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A review by thekarpuk
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
4.0
One of the unexpected benefits in the increasing diversity of science fiction is that we get less Star Trek voice.
I admit it didn't start with Star Trek, but it's the easiest touchstone when it comes to that stilted, vaguely military, sort of officious sounding tone that much of old-school scifi and even some modern works have. It may partially have sprung up from how much old science fiction involved the military, but it appeared all over the place, and I wonder if a part of it was an attempt to mask an inability to write any other way.
I don't expect realism in dialogue. I don't expect people to each sound like a unique and distinct voice, though I admit that's nice when it happens. I just dislike when every character has the same speech pattern and that speech pattern is dull as dirt. It's like listening to one boring nerd talk your ear off, in fact, upon consideration, that's exactly what it is.
Gideon fits into a character type that I didn't even realize I enjoyed until I noticed it reoccurring: the fantasy protagonist who never stops being unwilling. They're generally over it, and while they have agency, they are clearly being dragged through the narrative when they'd rather just escape from all the other characters and just disappear.
The dialogue in this book is fun without looking like that author is trying to be a high level stylist. People have an amusing specificity to how they speak, and those personalities bounce off each other, because almost none of them want to be around each other most of the time.
Maybe it's because I just got tired of protagonists who were outsiders for the purpose of narrative convenience, an easy, dopey cipher that everyone could explain things to. I'm tired of explanations. I would like fewer of them. I'll use contextual clues. It will be fine, I like books that don't have the explanatory dialogue of a bad TV crime procedural.
And that's part of the joy of this universe, it's ludicrously dark in structure, full of grandiose, awe inspiring set pieces, and the main characters are just sort of used to it. Because they would be by now, they live their whole lives in this heavy metal album cover of a reality.
What's odd even beyond all that is most of the story is essentially a whodunit. There's more Agatha Christie DNA in this thing than I would have imagined at the outset. A punch of people are trapped in a creaky old place, unclear of their objectives, and someone or something is killing them one by one. They just happen to all be necromancers and warriors on a hyper-goth temple on an otherwise empty planet.
After all this glowing praise you may be asking, why the 4 stars? And it's petty, but inescapable: the naming conventions.
I have a hard time keeping track of names at the best of times, which makes reading Japanese and Russian works particularly difficult, but at least in those they usually land on a name that the narrator will use more or less consistently, leaving me to mostly suss out the others in dialogue. Characters in Gideon the Ninth have a full name, a house, and a specific role related to that house, and the narrative uses all three, and sometimes nicknames, interchangeably and often, so I had some moments later in the book where I was referencing the character list from the beginning of the book on my phone to make sure I knew who was being discussed.
It's a small thing, but authors, at least in the narrative, pick a label and stick with it.
Otherwise, this book made me excited enough for this author that I actually got frustrated when I looked up the author and found out this is her debut. The second book in the series isn't even out yet. So at least, if nothing else, I have something to look forward to.
I admit it didn't start with Star Trek, but it's the easiest touchstone when it comes to that stilted, vaguely military, sort of officious sounding tone that much of old-school scifi and even some modern works have. It may partially have sprung up from how much old science fiction involved the military, but it appeared all over the place, and I wonder if a part of it was an attempt to mask an inability to write any other way.
I don't expect realism in dialogue. I don't expect people to each sound like a unique and distinct voice, though I admit that's nice when it happens. I just dislike when every character has the same speech pattern and that speech pattern is dull as dirt. It's like listening to one boring nerd talk your ear off, in fact, upon consideration, that's exactly what it is.
Gideon fits into a character type that I didn't even realize I enjoyed until I noticed it reoccurring: the fantasy protagonist who never stops being unwilling. They're generally over it, and while they have agency, they are clearly being dragged through the narrative when they'd rather just escape from all the other characters and just disappear.
The dialogue in this book is fun without looking like that author is trying to be a high level stylist. People have an amusing specificity to how they speak, and those personalities bounce off each other, because almost none of them want to be around each other most of the time.
Maybe it's because I just got tired of protagonists who were outsiders for the purpose of narrative convenience, an easy, dopey cipher that everyone could explain things to. I'm tired of explanations. I would like fewer of them. I'll use contextual clues. It will be fine, I like books that don't have the explanatory dialogue of a bad TV crime procedural.
And that's part of the joy of this universe, it's ludicrously dark in structure, full of grandiose, awe inspiring set pieces, and the main characters are just sort of used to it. Because they would be by now, they live their whole lives in this heavy metal album cover of a reality.
What's odd even beyond all that is most of the story is essentially a whodunit. There's more Agatha Christie DNA in this thing than I would have imagined at the outset. A punch of people are trapped in a creaky old place, unclear of their objectives, and someone or something is killing them one by one. They just happen to all be necromancers and warriors on a hyper-goth temple on an otherwise empty planet.
After all this glowing praise you may be asking, why the 4 stars? And it's petty, but inescapable: the naming conventions.
I have a hard time keeping track of names at the best of times, which makes reading Japanese and Russian works particularly difficult, but at least in those they usually land on a name that the narrator will use more or less consistently, leaving me to mostly suss out the others in dialogue. Characters in Gideon the Ninth have a full name, a house, and a specific role related to that house, and the narrative uses all three, and sometimes nicknames, interchangeably and often, so I had some moments later in the book where I was referencing the character list from the beginning of the book on my phone to make sure I knew who was being discussed.
It's a small thing, but authors, at least in the narrative, pick a label and stick with it.
Otherwise, this book made me excited enough for this author that I actually got frustrated when I looked up the author and found out this is her debut. The second book in the series isn't even out yet. So at least, if nothing else, I have something to look forward to.