helping people find weird niche works that would appeal to them even if those works don't appeal to most others.
And I wish the way popular works reached their audience wasn't through people like me, people who don't actually enjoy the works themselves that much, but feel a need to be familiar with the works because they're part of a broader shared cultural understanding that they want to make sure they stay in the middle of (in my case, sapphic literature).
Conclusion
I didn't enjoy it, I had my own personal reasons for not enjoying it, but I don't feel like I can rightly say the book is poorly written at all. If the unique aspects of it sounded like they'd appeal to you, and you weren't turned off by the downsides, then sure, give it a shot.
But don't read it just because it's popular. And if you happen to like it, consider the tastes of whatever person you end up recommending it to, or add some caveats and considerations to the recommendation, before you recommend it to them.
(Disclaimer: This is not me throwing shade at anyone who recommended the book to me. Not all of you knew me that well when you did. The ones who did, noted it might not be my thing. I just know there's bound to be tons of people out there for whom this isn't true. I've seen what Dark Souls does to people. We are all actively seeing what Harry Potter has already done to people)