The way I was introduced to this book was by being told that it's about "lesbian necromancers in space" and let's be honest, that's really enough to get me interested. Plus last October Tor.com had it available as a free ebook for downloading and that is also enough to get me interested. (You can sign up for future books if you'd like!)
Honestly reading this book was a really bizarre experience. I had no idea what was happening half the time, the world building is hard to figure out at first, but I was still sucked in. I think part of it was hearing all of these details and knowing that they'll be explained eventually. A huge part of the appeal though is that the protagonist's voice (so Gideon's voice) is so distinctive and so so so incredibly hilarious!
Gideon is a swordfighter from the Ninth House, a planet made up of black depressing nuns who do the bidding of Harrow, the current heir to the planet. Harrow is a talented necromancer, her specialty is conjuring skeletons from individual bones to do her bidding. Gideon and Harrow have a kind of rivalry between them where they continually sabotage each other. At the start, Gideon wants nothing more than to get off of this planet, but Harrow foils her plans every time. Things get changed up when the Emperor calls a necromancer/cavalier pair from each planet to the First House to become a Lyctor, or a servant to the Emperor. This would be a great honor, so Harrow plans to leave and takes Gideon as her cavalier. Once they get to the First House, they meet the necromancers from the other houses, two through eight. And there they learn that they have to figure out how to become Lyctors themselves. So Harrow leaves Gideon behind and throws herself at the challenges. Eventually they learn to work together, as the others start dying off mysteriously. No one knows if this is part of the challenge or if it's murder.
The end is devastating and I'm going to spoil it. One of the other necromancers ends up being a Lyctor in disguise, and this Lyctor is hell bent on sabotaging this gathering and killing them all. It turns out that the way to become a Lyctor involves the necromancer killing and eating the soul of their cavalier. Now the knowledge of death and swordsmanship are united in one, giving the necromancer more power. To defeat the Lyctor, Gideon sacrifices herself forcing Harrow to become a Lyctor and emerge victorious.
As I said earlier, the world building is incredible, but also incredibly confusing. I still have no real idea what a Lyctor is, what the other worlds are, or what's going on most of the time. Which I find enjoyable in fantasy, but also it was very alienating at first. I had no idea what the names of the other pairs were until I was very close to the end of the book. It was a lot to throw at the readers and I didn't have a ton of motivation to figure it out until I was most of the way through the book.
But Gideon is definitely the saving grace of the novel. She's absolutely hilarious, she doesn't care about becoming a Lyctor or anything like that. She mainly wants her freedom and to protect her friends. There's an additional level of humor where everyone thinks that she's a very serious Ninth House nun who doesn't speak and is very grim all the time, until she starts cracking sex jokes and bad puns. It's really entertaining getting her narration all through this book, and it's the main reason why I enjoyed it so much.
Another great aspect was the fact that this isn't a romance novel. No relationships spring up, despite the fact that we know from the beginning that Gideon is a lesbian, and figure out the others as we go along. It's a great model of how to make a character queer without focusing on relationships (since being queer is much more than that). Initially I thought that Harrow and Gideon would be an enemies-to-lovers situation, but even though it's clear by the end that they care very much about each other, they never get past hugging. It's so great that the book didn't have to rely on this to make you care about the characters.
I'm not sure if I'm going to read the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. Like I said, Gideon's voice was really what kept me going through this novel. If that isn't there, I'm not sure if I'll actually enjoy the rest of the series. But who knows, maybe the author figured out a way to make it work. Clearly Muir is immensely talented, and I do want to see what happens next.
No comments:
Post a Comment