Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Tor, 2019)

★★★☆☆

“Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” —Charles Stross

What it says on the tin?

Except that “exploring” doesn’t start until around the 40% mark. The first third of the book is spent on “vying”: if that’s what we can call sitting with the characters while they niggle each other and otherwise don’t do very much.

As Zach writes in his review: “They are given only the instruction not to open locked doors without permission, and then left to their own devices. They are totally in the dark, and Gideon is especially in the dark, and the reader is especially left in the dark.”

I found it all fairly excruciating. In particular, the worldbuilding never quite came together for me. The “palace” is actually a “weird-ass facility” with hatches, towers, and hotel rooms (?), dating back to 10,000 years before story’s present. I frequently failed to picture what Gideon was looking at, and wondered if it was something that was supposed to be recognizable to a 21st century human.

Much has been said about the fannish and Internet-y humor/style/mood the book achieves. It entertained me for about one chapter; then I needed something more to stand on.

But I did enjoy a fraught enemies-to-lovers (or at least friends) arc, and it was also just goddamn unique?

Edit 2/23/20: A fantastic interview with Tamsyn Muir over at Three Crows (cw: suicidal ideation). Add “lesbian necromancers” to the list of the blurb’s not-quites.