Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) in Beyond Reality

Feb 25, 2020 Wealhtheow rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, queer-characters

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Gideon Nav grew up in the moldering remains of the Ninth House, a planet that reminded me a bit of Castle Gormenghast, if Gormenghast were mostly peopled with skeletons and necromancers. She's desperate to escape and finally gets her chance when the Emperor Undying calls for representatives from each House. She and her most hated enemy, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, answer the call. From there the story turns into a locked room mystery colored with the shades of centuries-past th ...more

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Sep 29, 2019 Chessa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf_fantasy

*Runs around in a circle screaming with feelings* !!!!!

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Nov 13, 2019 Jeffrey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, read-in-2019, monsters, ghosts, sword-and-sorcery, puzzle, quest, necromancers

A real tour de force. Very original quest novel. Bold, original, deep, irrevenant, angry, unexpected ending.bloody

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Jul 11, 2020 Tani rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dark-fantasy, 2020-novels, favorites, female-author, five-stars, sff-2020, sff-explorer-2020, sff-ladies-2020, 2022-novels, fantasy

Gideon Nav is desperate to get away. She would do anything to enlist in the Cohort and spend the rest of her life smashing enemies. Anything to get away from the Ninth House and its Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark. However, all of her escape attempts seem doomed to failure. So when she's offered a chance to pose as Harrow's cavalier in exchange for her eventual freedom, she decides she has little choice but to take it. Which is how she ends up on a planet full of necromancers and cavaliers, posing Gideon Nav is desperate to get away. She would do anything to enlist in the Cohort and spend the rest of her life smashing enemies. Anything to get away from the Ninth House and its Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark. However, all of her escape attempts seem doomed to failure. So when she's offered a chance to pose as Harrow's cavalier in exchange for her eventual freedom, she decides she has little choice but to take it. Which is how she ends up on a planet full of necromancers and cavaliers, posing as something she's not, trying her damnedest just to stay alive.

I wasn't sure how I would feel about this one. I've seen a lot of people who loved it, and a lot who felt it was just OK, and some who actively disliked it. The biggest controversy seemed to be the style. Which is completely fair! Gideon is a foul-mouthed bit of sarcasm, and if that's not something you're in to, this may be really hard for you to read. As it happens, I am a huge fan of snark and sarcasm, so I thought this might work very well for me, and spoiler alert, it clearly did.

I think that I particularly enjoy snark as a vehicle to conceal true feelings. It's just a trope that appeals to me on a visceral level, and that's very much what is happening here. So often, it's more what Gideon doesn't say that matters, rather than what she does. I like that. And it doesn't hurt that Gideon's particular brand of snark had me laughing out loud multiple times throughout the book. Since I usually struggle with books that most people find funny, finding a book that appeals to my sense of humor definitely is an exciting thing for me.

Beyond the tone, I really wasn't sure what to expect from this. My basic knowledge going in was snarky tone and lesbian necromancers in space. I actually think that was helpful to my reading experience. I was able to sit back and just enjoy the journey, from start to finish. The first part of the book ended up being quite meandering. Because Harrow and Gideon have such a rocky relationship, Gideon ends up wandering around quite a bit, having encounters that seem pretty random, and just getting a feel for the place. Looking back, I feel like this added a lot to the later book. There are quite a few characters, and they all have a part to play, so getting to know them is pretty essential to enjoying the rest of the book. It helps that they're a pretty fun batch of characters, and I was quite fond of a good number of them.

The second half of the book is much more focused on action. At a certain point, this basically turns into a locked room murder mystery, which is why knowing the characters is actually really important. This is also where the world-building really picks up. As Harrow and Gideon are forced to work together more, you get much more knowledge of necromancy, what its limits are, and what it can do. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story. Although this takes place in space and is science fiction, I can't think of the necromancy as anything other than a magical system. Since I'm more of a fantasy reader, this was a huge bonus for me!

The final factor in my enjoyment of this was definitely the ending. I really enjoyed the way that events came together at the end, and I was happy to find that there were a lot of throwaway moments scattered throughout the earlier parts of the book that actually ended up being extremely important. The way that things came together was completely unexpected for me, but made perfect sense as soon as the pieces fell into place. I love when that happens. I'm not ashamed to admit that I am tremendously excited for the next book, after mainlining that ending last night. Luckily, I'm late enough to the party on this one that I only have to wait about a month! ...more

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May 01, 2020 mina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I did not read the synopsis of the book, but Tor.com had put out articles on this so many times which I avoided to read, and also the cover is awesome, so obviously I picked this book as one of my pandemic quarantine readings. I like the book and have decided to continue with the series.

This book is a fantasy story (necromancy), combined with a little horror and mystery, and some detailed explanations (or maybe they are vague to me, because the theorems or whatever just go over my head) on necro I did not read the synopsis of the book, but Tor.com had put out articles on this so many times which I avoided to read, and also the cover is awesome, so obviously I picked this book as one of my pandemic quarantine readings. I like the book and have decided to continue with the series.

This book is a fantasy story (necromancy), combined with a little horror and mystery, and some detailed explanations (or maybe they are vague to me, because the theorems or whatever just go over my head) on necromancy technology thrown in. The story is fast-paced after some slow introduction to the Canaan House, and it kept twitching to unexpected direction, made me constantly changing assumptions of who's actually responsible for the whole murders in the Canaan House, where all the representative necromancers and cavaliers from the 9 Houses assembled to become Lyctors.

The worldbuilding is original, but unfortunately not explained in detail, maybe because the author has several books in mind. The readers understand it by experiencing the story, which I like. But I still think my comprehension of their world is sketchy: What are the primary skill of each house? Who is the Emperor Undying, and why is he undead? Why does he needs so many Lyctors and what for? Why he has to wait so long to replenish his Lyctor numbers? What happened long time ago that led to the deep hate in his Lyctors' hearts? So many revelations are expected in the next books of the series: Harrow the Ninth (will be published in August 2020), and Alecto the Ninth.

Now let's talk about Gideon Nav, the redhead "cavalier primary" from the Ninth House, the protagonist: I like her loud and hilarious sarcasms (bordering to annoying, almost reminding me to the loudmouth protagonists in Andy Weir books), along with her soft heart for anything beautiful or skillful. I like her badass fighting skills (she did not even use her usual double longswords in this book) and her hate/hate/love-hate relationship with her necromancer, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. I like her righteousness and her decisiveness. But I do think she did not have time to show her full potential in this book *sigh.

Her necromancer, Harrow, on the other side, keep progressing to be even better than her parents and grandparents. She has to, her name is on the second book cover, so at least we know that she did not die (or if she died, she came back in one piece). Also badass and violent in a cold way, I admire this studious and talented character, and she stopped at nothing to get her way. Eagerly wait to see what she'll become in Book 2.

Other characters are originally interesting, too, each with their own unique quirkiness. But, ah, the ending, the ending!

The book is advertised quoting Charles Stross: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!" but there is really no lesbian story in it. There is some feeble attempt here and there, but no romance scenes, which is good. I have read quite a lot of good fantasy books with meh love stories, that I think those books will be better without them. ...more

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Jul 10, 2020 John rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish. For a book about a bunch of necromancers trying to become uber-necromancers, with lots of blood, guts, grossness and grimness, this was a really fun ride that made me laugh out loud at least once a chapter.

I hate to spend much time on plot summary, because so many other people have already done it as well as or better than I will, but you've basically got Gideon Nav, an orphan in the Ninth House who absolutely hates the Ninth House and wants to g I really enjoyed this book from start to finish. For a book about a bunch of necromancers trying to become uber-necromancers, with lots of blood, guts, grossness and grimness, this was a really fun ride that made me laugh out loud at least once a chapter.

I hate to spend much time on plot summary, because so many other people have already done it as well as or better than I will, but you've basically got Gideon Nav, an orphan in the Ninth House who absolutely hates the Ninth House and wants to get the hell out, but her ticket out becomes serving the Ninth House's heir and primo necromancer as her Cavalier. Cause you know, powerful necromantic power comes hand in hand with physical frailty, so you have to have someone who can kick ass and take names while you're conjuring up skeletons or doing blood magic or whatever it is you do. And Gideon, whatever else she is, is a one-woman wrecking crew who's been training to be a soldier her whole life.

Probably worth noting at this point that the galactic empire that Gideon and her necromancer Harrowhark are a part of has as its head the Necrolord Prime, something something something god and emperor at the top, his 8 Lyctors (basically second in power only to him) who are off somewhere in the galaxy doing whatever it is they do, and the nine Houses that run things back home on their own planets. Anyway, it's only a minor spoiler to say that the plot of the novel revolves around an invitation to the first necromancers of each House to come to the First House and attempt dangerous challenges to become the first new Lyctors in, like 10,000 years (I think). So that brings Gideon and Harrowhark--as well as necromancers and cavaliers from houses 2-8--together for what is basically a figure-out-for-yourself-how-to-become-a-Lyctor competition (or is it a collaboration?) that turns into something of a murder mystery as well.

The setting here is an interesting hybrid of fantasy and science fiction--the necromancy seems pretty clearly magic, not just sufficiently-advanced-technology by a different name--and yet we also have spaceships and electric lights and stuff. It's a little weird, but it works. In fact, the more I lived in it, the more it seemed like a fantastic choice. Here's the thing: you've got sword fighting and magic and all, and on one level this could pretty easily have been written as a straight-up fantasy, with castles and ships and whatnot (granted, I don't know what's coming up in the rest of the trilogy, just saying there was nothing in book 1 that had to be sci-fi). And yet. A real central part of the charm of the novel is Gideon's voice as narrator and character, and her language has a very modern feel that would feel pretty awkward in a standard fantasy milieu. I felt like, by having all the science fiction elements that it did, the language worked in a way that it might not have. And it really worked, the dialog crackled and made me laugh with these absolutely perfect juxtapositions and turns of phrase.

I also appreciated some of the difficult choices that Muir made in this novel. (view spoiler)

Anyway, yeah, this was a pretty quick read and a very enjoyable one.

Oh, if--like me--you end up reading the Kindle version, either be prepared to flip back and forth to the dramatis personae, take notes on the characters (my solution), or find a spoiler-free site with that information to make reference to it, because there are around 18 characters to try to keep track of, at least until the deaths ramp up, and you don't always have a ton to go on when it comes to keeping track of who's who. ...more

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Apr 01, 2024 Richard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, ebook, sffbc, sffbc-prime

Great fun, great characters and a refreshing new world to be immediately immersed in.
The story line was fun and dark and intriguing, maybe dragged a tiny bit in the middle, but picked up the pace for a satisfying conclusion that still made me want to continue the series as soon as I can.
Superficially fantasy but enough pseudo science thrown around to make it feel like a dark far future SF universe, after all old Arthur C. Clarke said any sufficiently advanced civilisation would appear like magic ...more

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Jun 03, 2020 Christine H rated it liked it

Shelves: weird-fiction

I'm really not sure how to rate this. I enjoyed reading it, but it also took me a long time to finish. It has lots of intriguing ideas, but it takes its time setting them up. The chief characters are memorable and I formed some attachments, but too much of the main relationship is told instead of shown. Gideon is hilarious and snarky, but her lingo can also disrupt the tone.

This book is inventive and confusing, textured and conflicting. It's like a Brian Lumley novel and an Agatha Christie novel I'm really not sure how to rate this. I enjoyed reading it, but it also took me a long time to finish. It has lots of intriguing ideas, but it takes its time setting them up. The chief characters are memorable and I formed some attachments, but too much of the main relationship is told instead of shown. Gideon is hilarious and snarky, but her lingo can also disrupt the tone.

This book is inventive and confusing, textured and conflicting. It's like a Brian Lumley novel and an Agatha Christie novel had a baby, and occasionally John Scalzi babysat, and the baby's ambition is to be The Final Empire when it grows up.

I think I can only give this three stars, despite having a ton of quotable lines and being incredibly bold and interesting.

Three main problems: pacing, the central relationship, and unsatisfying mysteries.

First, it is a bit slow, taking a long interval to set up both a totally unfamiliar setting and a huge cast of characters/suspects. I was happy to read a bit each night, but rarely felt like I needed to know what would happen next.

Second, the current state of the central relationship is very clearly drawn through real-time interactions. Such as,

“Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.”

“That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark.

But the backstory of how they came to hate each other, and the final development of their relationship, are both quickly told (not shown) in the midst of a bunch of action, and compared to the robust view of their real-time interactions, seem pretty thin and unconvincing.

Third, the world building and central story raise many tantalizing questions, wafting the promise of revelations to come by story's end, that will make things fit together in a satisfying way. Here is a spoilered list of "ooh, what about . . .?" questions I was looking forward to learning the answer to (or at least some further, revealing clues about), which are ALL just left dangling:

(view spoiler)

I guess we're meant to assume there will be revelations about this stuff in the sequel, but given how little satisfaction we got in this book, I'm not feeling confident in that. It would have been more alluring to get a couple things more definitively tied up from this plot, which then opened up further questions to be explored later. ...more

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