Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) in Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence

Dec 09, 2020 Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, fantasy

Liked the style, but can't say that I liked much else. The plot, after taking quite some time to make itself known, took disappointing turns considering what I most enjoyed about the opening pages.

Unsure if I'll read the sequel anytime in the next year (or at all) , but I'll keep an eye out for other works by Muir. ...more

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Apr 01, 2021 Emily Forsyth rated it liked it

I would like Gideon to pick me up and hold me in her big strong arms pls

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Nov 21, 2021 A. _____ rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2021

2 very meh stars.

I’m annoyed. I feel like I’ve been conned by the marketing team at Tor. I fell for all the hype and it did NOT deliver. Gideon the Ninth is so caught up in enjoying its own cleverness that it forgets its main purpose is to tell us a story, and to tell it in such a fashion that we, at the very least, **understand what’s going on**.

Gideon and Harrow’s relationship is the best thing about the book. I like Gideon and Harrowhark’s voice (though I suspect at least half of my appreci 2 very meh stars.

I’m annoyed. I feel like I’ve been conned by the marketing team at Tor. I fell for all the hype and it did NOT deliver. Gideon the Ninth is so caught up in enjoying its own cleverness that it forgets its main purpose is to tell us a story, and to tell it in such a fashion that we, at the very least, **understand what’s going on**.

Gideon and Harrow’s relationship is the best thing about the book. I like Gideon and Harrowhark’s voice (though I suspect at least half of my appreciation was because of the audiobook narrator). And I was curious to find out what lay beneath the surface of their animosity. But the reveal was…ok? I guess? Nothing earth shattering or even worth the wait. Just more meh.

The weakest link (and boy, was it weak as all hell) was the world building. Worldbuilding that is well done makes the story and the characters come alive, it is more than just place setting. The world and the characters are deeply entwined—characters are rooted in specific places and times. People (and therefore their stories) exist in the way they do because of the world they inhabit.

The world building in Gideon the Ninth is a flat, two-dimensional bit of “flimsy”*. I do not understand the world and therefore I do not really understand the characters motivations. The story and the people populating it drift through hazy scenery. The world is so barely realised it feels like nothing exists outside of the immediate scene description.

For instance, I still don’t know why the Emperor needs necromancers. Sure he’s fighting some war, but why specifically necromancers? Why not, I don’t know, guns and nuclear weapons? And what the hell is the purpose of Harrowhark and all the others. Sure, they’re protecting some tomb and we find out what’s in it toward the end…but WHY is any of that happening? Where are all the non-necromancers and acolytes in the world? Are there any? What is happening in the larger world?

I am not saying we need 50 extra pages of info about the world and where people farm and what they eat or wear or whatever. But I do need to know something about the world so that I can care for the fate of it. At the moment it seems like the whole universe is populated by a few hundred people and that’s it. Since they’re not very nice, I don’t see how I’m supposed to care for the fate of a world when (for most of the book) I’m only supposed to care for 1 character.

I expect to not know anything at the start of an SFF series, but by the end of book 1 I fully expect to know the basic workings of the world and the broad motivations of the people living in it. Tamsyn Muir gives us barely a hint of that in the EPILOGUE! Really frustrating.

(*I’m super annoyed by paper being called ‘flimsy’ in the world. If sandwiches are a thing in the world then you can just use the word paper. Calling it flimsy is just lazy, ineffective world building.)

Having said all that, Moira Quirk is a brilliant narrator, and pretty much the only reason I’ve finished the book. ...more

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Jan 08, 2021 J rated it did not like it · review of another edition

The biggest bait-and-switch read of the year?
I think the reason this book is so well-loved must at least be partially because the idea of the book, or the potential of what the book could be in an ideal reality, is so alluring. I had several problems with getting into this:

1. It's just boring. Nothing really happens for at least half the book, but I don't feel that the characters are developed enough so that I start caring about them either. The main character, Gideon, spends all this time bein The biggest bait-and-switch read of the year?
I think the reason this book is so well-loved must at least be partially because the idea of the book, or the potential of what the book could be in an ideal reality, is so alluring. I had several problems with getting into this:

1. It's just boring. Nothing really happens for at least half the book, but I don't feel that the characters are developed enough so that I start caring about them either. The main character, Gideon, spends all this time being reluctant and confused, which was also true for me as a reader because...

2. the book is super confusing. The world is not clearly described to me. I don't understand what sort of society this is, who really rules, what position the nine houses have and why it matters who wins the trial thing. I just can't buy that this is somehow by design. It feels like this probably was a clearly developed world in the author's mind and she just forgot that to the reader it's all new and I don't see the whole picture without more explanatory worldbuilding. There are many descriptions and somehow I still can't picture it, and the most important parts for me to care about this world are completely left out. What are the politics? What is their religion really? How do regular folk live? How is necromancy a part of the world and society?
I can't help but compare this to the Broken Earth trilogy which I read recently, and which left me with clear answers to all these questions. Broken Earth even had a glossary at the back of the book which I didn't once need to look at because I could understand the society, natural world and concepts just from context in the story alone.

3. Why can they travel to other planets but still have to fight with swords? Why is this both the middle ages and the far future? I enjoy foreign worlds, but they have to make sense on a technological development level. I guess this just is more of the last point.

4. This book had me reaching for the dictionary more times than I can remember with any book I've read as an adult. Sure, I could have just ignored all the quaint adjectives, but there were too many and it started to annoy me that I didn't know them, so my reading was interrupted regularly by looking things up. To add insult to injury, after having read the definition and example sentences in the dictionary, more than once I was left with the feeling that the word in question was used in a slightly wrong context in the book, which seems like even the author wasn't too familiar with it! At least one adjective wasn't even in the dictionary and most of the Google results are from this book. I just had to get this off my chest, because I can't even remember being bothered by this problem in any English-language book I've read before. It must not be me, it must be the book.

5. This point, I think, is illustrative of how wishful fans see a lot of qualities in this text that simply aren't there: The book is not only marketed, but described by most reviewers as having a lesbian romance subplot between the main characters. It does not.
(Shoot me if you think that was a spoiler. The people need to know the truth.)

6. The main character tries very hard to be funny and edgy, but to me the humor falls completely flat. I wold probably have enjoyed this aspect of the books more if I was half my age, though. I also find it nigh impossible to believe that any character that is 18 years old is a complete badass. Also on account of my being an old fart myself. There is a reason why I don't read YA. Unless I missed something, this was not marketed as YA, but then again, everything people say about this book seems to be a lie. ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Ella Rose rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, lbtq-poc-bipoc

A complex foray into intergalactic necromancy. Those who enjoyed denser fantasy novels are more likely to find this accessible since it can be a bit confusing for much of the novel. It’s compelling, but at times world building could have used more explanation and less characters introduced at once. Although this is hailed as a queer necromancer story, it’s much more than that. Part coming of age, part action, with a dash of romance (not really the focus of the story, imo)- worth a shot if you wa ...more

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