Read, If You Like: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A few weeks ago a friend and I swapped books for the summer. I leant them my favourite series, they leant me theirs. We solemnly swore to never, ever mention it if we disliked the other’s. It’s a risky business, loaning someone a book you adore. If the other person hates it, will your friendship fizzle out? Are you incompatible on a molecular level? Is this the friendship equivalent of one of you wanting children and the other not? (Yes.)

It turns out we both have excellent taste in books. This is useful both because I was on holiday recently and very ready to do nothing but inhale food and a new series, and because we can stop making references to a plotline or writing style and saying ‘oh it’s from that series, you can only understand half of the point I’m making.’ Now we can make the references and the other person gets it, which adds approximately thirty eight percent more fun to everyday conversations. I’m aware that sounds like most of our conversations revolve around plotlines and writing style. They don’t not. Look, we both work in a library. Anyway, since I did a review when I first read The Raven Boys, because of course The Raven Cycle is what I loaned my friend, I thought I’d do one for the first novel in the Locked Tomb series.

Read Gideon The Ninth (Tamsyn Muir, 2019) if you like:

• Blood. This isn’t me being all My Chemical Romance fan, it is quite a grisly story (thus I start with both a recommendation and a content warning)
• Weird-as magic systems. You know the type. Unusual. Requiring a small amount of patience to understand. Extremely well thought out. Trust-the-author systems. The technical term for this is weird-as.
• Sex jokes
• Face paint. Lots. So much face paint. There are whole characters whose face skin you never see.
• If you don’t mind the phrase ‘face skin,’ you’ll probably enjoy this book
• Complex and ever-evolving relationships between characters (complex and ever-evolving characters, in fact)
• Ensemble casts
• Books featuring teenage girls that aren’t about being a teenage girl
• The more I think about it, the more I think that if you are a My Chemical Romance fan, you’ll like Gideon. It sort of feels like The Black Parade had a baby with the fantasy and sci fi genres.
• Skeletons

I can also highly recommend the two sequels, Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth, which are both just as weird in slightly different ways, although their skeleton count varies. Ish.

I’m off to listen to MCR and work on projects I won’t have time for when uni starts again. If you’re into activism, the Do Something Directory wants to hear from you about how we can make engaging in activism better. If you’re into my brand of weird-as storytelling, keep an eye on my Patreon in the coming weeks. There’s a new story incoming, and depending on when you read this, I’m putting out calls for an official street team. Say hi to Gideon if you decide to read her adventures!

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

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