"Gideon the Ninth" - Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

mhm...?

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

oh is this a joke this being in the future? lol sorry i an obviously tired

[Pixelina]

Just scrolling through the comments here and i agree with a few of them, i would have loved to have the place having more character.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

We start the story with Gideon escaping from her cell of ten years. Unlocking chains with a key she stole. Her first interaction is with someone from the Ninth House that calls her 'chattel' (despite the character list claiming her to be an indentured servant).

Harrowhawk is someone who sees people as tools to be used, including her deceased parents whom she has been literally using as puppets for years. Gideon states throughout the book that Harrowgate was always cruel to her and is unworthy of trust. The incentives used to get Gideon to go along with Harrowgate's schemes is legitimising her freedom from the House.

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying the idea that Gideon would put aside her years of fermented hatred for Harrow and HER house because of the events that happened in the book. I'm fine with her sacrificing herself at the end as that doesn't have to be about saving Harrow, but the idea that it was out of friendship is too much of a stretch for me. Especially when it can be argued that they were still doing what they'd always been doing, maintaining Harrows powerbase.

The idea that sitting an oppressor down with someone that they are oppressing will be an enlightening moment that brings about a shared understanding and a brighter future is a liberal wet dream that I refuse to entertain in either the fictional or non-fictional world. It really fails to grasp the mindset of both parties.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I think you put your finger on the part that really didn't mesh with me, Ryan.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Yeah, there were people in the story for Gideon to like. People that would have given her hope for a better future. Harrow wasn't one of them though. Meeting with other House heads that treated her like a person and were kind when they had no need to should have made her more resentful. When Harrow asked what she needed to do for Gideon to trust her the response should have been 'Fuck off and die!'. Every word out of Harrows mouth should have dredged up negative memories that made friendship impossible.

[Beth]

Agreed. I mentioned this in my review, too, that the relationship between Gideon and Harrow is an incredibly fraught, unhealthy one, and they come to an accord awfully quickly. The power imbalance is the major factor there, for sure--they could just be teens sniping at each other if not for that, but they aren't, at all. One is punching down, the other's punching up.

[raven]

Hrm, and honestly, I had forgotten she was in a cell for ten years, or I elided it from my recollection of the scene. How did she arrange for the ship if she was in a cell? Why was she in a cell — there’s not that many people on the ninth anyway it seemed? For the crime of surviving? She’s being trained in her two-handed sword? I get folks in prison don’t just literally sit in a cell all the time, but the sense I got it was the entire ninth she wanted to escape less than a cell.

I’m not really disagreeing with Ryan, but I think the problem is more in the opening sequence, including Gideon’s taking Harrow up on her offer in the first place, as it really seems she should have just taken her chances with the ship as it was, since she had so many other failed attempts. I guess with that choice my personal thinking was either Gideon was stupid or she was looking for an excuse of approval. I don’t mean Harrow’s friendship right then, more she wanted to leave with an acknowledgement of respect.

I think the sequence when Gideon is doing the mute thing and Harrow goes absent for awhile and then Gideon rescues her was the point that (re)set my thinking of their relationship.

I appreciate your perspective Ryan. I recognize there’s flaws in this book, and I suspect I’m doing the old Marvel Comics no-prize thing fixing some of the elements of the book with a mental rewrite. It’s another reason I want to reread, as the initial read there’s so much going on and my head is trying to make sense of things I suspect I was quickly forgiving some of these flaws to make mental room for other processing.

[Banshee]

I saw somewhere the best description of the dynamic between the two main characters: "It’s a dark and messed-up relationship that exists within a dark and messed-up world." It's definitely not healthy. It's not a model relationship (whether we classify it as romantic one, sibling one or friendship - because it's never clear). But under extreme circumstances in this book, for me it just works.

[raven]

Oh I just recalled I remember when they first land, in my head I had this fantasy where I wanted Gideon to sneak off and run away with the ship and abandon Harrow, then all the ships fell over and I internally cursed that opportunity was gone. So at that point I know I was rooting for Gideon to just punch Harrow and go off and join a band or something.

[Beth]

I've now read through the thread and have a few responses to folks' posts.

Hans wrote: "Overall, the world/universe gave me a kind of Warhammer 40k feeling, especially regarding the aesthetics. Tomb worlds, lots of skulls and all that."

This is a great comparison! Over the top, a tone that often makes you not want to take it seriously. And yeah, lots of skulls and skeletons. :D

J.W. wrote: "I want to read about all of these awesome ideas, not just have them pitched to me as one-liners and then thrown onto an increasing heap of ideas that are never fully realized."

I agree with J.W. here in the sense that there could, or should, be more interstitial stuff to make things flow and hold together a little better, especially early on.

Joon wrote: "No space yet. Hope there's space. I was told there'd be space."

Well, uh. There's space in the second book?

Stephan wrote: "the last 1/5 of Harrow the 9th is worth reading."

Oh, this is actually great to know. I flagged out at about the 4/5 mark.

Allison wrote: "Yeah, I think there's been a trend to make the otherness a big thing in books, and I've been super enjoying the quieter, "normalized" inclusion of people who are LGBTQIA in books lately."

Agreed! As an occasional romance reader, I enjoy reading about those aspects of relationships, however I don't look for it in other genres (or at least don't want or expect it to be expressed in the same way). The level it was at in Gideon was just about right. Sebastian seemed to think it was more overt than I did, when they say Gideon "gets distracted by every pair of tits she sees".

Stephan wrote: "'m still flabbergasted that the relationship with Harrow and Gideon wasn't shown to be stronger given the sacrifice at the end, unless the author's sociopathic."

This is a humble request to not make back-of-the napkin diagnoses of authors' mental health. Women seem to be more subject to it than others.

[Kari]

Banshee wrote: "I saw somewhere the best description of the dynamic between the two main characters: "It’s a dark and messed-up relationship that exists within a dark and messed-up world." It's definitely not heal..."

I felt the same way about The Luminous Dead. The relationship between Harrow and Gideon is definitely not healthy, but given their age and inexperience with literally any other healthy relationship at all, I did buy that these two characters would gravitate towards one another when thrust into an entirely new situation they didn't understand. It's the "devil you know" thing.

I also think much is made of Gideon's sacrifice, but as someone up-thread pointed out, she didn't have a lot of options at that point. I think she saw she was probably not going to make it and thought she'd go out as a hero, which feels in line with the kind of vision she had for herself. It seemed more of a personal sacrifice, rather than for Harrow or anyone else. At least to me.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I think those are great explanations/rationalizations of those two arcs, Kari! Well said.

[Beth]

Kari wrote: "It's the "devil you know" thing."

This is a good way to put it! With Gideon's 80 escape attempts, you definitely get the idea that these two have an habitual way of dealing with each other. In Harrow (view spoiler)[there's a similar thing going with a recurring character from this book (hide spoiler)].

On a side note, I never really understood "the devil you know" as a saying until very recently. Like, this morning. A combination of a song ("Leave Me Alone" by IDKHOW), and Kari's post. I know English like it's a second language to me. (It's my first.)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

hahahahahaha

[Alabaster]

Beth wrote: "Agreed. I mentioned this in my review, too, that the relationship between Gideon and Harrow is an incredibly fraught, unhealthy one, and they come to an accord awfully quickly. The power imbalance ..."

Yeah my thoughts were pretty similar, except more along the lines of "a relationship that had no right ending as healthily as it did".

[Jacqueline]

The Ninth are pretty much a religious order and a Nuns room is called a Cell. It’s not literally a cell but that’s what it’s called. So here cell = room.

[raven]

Jacqueline wrote: "The Ninth are pretty much a religious order and a Nuns room is called a Cell. It’s not literally a cell but that’s what it’s called. So here cell = room."

TIL. Thanks! I’m obviously not of a religious bent.

[Stephan]

Beth wrote: "This is a humble request to not make back-of-the napkin diagnoses of authors' mental health. Women seem to be more subject to it than others"

Sorry. I wasn't thinking along those lines.

I just wanted to point out that what I said was scientific. It's viable to assume that a sociopath or someone with sociopathic traits wouldn't understand the underpinnings of relationships, with that whole empathy impairment thing. (male or female) I'm really trying to justify a lapse instead of attributing it to faulty writing, because the writing is good enough in places that such an oversight means the novel never made it to a final draft before being published. Does that make sense? {Another draft edit for filling in the emotional gaps would have bolstered the story up to top tier for Gideon the 9th}

As a real life example: Imagine that someone said something you found extremely funny and you started laughing....and while you were doing that they said "Don't laugh. That's rude." MOST people that laugh know it's a response to stimuli that is uncontrollable. For someone to say it's rude, means they don't understand how laughter works and have sociopathic traits, wether that be from genuine sociopathy, a personality disorder, or the autism spectrum. While I wouldn't be able to give the person a diagnosis from that interaction, if would seem to suggest the aforementioned.

If it were the case that the author had stunted empathy, it would explain why she would assume a person can go from absolute hate to extreme self-sacrifice for the same individual. Nothing in the novel takes the reader from point A to point B in that regard. I also think it's reaching to assign Gideon's actions to Stockholm syndrome. That's the best strategic bet for making everything pan out emotionally, but you'd have to go back and do (really hardly a rewrite at all)--put in how Gideon adores Harrow, despite the treatment she endures. Like "I know it's f'd up, how you can love someone who just broke your....but I do. I guess I'm just crazy like that.." or whatever. Some of that flavor.

Otherwise the playing field has to be leveled out a little bit from the chasm that exists between the two characters.

Lifetime on planet A of...hate.

How many weeks or months on planet B for...devotion?

It's too extreme. A lifetime of hate isn't washed away by a weekend. There isn't even enough time for an emotional change to occur.

If you have to ignore a dynamic in order to make the story work, then it's an error on the author's part. (I'm surprised no one at the publishing company pointed it out or if they did, that they decided to run with it anyway.)

[Stephan]

Jacqueline wrote: "The Ninth are pretty much a religious order and a Nuns room is called a Cell. It’s not literally a cell but that’s what it’s called. So here cell = room."

YES!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

So, a real human just asked you to be mindful of something and you doubled down, Stephan. That's not very nice. Perhaps a great example of why sociopathy isn't the only answer to lack of empathy?

Sociopathy of the AUTHOR for seeing a relationship bloom a way that they didn't convince you of is a vast over-generalization. It could be the writing, it could be her experience, it could be her innate understanding of how trauma impacts people, something extreme like sociopathy, any one of innumerable other conditions, or, and I think this most likely, it could just not have worked for you. Let's not assume, and a "sorry, I realize that didn't come off correctly" will suffice in the future.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Did anyone visualize the world? I saw it so clearly in my head. I mean I'm not sure I could have drawn you a precise map, but I had distinct impressions of the rooms, halls, ruins and each of the sublevels.

[Jacqueline]

Banshee wrote: "I saw somewhere the best description of the dynamic between the two main characters: "It’s a dark and messed-up relationship that exists within a dark and messed-up world." It's definitely not heal..."

Exactly.

Over my years (especially when I was younger) I had some weird messed up relationships with people. One in particular was my Godmothers daughter. She would treat me like dirt and would try and fight me for no reason at all (as in physical violence) but she also sat down with me and taught me how to crochet and knit. And if anyone ever threatened me in any way they were in for a whole lot of hurt. She would literally stop fighting with me and turn around and punch them. A number of times I had major health scares and she would be suddenly by my side (she lived about an hour and a half away by that time but she used to live a few hundred metres away down the street and then 4 hours away but it was always the same) and was looking after me. Maybe that's why I just went with the relationship of Gideon and Harrow. It really did remind me of some of my "friendships".

Allison wrote: "Did anyone visualize the world? I saw it so clearly in my head. I mean I'm not sure I could have drawn you a precise map, but I had distinct impressions of the rooms, halls, ruins and each of the s..."

Yeah I did. It was pretty vivid too.

Jon wrote: "Jacqueline wrote: "The Ninth are pretty much a religious order and a Nuns room is called a Cell. It’s not literally a cell but that’s what it’s called. So here cell = room."

TIL. Thanks! I’m obvio..."

Yeah I'm far from religious myself but Catholic Nuns taught me from when I was 5 until I was 16 so you pick shit like that up.

[Kari]

Allison wrote: "Did anyone visualize the world? I saw it so clearly in my head. I mean I'm not sure I could have drawn you a precise map, but I had distinct impressions of the rooms, halls, ruins and each of the s..."

I liked what you said in your review, Allison, that this would make a cool video game. It definitely stayed with me in that way. It was kind of like exploring the ruins in Bioshock.

[raven]

Jacqueline wrote: "Yeah I'm far from religious myself but Catholic Nuns taught me from when I was 5 until I was 16 so you pick shit like that up"


Wait, you’re Daredevil??

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

haha

[Jacqueline]

Jon wrote: "Jacqueline wrote: "Yeah I'm far from religious myself but Catholic Nuns taught me from when I was 5 until I was 16 so you pick shit like that up"


Wait, you’re Daredevil??"

Bugger.....

[Sparrow Knight]

Allison wrote: "I kinda hesitate to say this here given the tone of the conversation lol but I'd like to remind folks that this book was nominated as one of the best genre benders of the 21st century in our group ..."

I hope I like ‘Too Like the Lightening’ better. =o\

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

That's one of my faves! I hope you do, too. REEEEAALLY different from this genre bender.

[Oleksandr]

Allison wrote: "That's one of my faves! I hope you do, too. REEEEAALLY different from this genre bender."

For me they are different levels/magnitude of talents, but maybe it's just grumpy old me

[Anna]

If we want to discuss the other books nominated for the SFFBC Award, let's do that in the awards thread :)

[Sparrow Knight]

Allison wrote: "That's one of my faves! I hope you do, too. REEEEAALLY different from this genre bender."
That’s encouraging. It’s in my TBR pile. =oD

[Lowell]

There are so, so many things in this book that didn't work for me.. but most of them have already been talked about here, so I'll stick with the thing that really, really upset me:

The end. The stupid, absolutely idiotic sacrifice that Gideon makes of herself. But even more than because the whole "frenemy" aspect, I need to point out that even if we take Harrow/Gideon's relationship to be complex due to pent up mutual attraction and sexual repression...

Harrow abuses Gideon. Throughout the book, throughout the backstory, through all of it, Harrow is an abuser. And the message that this book sends is that the victim of abuse should sacrifice themselves in order to save their abuser is just...

despicable. It's shit.

I'm not going to analyze the author's motivations behind it, but I'm going to call them out on writing something that is just plain bad.

And after sitting on my review of this book since I read it earlier this year, I think the book is going to join my "train wrecks" list, because it's entertaining and SO SO bad.

[Joon]

Near about 50%. Right now the thing most keeping me in this book is the place. The characters have mostly failed to win me over, but the mystery of where they are and why is keeping me reading, albeit more slowly than I'd like.

I just wish I had more theories. The bit where they discovered the First House was cobbled together with bits and pieces of wildly different ages sounded significant and grabbed me hard, but it still hasn't been mentioned again. The feeling I'm getting is that the "lab" is a spaceship of some sort (crashed?) that they just built a castle on top of, so to speak, and that the "Necrolord" is the AI that operated it.

The problem with all this is that they are obviously already aware of space ships and space stations and all that, being on a different planet and all. So if the First House was that, I feel like it would have been their very first theory, immediately after having found the place.

The other problem is that so much is glossed over in the beginning of the book that I'm not really even positive where everyone/everything is physically located. The book suggests that each House lives on a separate "planet" (though I've been on the fence about how literally to take that...I had to go back and reread bits to confirm they were actually even in space at all.) Which to me lends a little more credence to the First House being a crashed ship. Generation ship whose survivors scattered to the other planets and established "Houses"? (If it winds up being a far-future story of our own solar system I'll be annoyed.)

As for the characters, I already know (roughly) Gideon's fate. Not how or why, just what. (Knew it long before this, don't worry. Think it was spoiled in an Amazon review for the second book.)

So either that knowledge is preventing me from engaging with her, and that's why I don't really care, or she just really is failing to win me over. At this point either is possible.

[Eva]

I've just found this amazing link in which someone lists and explains all the Easter eggs/literary references/meme references etc. they've found in the second book, Harrow the Ninth (careful, MAJOR spoilers for book 2):
http://readingtheend.com/2020/08/19/h...

I didn't find another good place to share the link, but it's so cool to have for when you've finished Harrow. If you're one of the people who liked this book and are going to continue on, maybe just save the link for future reference.

I think the references are a great example of the mix of high-low culture that suffuses the whole book: Shakespeare, Voltaire, Wilde, Homer and the bible is mixed up with pop culture memes and dad jokes. Just like the language characters speak in Gideon and Harrow is a mixture of high-falutin' weird religious-prayer-language with modern/90s pop culture slang, just like SF is mixed with fantasy, etc. By the way, I'd personally file the prevalence of our own pop culture in this future society under "intriguing mysteries yet to be explored".

In terms of Gideon's initial "hatred" for Harrow: I don't think she's an entirely reliable POV about her deeper feelings. She keeps pretending to be tough and to take things lightly (hence her awful dad jokes trying to keep things from feeling too serious to her), and there's also much more to the backstory that one only learns about later in book 2 (Harrow's perspective adds A LOT!).

In addition, these two grew up without any normal parental guidance and without peers/other people their age, all they had were weird religious nuts teaching them weird shit but certainly no social skills apart from ceremonial rituals - they're still basically feral. They also have a very life-and-death serious conflict of interests in the beginning, which is made clearer in book 2 when one gets the other POV. It's certainly meant to be a messed-up relationship, but one that has a good core of honor and actually caring, it has potential for growth. They don't know how to actually talk to each other in a kind manner (since they've never heard anyone speak that way to them, how would they even know how?), but I'm totally rooting for them to learn how to human.

I actually thought the author displayed tremendous empathy and understanding when creating characters that were so affected by their environment, upbringing and awful trauma, showing both their great vulnerability and the ways they cover that up - really skillful characterization.

All too often in speculative fiction one sees characters who've grown up in crazy environments but psychologically are just your average suburban teen girl complete the requisite beliefs, habits, ways of thinking, etc. In contrast, Gideon feels a homey sense of relief and comfort when she sees skull decorations, because they are "normal" and familiar, they're the way things are supposed to look like.

[Anna]

Eva, post that in the Harrow thread, linked at the beginning of this thread?

[Jessica]

Eva wrote: "I've just found this amazing link in which someone lists and explains all the Easter eggs/literary references/meme references etc. they've found in the second book, Harrow the Ninth ..."

I need one of these for book 1! I searched this site and the blogger doesn't seem to have one, too bad.

[Kari]

Eva wrote: "In terms of Gideon's initial "hatred" for Harrow: I don't think she's an entirely reliable POV about her deeper feelings."

I agree with everything you're saying here, Eva, but I especially like this statement. I felt there was an underlying thread to Gideon that she wasn't too keen on being honest about--her relationship with Harrow, among others.

I also like the description of "feral"; the way Harrow and Gideon interact with each other, at this stage, does feel an awful lot like they're just repeating patterns they've seen before.

[Beth]

Kari wrote: "I also like the description of "feral"; the way Harrow and Gideon interact with each other, at this stage, does feel an awful lot like they're just repeating patterns they've seen before."

I also like Eva's longer, more in-depth exploration of these characters! In a sense, they're like siblings, I think--they've been living in close quarters for years, and might not have the ability or maturity to distance themselves from their "repeating pattern" of dealing with each other, notably the unhealthy parts of it.

[Hans]

Lowell wrote: "There are so, so many things in this book that didn't work for me.. but most of them have already been talked about here, so I'll stick with the thing that really, really upset me:

The end. The st..."

I don't think this book aims to represent a healthy relationship between two normally developed teenagers though, whatever "normally developed" means. One shouldn't confuse what the author depicts with what they themself support.

To me, it was quite clear that Harrow is an abuser, she herself doesn't even deny or try to justify it. But it was also obvious that both Harrow and Gideon are broken and traumatized in certain ways. It's hard to compare their relationship and upbringing to what most of us probably know, because both of them basically grew up alone, without peers and without any kind of moral compass or social guidelines. They are to each other pretty much everything they know and so I didn't find the development of their relationship too crazy.

I will agree that the jump from their talk to Gideon's sacrifice is a bit rushed, but was it really a sacrifice for Harrow or was there simply no other way out? Would she have done it if she had seen another way out for herself? I'm actually asking, cause it's been a while and I don't remember the scene all too well.

Allison wrote: "Did anyone visualize the world? I saw it so clearly in my head. I mean I'm not sure I could have drawn you a precise map, but I had distinct impressions of the rooms, halls, ruins and each of the s..."

Despite the worldbuilding being rather cryptic, I felt that I could visualize the castle and its surroundings pretty well. Magnificent but also dusty, oppressive and abandoned. Dead and alive at the same time, in a House of Usher kinda way.
And as I already mentioned, the whole world gave me that Warhammer 40k feeling of over-the-top gloomyness with lots of skulls and whatnot.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

They grew up with 300+ other children. Nearly all of those children died before the story actually starts but neither Gideon or Harrowhawk grew up alone.

[raven]

Ryan wrote: "They grew up with 300+ other children. Nearly all of those children died before the story actually starts but neither Gideon or Harrowhawk grew up alone."

I don’t think that’s right? I’m pretty sure they were babies. This is a summary I found:

Gideon Nav is the only other girl Harrow's age in the whole Ninth House since every other Ninth child died under sinister circumstances around the time she and Harrow were born. She's an orphan, an indentured servant, and probably the best swordswoman the Ninth has produced in a generation.

I think they were both really young when that occurred?

[Beth]

Yes. Harrow was in utero when those children died, and she and Gideon are fairly close in age, so those two have no peers on the Ninth's world.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

My bad.

(view spoiler)[They chipped her, surnamed her, and put her in the nursery. At that time, the tiny Ninth House boasted two hundred children between infancy and nineteen years of age, and Gideon was numbered two hundred and first. Less than two years later, Gideon Nav would be one of only three children left: herself, a much older boy, and the infant heir of the Ninth House, daughter of its lord and lady. They knew by age five that she was not a necromancer, and suspected by eight that she would never be a nun. Certainly, they would have known by ten that she knew too much, and that she could never be allowed to go. Gideon’s appeals to better natures, financial rewards, moral obligations, outlined plans, and simple attempts to run away numbered eighty-six by the time she was eighteen. She’d started when she was four. (hide spoiler)]

[raven]

Oh that also slightly alters another thing in my head: some of her ‘escape attempts’ were less grand schemes like the last, and more in the line of negotiations, makes the eighty-six seem a bit less ridiculous. From ages 4-19, that works out maybe an attempt every two months, maybe, if my quick math is anywhere close, and that seems too short for that last one, so it cannot be representative of each one.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Thirty three of her attempts were by applying for military service elsewhere, if that helps.

[raven]

Ryan wrote: "Thirty three of her attempts were by applying for military service elsewhere, if that helps."

Kinda does, it means some things were being done concurrently, parallel plans rather than serial ones. Seems like it would have been better without giving an exact number of attempts; the specificity there didn’t work for me.

[Eva]

Anna wrote: "Eva, post that in the Harrow thread, linked at the beginning of this thread?"

Ah, thank you, that's what I was looking for! Will do. :-)

[Joon]

The more of this I read, the more I feel like the author should feel straight up insulted by that "lesbians in space" blurb.

If nothing else, it would suggest to me that Stross didn't even read the book.

[raven]

I think Stross was more concerned about writing a compelling quote rather than an accurate one, and whomever makes the decisions on what is featured on the cover felt it would be effective.I almost never recall these kind of quotes after reading a book, so it’s memorable, but I don’t think that’s a good thing.