At the First House, each necromancer will strive to become a Lyctor, an immortal and borderline-omnipotent servant to the undying Emperor God - but to do so, they’ll need their cavaliers’ help to make it through a series of challenges of both necromancy and the sword.Īll of this is a lot, obviously, but Muir establishes this complex world so simply and so elegantly that it never becomes overwhelming. Together, Gideon and Harrow must journey to the long-abandoned First House, a decaying, gothic wreck of a palace on a planet full of water and skeletons, to join necromancers and cavaliers from each of the other seven Houses in their system. She says she won’t let Gideon go before she performs one last service for Harrow as her cavalier.

And no matter how cunningly Gideon tries to plot her escape, Harrow manages to foil her at every turn. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-markīut Gideon is an indentured servant, and her labor is owed to Harrowhark, the 17-year-old princess of the Ninth, most powerful necromancer of her generation, and Gideon’s childhood nemesis. (There are nine Houses in this book, each on a different planet and each home to a different necromantic cult.) Gideon herself is not a necromancer: She’s a soldier, a likable jock who just wants a simple life with her dirty magazines and her longsword, away from the misery and desolation of her life in Ninth. The titular Gideon is an 18-year-old orphan, a foundling who grew up in the bone-obsessed necromantic cult of the Ninth House.

Every story is better when you put it in IN SPACEĪs promised, Gideon the Ninth has quite the high-concept premise, so bear with me while we lay out the plot as simply as possible. I finished it crying, because the ending punched me straight in the gut. I started this book chuckling at the outrageous premise. It’s an incredibly immersive book, with a rich, detailed mythology, gorgeously balanced sentences, and a genuinely meaningful central relationship. Gideon the Ninth turns out to surpass that initial eye-catching blurb. Was Gideon the Ninth going to be one of those all-too-common cases of a book with a fantastic initial setup that failed to execute it well? Would it be well-plotted but with clumsy sentences, or maybe suffocate under the weight of that high-concept premise?īy the time I was 10 pages in, I’d forgotten all about those concerns.

I wasn’t entirely sure that any book could live up to that summary. “You have my attention,” I said out loud.īut my attention came with some doubts. So when the book arrived on my desk with that blurb emblazoned on the cover, I had the same reaction any rational human being would have. Gideon the Ninth, the debut novel by Tamsyn Muir, is best summarized by the blurb listed in place of prominence on its front cover: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!”

Gideon 9th