Z

Well. This was, indeed, the most fun I've ever had with a skeleton.

This book tore my heart out around halfway (the colandering of a certain adept), spent the rest of the book happily stomping all over it and then threw it into a shredder at the end.
...Can't wait to read the next one!

The last book that wrecked me this hard was when I read The Hunger Games over a decade (I fear) ago. If I still were a teenager, the amount of influence this would have on my personality developement... (Now it simply fits what has been developed and will probably increase my love for bad puns and “that's what she said”)

I read this book after being in book three of Jennifer L. Armentrout's Ash and Blood (and boy do I feel weird with this comparison because the quilaty difference is brutal), after the description “lesbian necromancers” stole my entire attention. I mention this because both of the authors bring real life things into the books - but where it is weirdly jarring and unexplained in Ash and Blood, in Gideon the Ninth there are memes aplenty and things that work like they do in our world without being in any way jarring or taking you out of the story. Gideon is simply so irreverent and also an appreciative lesbian and somehow, “thats what she said” seems like something she'd come up with.

What I was really impressed with was the way that nobody in this entire story is unlikeable. Well, except for Crux. He can go get colandered.
But the others? Even for all their flaws, they're all in some way likeable. Even Ianthe kind of gets likeable there at the end. Because, as little as we learn about some of them, what we learn is enough to give them character and personality. Even the Second - I can only remember one of their names, but I know who they are and what they believe. I know little about Harrow's parents, but I have a solid picture of them in my head.
That's another thing - the descriptions were excellent. Just enough to give you the ability to create a picture in your head, but never too much or too long.

And Harrow... Oh, Harrow. I fell in love with her about five seconds in (for the record, that was after I fell in love with Gideon, which was instantaneous), when it turned out she'd dug bones into the hard ground with her necro noodle arms for hours to make sure that she didn't have to go without Gideon.

Their love(?) story is perhaps the most enemies to friends(-ish) to idk if they're interested in being lovers or even able to what with the whole “I ate your soul because you made me and it almost drove me crazy with sorrow” that I've ever read. And I read A LOT of fanfic. We get a lot of info about just how absolutely dysfunctional their relationship is and how much hate there has been, but the line is VERY fine here. And it feels absolutely natural that Gideon, who has never really had approval but in a weird way has always craved it, who has in some way been a shadow to Harrow, who is a good, caring person but also quite impulsive, would sacrifice her for HER necromancer. It is never stated explicitly, but through the entire book, in the way they treat each other and think about each other - Harrow's initial refusal to siphon from her, the fact that Gideon looks for her when she disappears and basically attempts to rage her way through the trapdoor to get to her - you get a feeling for the amount of emotions between them - and that it is on the brink of falling into something positive and caring (albeit still filled with cursing at each other). The catalyst scene in the swimming pool, where Harrow tells Gideon what actually happened when they were little - there's so much freaking trauma there, on both sides and they're definitely trauma-bonded to some extent, but... it feels natural that they cling to each other after that. That this one talk, this one comforting, is enough to turn things around between them.

That's something Tamsyn Muir is excellent at in general - giving you juuuuuuust enough info that you know what characters know and feel, without stating it out loud. “Show, don't tell” down to an artform. (Example: It was very clear that Palamedes knew pretty early on what the way to Lyctorhood was, even if he only hinted at his disgust. It's also at least very probable that Harrow wasn't far behind, but absolutely unwilling to entertain the thought, thus focusing on the theorem. And it also didn't feel weird that Gideon had at least an inkling, because we were given enough that her reaction was plausible.)

I could spend about five hours more just waxing on about this masterpiece that this book is, but alas, there are more books in the series, so I must go put my poor heart through some more abuse.
Though I am foolishly still hoping for a happy ending. One where everony is alive (Except Crux)