Return of the Bookclub Dropout
Gideon the Ninth Edition
I am a Book Club dropout. Though I love reading books, and talking about books, doing so on a preordained schedule is an anathema to me. I don’t want to read the selected book on someone else’s timeline. I may not want to read it at all. Or maybe I do, but not just then. Truly, my brain does not need much invitation to refuse doing something.
If you’d like a refresher on all of the Book Clubs I have flunked out of, direct your attention here:
Anyways, I’d say I’d fail this new one, but you know what? I don’t think they’re going to let me. I present to you: A Court of Tea and Opinions reads Gideon the Ninth.
Background
First of all, who is the A Court of Tea and Opinions, you ask? I’m so glad you asked.
The long and short of it is: my friend Jessi and her friend Britt (who then became my friend Britt) went out to breakfast about a month and a half ago. I mentioned I was on the dragon smut to faerie smut pipeline, and Jessi immediately added me to their ACOTAR Instagram group chat. It’s only memes. It’s fantastic and I love it so much. Truly, the best way to read a book might be to come to it 8 years late and have a fandom that already created a plethora of memes for you to enjoy while you read.
Anyways, while sharing memes and generally joking about faeries, we, the denizens of the formerly known Suriel Tea Co.,1 realized that we all wanted to read Gideon the Ninth but had yet to do so. I own Gideon, as well as its sequels Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth, but just hadn’t gotten around to them yet.2 So, we set a date for book club, I fired up my educational institution Zoom, and we got to reading. In the run up to the actual bookclub itself, we decided we needed a group name. To keep in line with the official ACOTAR naming convention (A Court of (blank) and (blank), A Court of Tea and Opinions was officially born. We’re looking into making merch, too.
The Book
*Spoilers ahead*
Gideon the Ninth is the first book in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, who does not appear to have a website.3 The summary on the MacMillan publishing page reads thusly:
The Emperor needs necromancers.
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.
Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense.
Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth, first in The Locked Tomb Trilogy, unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap off the page, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy.
We follow our protagonist Gideon, who is desperately trying to escape her home planet, the Ninth, to join the military. The Ninth is an overrun ossuary, with animated skeletons outnumbering living and breathing humans. We are dealing with necromancy, after all. The Ninth is also home to the eponymous Locked Tomb, which isn’t important right now.
After Gideon’s latest escape attempt fails, she’s strong armed into acting as the cavalier, or swordswoman, of the Ninth’s necromancer, Harrowhark. The two are about to travel off planet to the First, so that Harrow can try to become a Lyctor, whatever that is. (The reader is given little information about what all that entails.)
An interstellar space flight later, we land on the First at Canaan House, where we meet MORE skeletons, as well as the necromancer and the cavalier for every other house. Y’all, there are so many names in this book. If you are not the kind of person who does well with a large cast of characters, this book is not for you.
Shenanigans ensue, and we’re then lead on a murder-mystery quest that turns deadly as something inside Canaan House seems to be picking off the necromancers one by one.
I enjoyed reading Gideon. The humor was up my alley, the worldbuilding was really interesting, and I liked learning about the magic system. However, (you knew this was coming) I had some issues with how the book was written.
First off, the pacing is…off. The first 20% of the book can be described as ‘CAGE RAGE TO DEATH IN A PIT,’ followed by 20% of ‘walking around in a house.’ Once the murder-mystery begins, then things pick up and keep up for the remainder of the book, but the constant change in pace is jarring.
My bigger issue, though, was the relationship between Gideon and Harrow. Or lack thereof, to be more precise. These two young women hate each other. And I mean hate with a capital H. If actually given the chance, they would tear each other to pieces. They’re the cage rage of act 1, and by act 2 they just… don’t talk to each other. Harrow is off in some part of Canaan House working, and Gideon is literally wandering around. They’re not interacting. At least if Harrow has anything to say about it.
This wouldn’t be so much of an issue except for the fact that there is a big emotional cathartic moment later on in the book that I do not feel is earned. Not only is there simply not enough communication between these characters to make this feel plausible, but also the emotional evolution between them isn’t as big as it needs to be. We cannot go from Cage Rage in a Pit™️ to Emotional Hugging in a Pool Guarded by Skeletons™️ with the little amount of screen time these two share together. At least, in my opinion.
One thing to note is that characters are not people. Most characters follow arcs and beat sheets, and do not behave as real life people would. Maybe Harrow’s behavior is more human like, but it doesn’t make for a convincing emotional show down.
Harrow’s position as a character is thus: if you hate someone so much that you’d rather die, then that’s what the narrative is asking you to do. Die, unless there is a better reason why you should tolerate them. And the book does supply that! Harrow cannot complete the Lyctor challenges without Gideon. But as a reader, I think it would have served as better emotional and character development for Harrow to break down and realize she wants to win more than she hates Gideon, and come to Gideon with this information.
What I like to do in these scenarios is think about what I as a writer would have done differently. Because hey, if I can dish it out, I should be able to provide solutions. And my thinking is this: at one point, Gideon realizes she can’t find Harrow, and goes searching for her. She finds her collapsed, and that’s when Harrow decides to start telling Gideon about the different challenges. My reworking would involve Harrow approaching Gideon. That would be a bigger change in character for Harrow than Gideon, and would be shocking enough to startle both the reader, and Gideon, into curiosity.
To end on a more positive note, though, here are some things I liked about Gideon:
That Ianthe was the first one to figure everything out about how to obtain Lyctorhood, not Harrow.4
The teenage necromancer and cavalier from the Fourth. Their dialogue was formatted differently, and as weird as this sounds, it made them seem more like teenagers.
This exchange:
Harrow said, “No.”
“I want to go,” said Gideon.
“This sounds impossibly vapid.”
“I want to eat a dessert.”5
A gal after my own heart.
That we actually got a character list! And explanatory materials! Though we’ll get back to that in a bit.
Overall rating? 4/5 for enjoyment, 3.5/5 on actual structure.
The Bookclub
Part of the reason we renamed ourselves as A Court of Tea and Opinions is because we have opinions. And lots of them. We convened on Zoom to discuss.
We were in general agreement that the magic system was cool and we wanted to know more about it. 10/10 for that. Most of us did also have issues with the pacing - from some of us finding it to be jarring, to others finding it to be not interesting at all, that seemed to be the biggest gripe. That, and NOT PUTTING THE EXPLANATORY MATERIALS AT THE FRONT OF THE BOOK.
The edition of Gideon we read had 40+ pages of explainers, which would have been great to know *before hand*. My suggestion for integrating this was to put it in Gideon’s perspective, as in - have Gideon write down a list of all of these people and their traits. Her humor was already well integrated by this point, so it would have been entertaining to see what her thoughts were. And, give the reader a more time appropriate list of every character. Instead of us having to continually flip back to the front of the book.
As a good book club is wont to do, we had beverages. Most of them were tea. If nothing else, we know what we’re about. There were diversions, pet visitors, and a rant about other Sarah J. Maas books. Our general ending consensus was that we were all entertained, and had questions that we wondered if the sequels would answer.
So, what’s next for the A Court of Tea and Opinion’s book club? Well, we decided that since we’re already here…we might as well read Harrow the Ninth. Book club is set for June, so perhaps the Book Club Dropout will become a recurring series. Who’s to say?
The Suriel is a faerie in the ACOTAR universe who has a tendency to gossip.
Much to the chagrin of one of the Emily’s.
I also keep wanting to call her Tasmin, which is not correct. I must be thinking of the Tasmanian Devil? Which is even more absurd because Muir is from New Zealand, not Australia.
Though I am now immediately suspicious of anyone named Ianthe because of ACOTAR.
Muir, Tamsyn. Gideon the Ninth. (Locked Tomb Trilogy, #1.). Tor.Com/Tom Doherty Associates, 2019. pg 167.
Hurrah! Another footnote doing its actual job.
🍵😁