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Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir
Sep. 23rd, 2021 07:51 amI had so very heavily osmosed that this book would be Not My Thing that I ended up spoiling myself for several major plot points (although not, as it turns out, most of them). Then I started reading it a couple of days ago as part of a survey of general "hookiness" of openings - and then I looked around and it was on my Kindle and it was 6 chapters later, so, uh.
Turns out it actually is very much my thing.
Except it still kind of isn't - I still don't care about necromancers or gloomy skeleton-filled catacombs in the slightest, this book is totally not my aesthetic, and I am actively grossed out by the necromancy and general bleeding from every orifice that accompanies it.
And yet I found the book riveting, and delightful, and occasionally hilarious, and even beautiful/numinous in unexpected ways. I'm not that enthused to read the sequel (see spoiler sections below) but I really enjoyed this one as a standalone thing. I know it's kind of based on Homestuck and I can definitely see that, and it also reminded me of Amber to a surprising degree, but actually what the style really reminded me of, more than anything else, was 1990s/early 2000s independent comics: the Goth aesthetic and random asides and tonally bonkers worldbuilding. I know this is exactly what is going to make this book not some people's cup of tea, and I get that, but this book kept reminding me of the way that indy comics artists back in the '90s would stick incongruous sight gags into the background of panels - silly labels on products, that kind of thing; it doesn't have to make sense, it's there to make the reader smile. This book is gonzo, bonkers, balls-to-the-wall "because the author wanted to"; it's a book that runs on pure id, and luckily I'm just in tune enough with the author's id to really enjoy it.
( Spoilers for Gideon )
( Light spoilers for the first couple chapters of Harrow (also with Gideon spoilers) )
Turns out it actually is very much my thing.
Except it still kind of isn't - I still don't care about necromancers or gloomy skeleton-filled catacombs in the slightest, this book is totally not my aesthetic, and I am actively grossed out by the necromancy and general bleeding from every orifice that accompanies it.
And yet I found the book riveting, and delightful, and occasionally hilarious, and even beautiful/numinous in unexpected ways. I'm not that enthused to read the sequel (see spoiler sections below) but I really enjoyed this one as a standalone thing. I know it's kind of based on Homestuck and I can definitely see that, and it also reminded me of Amber to a surprising degree, but actually what the style really reminded me of, more than anything else, was 1990s/early 2000s independent comics: the Goth aesthetic and random asides and tonally bonkers worldbuilding. I know this is exactly what is going to make this book not some people's cup of tea, and I get that, but this book kept reminding me of the way that indy comics artists back in the '90s would stick incongruous sight gags into the background of panels - silly labels on products, that kind of thing; it doesn't have to make sense, it's there to make the reader smile. This book is gonzo, bonkers, balls-to-the-wall "because the author wanted to"; it's a book that runs on pure id, and luckily I'm just in tune enough with the author's id to really enjoy it.
( Spoilers for Gideon )
( Light spoilers for the first couple chapters of Harrow (also with Gideon spoilers) )