From the Bookshelf of The Sword and Laser…

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

Tamsyn Muir

Start date: February 1, 2020

Finish date: February 29, 2020

Discussion: Gideon the Ninth

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Gideon the Ninth

GtN: Make this a video game!
By John (Taloni) · 9 posts · 89 views

last updated Oct 14, 2021 07:33AM

GtN: write a better blurb challenge
By Lee · 19 posts · 125 views

last updated Mar 11, 2020 10:58AM

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What Members Thought

Sep 29, 2019 Chessa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf_fantasy

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

12 likes · Like · see review

Jan 01, 2020 Udayan rated it really liked it

Nice way to start the year - swords, sorcery and skeletons !!

6 likes · Like · see review

Apr 16, 2020 Sharlene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, library, 2020, ebook, women-writers, speculative-fiction

This book is an absolutely brilliant, soul-sucking, bloody, batshit crazy yet completely absorbing read that has you holding your breath with every insane twist and turn of this roller coaster of reading ride.

It is impossible to really describe this book accurately but I’ll try.

Gideon the Ninth is set in a very distant future (perhaps?) in which there are nine houses and all of them deal in a kind of death-related magic.

And there is to be a tournament in which each House sends a necromancer and This book is an absolutely brilliant, soul-sucking, bloody, batshit crazy yet completely absorbing read that has you holding your breath with every insane twist and turn of this roller coaster of reading ride.

It is impossible to really describe this book accurately but I’ll try.

Gideon the Ninth is set in a very distant future (perhaps?) in which there are nine houses and all of them deal in a kind of death-related magic.

And there is to be a tournament in which each House sends a necromancer and a cavalier who is an expert at sword fighting (although there are clearly more advanced technologies around, these Houses feel very ancient somehow, including the tournament’s preference for the cavaliers to use rapiers).

Gideon Nav is the cavalier (well, sort of, more like a sub really) to the Ninth House, to Harrowhark, with whom she has had a mutual hatred since they were young. But she has been promised freedom if she accompanies Harrow to this tournament to become a Lyctor. Lyctors are insanely powerful and work directly for the Emperor in his war against an unknown enemy (I’m guessing it’s to be revealed in the rest of the series). And guess what, this tournament takes place on another planet. And it turns out all the Houses exist on different planets.

So yes, let’s see, there are necromancers, there are warriors, there are skeletons and death magics and they all take place on a galactic empire. And the Ninth House is the creepiest, the weirdest House of all, the kind which has people avoiding their gaze in case they inflict a curse on them or something (and yet dying to watch every little thing they are doing). Sounds a bit insane but it is gloriously brilliant (and also insane).

Ok so this might sound a bit too “out there” for some but this was for me, an absolutely compelling read. The crazy world building, the heart-thumping action, the dark whimsical magic, and that Gideon, that funny, irreverent humour, that hate-not-hate relationship with Harrow, it was everything. ...more

1 like · Like · see review