Gideon the Ninth

I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t spend at least 25% of this book unsure of exactly what was going on, but I had such a good time!!!

Just incredible. Pretty rare to find such and imaginative and rich world built into such a compelling narrative that is SO FUN. It's funny, heartbreaking, action-packed, mesmerizing, and thoughtful all at once. Can't wait to read the rest.

I'm not into horror. Period. Don't like to read it, don't like to watch it. Don't even really like to hear it talked about. But this was a good ride, engaging, with profoundly beautiful visual description. It managed to be quite long and complex, and yet still relatively simple too. It turned cliches about and brought them back with something new.

I loved the characters in this book. Enough so that I greatly look forward to the next in the series. I did find the story structure telling a little light, and it often reminded me of epic adult Scooby Doo. It's a hybrid of the jaded millennial reluctantly participating in society (but on their own terms) and a Shakespeare-ian 5-act play, where the protagonist forms a band who tries to unmask the monster clue by clue. The telling was still lots of fun. I guess it just felt like it couldn't decide if it was quirky pop comedy or something deeper.

I remember hearing about this book last year, but the tagline it was advertised with, "lesbian necromancers in space", didn't sound particularly appealing. Now, with the second book of the Locked Tomb trilogy just out, there was more talk about Gideon the Ninth, and these reviews sounded a lot better. After the borefest that was Gorky Park, I wanted something entertaining and picked up Gideon. And how glad I am I did. It's very good for a first novel, full of an interesting world and twists and turns. I can see why some people wouldn't like it, but I didn't see any faults in this book. My only problem was the vocabulary, which is oftentimes a bit too much if your native language isn't English. But it was still OK and I can't wait where the next books take the story.

I’ve got really mixed feelings about this book. There were moments that it was exactly what I wanted it to be, but then there were long stretches where it got into details about unnecessary things. Though later those things turned out to be important. So I guess the problem was that the foreshadowing was too subtle? I really liked the universe and the characters were memorable and well developed. I would recommend it with the caveat that it’s more of a mystery than an adventure.