Gideon the Ninth

[cahn]

4/5. This was my third try, and this time oh wow I thought it was great -- though the first two times I foundered in the first chapter. You see, I was brought up in a style of reading SF/fantasy where language is worldbuilding. Word choice tells you important things about the universe, what things exist in this universe, what things don't. The way characters talk tell you important thing about their culture in-universe. And a large part of what makes a book good, in this way of thinking, is how well it is able to maintain the balance of teaching you about the world through language and word choice and still keep you empathizing and in the heads of the characters.

...Muir does not freaking care about language and word choice as worldbuilding AT ALL. In fact, to a certain extent Muir does not care about worldbuilding at all -- and the way I just said that isn't quite right, as I think she has actually done some interesting worldbuilding in setting up her necromantic systems and the Houses and so on (whether it is consistent I guess I'll have to read the next book to see), and there are certain word choice things that she does really well, like have all the cavaliers referred to by their House -- but, like, there's a part she cares about and a part where she Does Not Care At All. So, on the first page, where chocolates on fancy hotel pillows are referred to (which caused me to nope out the first time) -- eh, sure, this universe can have chocolates on fancy hotel pillows just like the twenty-first century US, sure, why not, we're just not going to worry about the implications of that for consistency at all. People say "that's what she said" in this universe, why not?

So for this reading (as counseled by ase quite a while ago) I deliberately tried to turn off my SF-reading brain and tell it sternly, "Look, just roll with it and assume that nothing in terms of word choice is worldbuilding-specific." (I think one of you counseled me to think of it as if a translator had translated it into twenty-first-century jargon? Good idea, thank you to whomever suggested it.) And when I did that, Muir's stylistic choices turn out to work pretty well, actually -- I'll have to read the second book and see how that goes, but one thing that made it work was that this book was quite restricted in terms of setting; in a book taking place in more locales than one house I could see this not working, but as it was it allowed Muir to focus on language and word choice as character development.

(I didn't mind the memes showing up, though I live in a cave so I don't get memes in general -- but hey, I was raised on John M. Ford, who tried to put a reference to "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards..." in as much stuff as he could, including his Richard III vampire AU, so in general that kind of thing delights me. I am super delighted by all the quasi-spooky-Biblical stuff and hope it gets picked up on in the next book.)

And wow, once I could turn off my SF-reading brain I really liked the book. I mean partially because it is ALL the loyalty tropes on steroids and I feel like my brain does not admit the possibility of the loyalty tropes get to be Too Much, oh no, there's no such thing! So, you know, I got overloaded with loyalty trope and it was great! And also it reminded me of the Gormenghast books [ETA: I probably got this idea from skygiants's review, but I entirely concur], only with way more narrative drive, a compelling plot, and a heart, which I enjoyed. The plot just never let up, I loved it. I should have seen the ending coming because everything just leads directly to it, but I didn't because the narrative drive just took me straight through.

Also, I got blindsided a bit by the Gormenghast vibes and thought the book would all take place in the Ninth House with just the Ninth House characters, and no one told me that if I'd got through the first couple of chapters that it would be a "teams compete in a competition that involves necromancy laboratories" story because that kind of thing is my jam and I would probably have read this quite a bit earlier :P

One of the things I rather loved about it was that I kept hearing that it was "lesbian necromancers in space!" and I guess that's an accurate description, but that sort of makes me think there's going to be a sappy gooey romance, and, like. I loved Gideon because she was unabashedly into girls, like, attracted to them to the point where it's a plot point, but ~romance~ wasn't in some sense the character/relationship point of the book or of Gideon. (~Over-the-top loyalty~, mind you, can be the character/relationship point of any book anytime, yes please :D ) It was just one of those things where she had porno magazines of girls and she found women compelling in a way she didn't at all find men compelling (even though she would notice things about men's bodies too, mostly from a professional standpoint). And I hadn't realized how refreshing that would be, that Gideon just got to be into girls without it being a big deal in any way, inverting the usual careless pulp-SF het.

ahhhhh I really want to read the second one now but all these other Hugo holds came in so I will have to wait...

[I know a bunch of you wrote reviews of this which I missed because of reading it a year later than everyone else... so feel free to link me!]

Comments

[sophia_sol]

I'm so glad you found a way into reading this book in a way where your can enjoy it for what it is! The idea of reading it as translated into 21st century English is a great one.

My review of it is here: https://sophia-sol.dreamwidth.org/341030.html

I think I've actually become more fond of them book in retrospect than I was immediately after; the things I find boring have faded from memory and I'm just left with the things I loved!

[cahn]

Haha I think the Headley Beowulf translation helped me think of it that way! Ooh, thanks for the link to your review :D I also felt like the first 80 pages did not give me at all a good idea as to what the rest of the book was like!

[antisoppist]

I hadn't even picked up that Gideon was female so I'm clearly reading the wrong bits of the internet.

I translated a sample of a Finnish middle-grade fantasy novel recently and I spent far too long thinking about a synonym for electrifying in a world that didn't have electricity and researching the etymology of the Finnish word for electricity/electrifying in a way that the author didn't seem to have thought about. Possibly it is a good thing I have not broken into the SF translation market because it would take me forever.

[cahn]

ahahahaha okay how much do I love that you were thinking about word choice in that kind of detail. YOU ARE MY PEOPLE. Perhaps it is a good thing you haven't broken into the SF translation market but now I kind of want you to :P

[eglantiere]

i've avoided it for so long for the silliest of reasons - confusing it with some other edgy necromancer book - and woah, it's one of the most favorite things i read this year. i'm rereading harrow right now, savoring the details when i'm not sidelined by my anxiety and confusion over its setup! it's such a refreshingly ballsy, fresh, bigger-than-life couple of books, i adore it.

[cahn]

Honestly it would not occur to me to describe this as "edgy necromancers," even though that's what it is... maybe because I had so many other descriptors occur to me, like "allllll the loyalty kink in the world," lol! I am excited to read the second one as soon as I make it through the rest of this library pile :D

[iberiandoctor]

Okaaaaay, if you had told me this was a book in which the futuristic sexy necromancers check into hotels which have chocolates on fancy hotel pillows just like the twenty-first century US, I would have noped out so hard I fell over. I'm not as fussed as you over word choice, but you'd hope the worldbuilding would be... not this unseamless? IDK, I'm not sure how you got over it. Which is a shame bc many people have said how good it is. (Does "think of it as if a translator had translated it into twenty-first-century jargon" mean it could be twenty-first century AU or meta? Otherwise I would be having a hard time.)

[cahn]

Well, to be fair, they don't check into hotels with chocolates, it's just a throwaway line from the beginning: "Then Gideon whistled through her teeth as she unlocked her security cuff and arranged it and its stolen key considerately on her pillow, like chocolate in a fancy hotel."

Which I would usually take to mean that okay, in this universe there are chocolates in fancy hotels, and then I'm like, what? and then I noped right out. But once I was like, "no, Gideon isn't actually thinking about chocolates, someone translated it and that's the metaphor they chose to use instead of 'like garblgarbl in a xltin' which we wouldn't have understood," it became much more palatable :)

I think the author was in Homestuck fandom? I don't know anything about that fandom, but I've heard that if you do then it's easier to take.

[skygiants]

Here's mine! The loyalty stuff is definitely some of the best and most compelling parts of the series. :DD

[cahn]

Man, and with so many characters! I'm here for one loyalty relationship, but when the whole principle of your universe is loyalty kink, I... well, yeah :)

ETA: Ah, you're the one who made the Gormenghast comparison! Ha, yes. (I'll credit you in the post now :) )

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I loved the book, partly because of what turned you off about it: the way Muir is constantly holding her universe at a kind of ironic distance. She's always going out of her way to remind you that this universe is Not Real--- she has created it to entertain you and you have accepted, and isn't it interesting that it works so well? I read an interview with Muir once where she said: "I do hope that the novel does create a snapshot, because that’s something I love — I love reading old books that are eras frozen in amber; I love timeless books too, but I love books with hip references that we don’t get any more. I love all the utterly impenetrable references to things that were hip at the time in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas."

Even if I didn't find the world realistic, I found it compelling (Which is absolutely necessary... I hate postmodern writers who seem to have contempt for their own created universes. ::cough:: Margaret Atwood. John Harrison. You'll think of others.) I loved how every house has its own fighting style and its own style of necromantic magic and how once again, the weight of the world must lie on hapless, shitty teenagers who don't deserve it. But as world-building, it shows all the backstage bits where the architecture doesn't join up and invites you to laugh at them.

I think the comparison to Gilbert and Sullivan is spot-on. If you're watching a musical (except the Buffy one), you just have to accept that occasionally, everyone on stage will stop and sing about what they're doing, even if that makes absolutely no sense. You seem to like proper opera (something I know very little about)... is it the same thing? I'm also reminded of the introduction to Vanity Fair:

"What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?—To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance." I can absolutely imagine Muir writing a preface like this. (Ok, and now I can imagine a Gideonverse AU of Vanity Fair and I suddenly want that to be a thing.)

[cahn]

Huh, that's so interesting, because I apparently really like ironic distance in all kinds of media -- I love Gilbert and Sullivan, I love books with all kinds of callbacks and allusions, I absolutely adore Dante with all his references to current-at-the-time events -- it's only SF where it is really hard for me to handle, and I think it's because of this being trained to read the text for worldbuilding, which I don't really do when i watch Gilbert and Sullivan...

(Proper opera doesn't really do this explicitly so much in-text, but a lot of times the staging will bring out more modern references -- like the Met staging of Verdi's Ballo in Maschera I saw recently in video where everyone suddenly breaks out into a Broadway-esque line dance, which I just loved.)

I absolutely agree that it's a compelling world. (I haven't read John Harrison, but I have read Margaret Atwood, and, heh. Yeah. I also get the impression sometimes that she doesn't like her characters much, either.)

...I have also not read Vanity Fair, but clearly I need to :P

[luzula]

You see, I was brought up in a style of reading SF/fantasy where language is worldbuilding. Word choice tells you important things about the universe, what things exist in this universe, what things don't. The way characters talk tell you important thing about their culture in-universe. And a large part of what makes a book good, in this way of thinking, is how well it is able to maintain the balance of teaching you about the world through language and word choice and still keep you empathizing and in the heads of the characters.

Ha ha, yes, this is so me. I noped out of it just as you did...but I don't think I have the inclination to revisit it.

[cahn]

Yes! not just me :D I wouldn't have reread it if the sequel hadn't been on the Hugo nominee list, so I thought I should give it one more try before giving it up entirely.

[luzula]

I recently beta-read someone's first draft of a novel, which was set in an alternate version of our world, and of course I was all "someone ate a tomato in alternate Britain! that means there was a Columbian Exchange in this world" and "someone used a metaphor about a depth charge! that means there are submarines in this world" etc. I only hope it was not too much, but of course I did say that maybe not everyone reads this way, and they could just take what was useful to them from my notes, etc.

[cahn]

That is AWESOME and a) I am on board with you beta-reading more alternate universes and b) if I ever write a SF-ian AU I know whom I am asking to beta :D

[(Anonymous)]

Re: b), I would be honored! : )

[ase]

Here's me on Muir so far.

Ianthe is terrible. Which... might be related to the loyalty thing, huh.

[cahn]

:D You know that you are the reason why I tried this again, I figured if you liked it it must be worth reading :) (Not, of course, that that necessarily lines up with "I must like it!" But hey, you have a pretty good track record :) )