The Book Thread

[Eldan]

Well, so far, Magnus is the only likeable character. If he dies first, I shall be miffed.

[Eldan]

I much prefer the chapters were Gideon is under a vow of silence.

[warty goblin]

I much prefer the chapters were Gideon is under a vow of silence.

That reminds me of the last Sword of Truth novel I suffered through, the one where Kahlen is erased from existence. Turns out I much preferred her that way, which made it hard to get excited about the quest to re-exist her.

[Eldan]

More Gideon

Spoiler

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Well, I ****ing called it, didn't I. Became increasingly obvious, the only character with seemingly no hidden motives or story to reveal later. Also entirely too sensible. RIP, uncle Magnus with your glorious dad jokes.

New most interesting character is Dulcinea, seemingly the only one actually thinking and asking questions instead of just doing stuff. Like why the heck people are even competing instead of cooperating when there's seemingly no reason to.

[Eldan]

Getting into the last third of Gideon, and my opinion has not massively changed.

The characters are okay for the most part. At least half of them are still too immature and petulant for my tastes, especially Gideon. Still don't like Gideon.

The humour in this book just sucks in general. Not just the parts which are intended to be bad jokes made by Gideon, just the humour in general.

The worldbuilding is still severely lacking and it takes away a lot from the book. I still have the feeling I don't really know who half these characters are, where they come from or what motivates them, beyond the broadest stereotypes. Still no idea who the cohorts are fighting, and why. Who the Emperor is, beyond "a powerful necromancer". Why I should care what's in the locked Tomb, after that is revealed, though I have ideas. Why exactly these characters should be fighting each other at all, because they still have no reasonable motive not to cooperate.

And yet, I'm still enjoying it for the most part.

[Batcathat]

Getting into the last third of Gideon, and my opinion has not massively changed.

The characters are okay for the most part. At least half of them are still too immature and petulant for my tastes, especially Gideon. Still don't like Gideon.

The humour in this book just sucks in general. Not just the parts which are intended to be bad jokes made by Gideon, just the humour in general.

The worldbuilding is still severely lacking and it takes away a lot from the book. I still have the feeling I don't really know who half these characters are, where they come from or what motivates them, beyond the broadest stereotypes. Still no idea who the cohorts are fighting, and why. Who the Emperor is, beyond "a powerful necromancer". Why I should care what's in the locked Tomb, after that is revealed, though I have ideas. Why exactly these characters should be fighting each other at all, because they still have no reasonable motive not to cooperate.

And yet, I'm still enjoying it for the most part.

After ruling all that out, I am rather curious about what it is you're enjoying. Is it just the style? I suppose it might be the plot, but I would think okay-ish characters and lacking worldbuilding would affect that.

[warty goblin]

Wrapped up Raven Swordmistress of Chaos. It's definitely what it looks like (moderately horny sword and sorcery), but a pretty solid version of that. One of the fun things about this sort of story is that enough of it runs on mood and common tropes that it can be super efficient, and because S&S doesn't require the sort of strict realistic worldbuilding popular these days, it can just do cool stuff. This book is pretty much a tour of cool stuff, evil magic, wizard duels, beast men, things from beyond time, all the fun juicy pulp stuff.

Speaking of horny, the Sarah Beauhall books continue their reign of hormones. Nothing particularly inexplicable yet, but it's definitely coming. Alas, for those of you following along, it seems that a bra does not cure getting psychically shredded by an astral t Rex. So if a player in anybody's home D&D game tries that, no dice.

[Ionathus]

Getting into the last third of Gideon, and my opinion has not massively changed.

The characters are okay for the most part. At least half of them are still too immature and petulant for my tastes, especially Gideon. Still don't like Gideon.

The humour in this book just sucks in general. Not just the parts which are intended to be bad jokes made by Gideon, just the humour in general.

The worldbuilding is still severely lacking and it takes away a lot from the book. I still have the feeling I don't really know who half these characters are, where they come from or what motivates them, beyond the broadest stereotypes. Still no idea who the cohorts are fighting, and why. Who the Emperor is, beyond "a powerful necromancer". Why I should care what's in the locked Tomb, after that is revealed, though I have ideas. Why exactly these characters should be fighting each other at all, because they still have no reasonable motive not to cooperate.

And yet, I'm still enjoying it for the most part.

Hooray!

After ruling all that out, I am rather curious about what it is you're enjoying. Is it just the style? I suppose it might be the plot, but I would think okay-ish characters and lacking worldbuilding would affect that.

Eldan's review so far has been similar to my feelings on my first readthrough - probably a little more critical, but the same general questions and objections. Main difference is I think I liked Gideon as a character more than he does at this point.

Spoiler: My tangential feelings about the flexible definition of "worldbuilding"

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Also, my feelings on worldbuilding are probably coloring my enjoyment. I'm always happy to get the "logistics" worldbuilding elements like how the government works, who they're fighting, who their god/king/ruler is and what he stands for...but I don't necessarily need them. I read some very (logistically) worldbuilding-lite fantasy in my formative years: things like The Riddle-Master of Hed and The Fionavar Tapestry, where stuff often just kind of...happens? They don't slow down to explain the rules of magic or the governments or even who any of these people are, but those books still sucked me in because of the unique feeling they cultivated and the promise that they would drip-feed me more of my logical questions if I just kept following along on the path the author had created.

It's been a while since I've read either, but I do feel like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings both do the same thing to varying degrees. Of course, Tolkien wrote a lot of appendices and extra worldbuilding, so those details have entered the cultural consciousness (at least in fantasy circles) but I remember the stories themselves having quite a fairytale "dream-logic" quality to them, where the main character hobbits just sort of bounce from place to place, and the knowledgeable characters only fill them in on the need-to-know stuff. I don't recall coming away from either feeling like I'd had all my logistics questions answered either. But then again, it's been a long time since I read them and I should definitely schedule a reread!

Probably the style or "vibe" and the descriptions were the biggest attractions for me. I really like the little characterization details, and I like how Tamsyn writes a scene. For some reason her prose is very evocative for my reading tastes, and her concept of the limits of the magic goes in very interesting directions. When I started this book about necromancers I expected skeletons everywhere, and "gloom," "dark," "death," "rot" on every page, but I was pretty surprised by how varied and colorful the descriptions were, and how much blood (ha ha) she squeezes from that particular stone. Things like making a bone cocoon, or another of the Houses being able to tell the age of something by some sort of necromantic radioisotope dating method, or the spirit magicians' whole schtick...I dunno. It was like being told there's a gallery of paintings made exclusively with the color blue, and thinking I would probably be sick of blue before the end, but then being pleasantly surprised by how many interesting uses the artist came up with.

It's hard to describe but it was just a very unique world, and she really pulled me in with the "vibes."

I can't speak for Eldan though, and I'm eager to hear what he's liking about it so far!

[Eldan]

After ruling all that out, I am rather curious about what it is you're enjoying. Is it just the style? I suppose it might be the plot, but I would think okay-ish characters and lacking worldbuilding would affect that.

The plot is currently weird and interesting enough that I'm still engaged, yes. I want to see where it's going and if it's actually going to make any sense at the end. Because currently, there's a lot of open questions.

And I don't hate the characters, I'd just wish they'd all talk to each other, dammit. And it's weird how jokey they still are while being slaughtered.

Edit: comments on worldbuilding:

Tolkien works for me. The logicists are never explained in that much detail. Like, what is Gondor's currency? How many farmers are there in Rohan? How big exactly is the population of all those cities in southern Gondor that send troops for the final battle? What is Sauron's chain of command between himself and his troops? These are not questions that are answered, but they don't need to be answered. We still get a feeling of who the characters are, where they come from and why they are fighting, why they are going on a quest together and even why Boromir betrays the others.

In Gideon... you quickly get a feeling which one is the "soldier planet" or the "science planet" or the "artsy planet" among the Nine, though not for all of them. Even now, I have no idea what the Fourth does. And I only have the vaguest idea what they are competing for or why it is a competition. When the teacher tells them what their goal is in the beginning? There is seemingly no reason for them to be secretive about it. And that doesn't really change. There's eight challenges, leading to eight magical theorems and if you solve all eight, you can become a lictor. But they are explicitely told that all eight of the challengers can do it, lictorhood is not a limited resource. But they all just run off alone and... do things. This would work if we were told these are feuding noble houses, say, like in Dune. But there's no actual implication in the text. They all serve the emperor, they have different specialties, they are all seemingly fighting in the same war, and there doesn't seem to exist any kind of massive resource scarcity, or even something like imperial favour to compete for, as the Emperor is conspiciously absent and distant from everything.

So what I really want from the book is a good reason for why people are a) hostile to each other b) not even considering solving some of the tasks as a group or sharing solutions* c) being killed.

*Yes, there's a limited number of keys, but not everyone needs every key. You can just share keys. Or unlock a door and leave it open.

[Eldan]

Alright. Finished up Gideon the Ninth. Tl;dr: Yeah, on balance, I like it, even if some parts are very disappointing.

Muir writes solid action scenes, even if the last one was perhaps a bit long at... three chapters? She also writes good descriptions of environments and her characters aren't necessarily likeable, but they are solid. Most importantly, she knows how to lay out the parts of a mystery so that the readers can solve it in a logical way and as someone who grew up with more detective novels than fantasy, I appreciate that.

On to the spoilery parts.

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Thoughts on different parts of the novel, as they occur:

How to become a Lyctor: well-laid out from the start and it made sense, but a bit too obvious. I think I had most of the parts of how that worked just after reading the glossary at the end of the book. "Necromancers are physically weak" and "One flesh, one end" pretty much give it away. The fact that nowhere was it mentioned that the lyctors had cavaliers themselves, despite obviously being necromancers and the models the houses were built on was just the confirmation that those cavaliers were in some way used up to make the Lyctors. Now, my suspicion after the first puzzle was about riding along in the cavalier's head and sharing their sensations was that to make a lyctor, a necromancer would learn to transfer their mind and soul into the lyctor's body, giving themselves the strong physique they lacked and had to compensate for. Killing and eating the cavalier, I think, actually makes slightly less sense, but it's close enough that I was utterly unsurprised by it. Still, I like a puzzle that works with the parts that are presented earlier in the novel. This is a plus.

The third house: The house that was most obviously, from the beginning, set up as having more going on than was obvious. (All the other houses could have more going on, but none of the others were so obviously set up to be special.) Two sisters, two necromancers, there had to be more there. Shame that the "more" that was there was so disappointing. "The pretty one is actually incompetent and just a distraction, the ugly one everyone overlooks is actually the mage" is incredibly clumsy, obvious and disappointing as a reveal. I was hoping for something really gnarly here, like a single necromancer split into two bodies and regenerated, or one a construct piloted by the other, like the seventh cavalier turned out to be. Big minus.

The other houses: Kind of sad that in the end, houses 2, 4, 5 and 8 were mostly redshirts. Eight were minor antagonists with unusual powers and at least an interesting relationship dynamic between them and I still think Magnus was the best character and it's a shame he died early, but I can't remember four and two ever even doing anything particularly memorable. Though I guess captain two is being set up for a sequel hook. No body found means they aren't dead, everyone knows that. Small minus, I guess there's only so many characters who can really get into the spotlight.

Cytherea: A boring villain. Her motivation is apparently she lived too long and now she wants to end everything. She's just here to kill people, and she's not even doing it in interesting ways, her powers are the most direct and obvious of anyone in the entire book, just bigger. Big construct, solid swordfighter, near endless energy and regeneration. Seeing her repeatedly no-sell attacks gets boring after a while. Wasn't defeated in an interesting way, either. When characters early on were speculating there was some kind of monster in the facility who killed people for violating the rules (such as entering locked doors without asking for permission/having keys), that was more interesting: a rule-bound monster is one that can be circumvented in interesting ways. Second big minus.

Harrowhark the First: To be expected. There were really only two possible endings to the book, after we got about halfway through: either Gideon sacrifices herself to make Harrow a lyctor, or Harrow turns down lyctorhood and throws it in the emperor's face, who'd probably be impressed. The more interesting question was if the Sixth would die.

Gideon: Sacrificed herself, has an overall blah character arc, and I still don't like her. Now, she's probably not gone, because a) no body found and b) background and special powers/mysterious origin never explained. Still, Harrow apparently has her soul (confirmed by the Emperor and Harrow herself), so I'm already fearing there might be an asspull about why she's not dead. Let's hope Harrow instead finds out how to revert being a lyctor and finds her body.

Cooperation: Overall not sad that the winners at the end were the only people who acted even halfway sensibly and shared their information. Six and Nine were the only houses (after Five was dead) who weren't total idiots about the entire challenge. They shared enough information so they could figure the process out, while everyone else went stupidly secretive and paranoid and got killed for it. Good.

The Emperor: How did this plan make one lick of sense. So the Emperor wants new lyctors, and he claims he wants them to be well-informed before they make the sacrifice. Why by all that is unholy, then, does he make everything a puzzle with no guidance whatsoever? This is breathtakingly stupid. Tell them what this is about. The entire fiasco could have been prevented if the emperor just left a few sticky notes with basic explanations. "There are eight theorems, you need to figure them all out to become a lyctor, also, I want you to think about all of this very carefully before you do anything rash".

So yeah. Entertaining, but not great, leaves a few mysteries open, I want to see where it goes, probably getting the sequels.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forget. Man is this book badly advertised. At least to me. They plaster the dang "Lesbian Necromancers in space!" everywhere and it's just kind of false advertising. Yes, there's necromancers, yes they are (briefly) in space and part of a space empire, and yes, one of them is very much a lesbian an the rest ambiguously so to various degrees... but... it barely matters. It certainly doesn't matter enough to be the main part of the tagline. Sure, Gideon does a lot of lusting over the hot girls, but after that tagline, I was expecting a lot more romance and possibly sex scenes, which have only very rarely interested me in books. Shouldn't have focused on that part of the book, I can only imagine someone who wanted more of that would have been disappointed.

[Mechalich]

Edit: Oh yeah, I forget. Man is this book badly advertised. At least to me. They plaster the dang "Lesbian Necromancers in space!" everywhere and it's just kind of false advertising. Yes, there's necromancers, yes they are (briefly) in space and part of a space empire, and yes, one of them is very much a lesbian an the rest ambiguously so to various degrees... but... it barely matters. It certainly doesn't matter enough to be the main part of the tagline. Sure, Gideon does a lot of lusting over the hot girls, but after that tagline, I was expecting a lot more romance and possibly sex scenes, which have only very rarely interested me in books. Shouldn't have focused on that part of the book, I can only imagine someone who wanted more of that would have been disappointed.

Point. Though I'm not sure it's badly advertised so much as falsely advertised.

The advertising and pitch, including the jacket blurb, present the novel as 'lesbian necromancer Maze Runner' which, as a variant on the typical YA battle royale approach would certainly be a thing that could be very popular (and actually, I can think of a good half-dozen webtoons that do exactly this, minus the 'lesbian' part). The actual book is...something very different in a much more experimental and weird way (and the sequel takes this to exponential extremes). I don't think Gideon the Ninth succeeds (and I am of the opinion that Harrow the Ninth is a catastrophic failure), but I certainly don't begrudge Muir taking such a big swing into the weird fiction space. However, I do think the publisher took a book that has at best niche appeal and presented it as a mass market item based on the ability of 'lesbians!' to ride certain politically resonant trends in the YA and YA-adjacent space (Gideon the Ninth isn't a YA novel, but it has enough structural similarity to one to have been marketed that way) and sold a lot of books that way.

In some sense, the story of the Locked Tomb trilogy is more interesting as a phenomenon of how speculative fiction is marketed in the 2020s than anything about the books themselves.

[Eldan]

Anyway, I read back over what other people in this thread thought about it and I think I'm going to pick up the sequel. "Weird and experimental" is good, the main negative point for many people seems to be that they dislike Harrow, which I don't (really, she mostly comes across as pretty sensible to me, except she has the problem everyone in fiction seems to have, where she just can't communicate) and "absolute failure of a book" is at least a strong emotion, so I guess it's not boring.

[Mechalich]

Anyway, I read back over what other people in this thread thought about it and I think I'm going to pick up the sequel. "Weird and experimental" is good, the main negative point for many people seems to be that they dislike Harrow, which I don't (really, she mostly comes across as pretty sensible to me, except she has the problem everyone in fiction seems to have, where she just can't communicate) and "absolute failure of a book" is at least a strong emotion, so I guess it's not boring.

Argh, it's really, really, hard to talk about Harrow the Ninth without spoilers, due to the way the book is structured.

Doing my best: the entire book is essentially a bait and switch, one that the audience is entirely aware of from the beginning (at least I was but considering it's pretty sledgehammer-to-the-face obvious, I don't see how anyone could fail to figure it out really fast). This forces the reader to experience a novel in which the title character - and the only character who anyone could possibly care about since the other characters are 10,000 year-old demigods so removed from the human experience that they aren't characters, just plot devices - fundamentally does not function because everything that occurs is doomed to erasure by the inevitable conclusion. In a sense it actually is extremely boring because it's hundreds of pages of spinning around to end up back where everything started.

This is further undercut by the lackluster worldbuilding because the necromancer empire is so lacking in detail there is nothing for the reader to identify with and no way to tell whether or not the continuation or destruction of this empire would be good/bad/orange/blue. Personally, I can enjoy works with major characters who I don't like or don't identify with as long as the stakes are clear, but in the Locked Tomb universe the stakes appear to be argle-bargle. Gideon the Ninth gets around this by having a villain who is at least trying to murder all the characters for poorly specified reasons, but Harrow the Ninth doesn't even have that sort of simple device.

[Eldan]

Hrm. Okay, that does sound like it amplifies all the biggest problems I have with Gideon while doing away with the parts I liked.

[Ionathus]

Alright. Finished up Gideon the Ninth. Tl;dr: Yeah, on balance, I like it, even if some parts are very disappointing.

Muir writes solid action scenes, even if the last one was perhaps a bit long at... three chapters? She also writes good descriptions of environments and her characters aren't necessarily likeable, but they are solid. Most importantly, she knows how to lay out the parts of a mystery so that the readers can solve it in a logical way and as someone who grew up with more detective novels than fantasy, I appreciate that.

Glad to hear you mostly liked it!

Spoiler

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The third house: The house that was most obviously, from the beginning, set up as having more going on than was obvious. (All the other houses could have more going on, but none of the others were so obviously set up to be special.) Two sisters, two necromancers, there had to be more there. Shame that the "more" that was there was so disappointing. "The pretty one is actually incompetent and just a distraction, the ugly one everyone overlooks is actually the mage" is incredibly clumsy, obvious and disappointing as a reveal. I was hoping for something really gnarly here, like a single necromancer split into two bodies and regenerated, or one a construct piloted by the other, like the seventh cavalier turned out to be. Big minus.

You're right, this is a pretty boring and obvious twist. I also thought, right at the start, "oh, the ugly one must be the real leader" and then they took such a long time to play it out that I second-guessed myself. I enjoyed the Third House's messed-up internal dynamic (Coronabeth wanting to hog the attention, wanting to always hang out with the cavaliers, the moments when Ianthe actually wants something and just brushes Coronabeth aside and it shocks her, Naberius having to stop her from giving up the necromancy charade, Coronabeth being straight-up upset that Ianthe didn't kill and eat her instead) more than I enjoyed their interactions with the rest of the cast.

The other houses: Kind of sad that in the end, houses 2, 4, 5 and 8 were mostly redshirts. Eight were minor antagonists with unusual powers and at least an interesting relationship dynamic between them and I still think Magnus was the best character and it's a shame he died early, but I can't remember four and two ever even doing anything particularly memorable. Though I guess captain two is being set up for a sequel hook. No body found means they aren't dead, everyone knows that. Small minus, I guess there's only so many characters who can really get into the spotlight.

(emphasis mine) Yeah, it's hard to flesh out 18 characters in the space this book has, but I still wished we'd have gotten more of them all.

More thoughts on 2 in a second.

Cytherea: A boring villain. Her motivation is apparently she lived too long and now she wants to end everything. She's just here to kill people, and she's not even doing it in interesting ways, her powers are the most direct and obvious of anyone in the entire book, just bigger. Big construct, solid swordfighter, near endless energy and regeneration. Seeing her repeatedly no-sell attacks gets boring after a while. Wasn't defeated in an interesting way, either. When characters early on were speculating there was some kind of monster in the facility who killed people for violating the rules (such as entering locked doors without asking for permission/having keys), that was more interesting: a rule-bound monster is one that can be circumvented in interesting ways. Second big minus.

Agreed. I like Palamedes basically calling her out for "blathering on about why she killed people, as if her reasons for murder were interesting." She's most useful as a big scary overwhelming threat at the end that forces Gideon to push Harrow into Lyctorhood. There are some small reread bonuses for meaningful things that "Dulcinea" says, but on the whole not the most compelling character.

Cooperation: Overall not sad that the winners at the end were the only people who acted even halfway sensibly and shared their information. Six and Nine were the only houses (after Five was dead) who weren't total idiots about the entire challenge. They shared enough information so they could figure the process out, while everyone else went stupidly secretive and paranoid and got killed for it. Good.

I really liked this aspect of the book. It's interesting that you start on the Ninth House, then we got to Canaan House and I said "oh thank god, they're not all skeleton-wearing goth freaks". And then you get further into the book, and people still aren't warming up and cooperating -- the only ones who did so are killed first (RIP in peace Magnus), and you start to get this vibe of "oh yeah, okay, these people are slightly more normal than the 9th house but they still have trouble communicating and trusting each other." Which is kind of a central need for a murder mystery, for everyone to be a suspect. But it's pretty fun that the 6th and 9th houses team up, given that they're both quite standoffish initially. I'm a big sucker for "character learns to trust" stories and there was a lot of material for me to eat up here.

Also to my earlier reference to the 2nd house: the moment where Palamedes accuses the 2nd necromancer of painting a target on everyone's backs, immediately followed by 3's challenge, was really interesting to me. You get to see the battle lines drawn, where previously it had been lurking below the surface but now it's clear to everyone: 2 is a control freak, 3 has no scruples about getting what she (Ianthe) wants (to Corona's horror), and the 9th house finally takes a side and allies itself with somebody else's interests (plus Harrow finally trusts Gideon for the first time). It's a very fun scene and it's all about how these people are or aren't capable of playing nice.

The Emperor: How did this plan make one lick of sense. So the Emperor wants new lyctors, and he claims he wants them to be well-informed before they make the sacrifice. Why by all that is unholy, then, does he make everything a puzzle with no guidance whatsoever? This is breathtakingly stupid. Tell them what this is about. The entire fiasco could have been prevented if the emperor just left a few sticky notes with basic explanations. "There are eight theorems, you need to figure them all out to become a lyctor, also, I want you to think about all of this very carefully before you do anything rash".

Yes, agreed. Without being coy about the rest of the series, this is at least partially by design. The Emperor could have been a lot more direct about his goals and communication - but he's addicted to the mystique

The other thing to consider is that the external threat of Cytherea worsened this lack of guidance. Without someone in the facility trying to actively kill them, the houses would've had fewer reasons to distrust each other and more time to establish communications, even though they got off to a crappy and mysterious start. I don't know how much stock you put in Word of God from this author, but I believe she's quoted somewhere as saying that if Cytherea hadn't come to Canaan house, only Ianthe would've left a lyctor, and everyone else (necro and cav both) would've made it safely home.

So yeah. Entertaining, but not great, leaves a few mysteries open, I want to see where it goes, probably getting the sequels.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forget. Man is this book badly advertised. At least to me. They plaster the dang "Lesbian Necromancers in space!" everywhere and it's just kind of false advertising. Yes, there's necromancers, yes they are (briefly) in space and part of a space empire, and yes, one of them is very much a lesbian an the rest ambiguously so to various degrees... but... it barely matters. It certainly doesn't matter enough to be the main part of the tagline. Sure, Gideon does a lot of lusting over the hot girls, but after that tagline, I was expecting a lot more romance and possibly sex scenes, which have only very rarely interested me in books. Shouldn't have focused on that part of the book, I can only imagine someone who wanted more of that would have been disappointed.

Anyway, I read back over what other people in this thread thought about it and I think I'm going to pick up the sequel. "Weird and experimental" is good, the main negative point for many people seems to be that they dislike Harrow, which I don't (really, she mostly comes across as pretty sensible to me, except she has the problem everyone in fiction seems to have, where she just can't communicate) and "absolute failure of a book" is at least a strong emotion, so I guess it's not boring.

Yes, absolutely to the advertising. "Lesbian Necromancers In Space" was a quote from a critic that got adapted into a marketing push I believe, and Tamsyn has said in an interview that she wishes it hadn't been the tagline that got slapped on the series. I do know several queer people who picked it up for that reason though, and they deeply enjoyed the series partially because it was queer-normative even if romance isn't the focus. So I'm happy that it makes more space for lesbian/queer sci-fi, with Gideon's casual moments of sexuality alone, even if it's not a very sex-heavy book. I do think it has turned a lot of people away, especially at the transition between Gideon The Ninth and Harrow The Ninth, because Harrow goes way further into "weird and experimental" and the people who picked up the series for a fun pulpy lesbian sci-fi experience can easily be dissuaded.

I disagree with Mechalich about the main "secret" of HtN -- knowing what's going on while Harrow doesn't did not hurt my enjoyment, because I still got to explore a lot of other aspects of the world while I waited for Harrow to piece it together. There's also definitely more worldbuilding IMO, and you will really get to see the Empire in a broader scope. All of your questions won't be answered though, because even if Muir knows the answers it's very apparent that the logistics of worldbuilding aren't what interest her. As I said before, I got enough worldbuilding from the series to stay hooked, and the parts that annoyed me eventually made sense as everything slowly unfurled. But you might easily have a different experience and it might not sell you.

I believe everyone who enjoyed GtN should at least try HtN, because if you like it you'll really like it. But I don't begrudge anyone who doesn't like it. Harrow the Ninth is a very unconventional book, and (as you noticed) a lot more divisive than Gideon The Ninth. But I think particularly because you didn't mind Harrow, and like mysteries, there will be a lot for you to find compelling in the 2nd book.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I like my speculative fiction with overdetailed worldbuilding. Glossaries, footnotes and maps are crack to me and I love a good five page digression about politics.

[Dragonus45]

Yes, absolutely to the advertising. "Lesbian Necromancers In Space" was a quote from a critic that got adapted into a marketing push I believe, and Tamsyn has said in an interview that she wishes it hadn't been the tagline that got slapped on the series. I do know several queer people who picked it up for that reason though, and they deeply enjoyed the series partially because it was queer-normative even if romance isn't the focus. So I'm happy that it makes more space for lesbian/queer sci-fi, with Gideon's casual moments of sexuality alone, even if it's not a very sex-heavy book. I do think it has turned a lot of people away, especially at the transition between Gideon The Ninth and Harrow The Ninth, because Harrow goes way further into "weird and experimental" and the people who picked up the series for a fun pulpy lesbian sci-fi experience can easily be dissuaded.

I love this series deeply, but got that was such a bad idea from a marketing perspective. I see something like that and immediately go "really an entire novel and that's the best thing you can think of to advertise it?" and assume it's going to be a shallow story trying to get me to read it because I'm queer and hopefully be willing to give a pass to it because of the rainbow smoke cloud distraction.

[Eldan]

Yeah, the cover quotes look a lot more like "YA romance novel with a thin covering of sci-fi" than anything else. I was sitting there the entire time waiting for people dramatically falling in love with each other and dreading the oncoming sappy dialogue.

[halfeye]

Did anyone like Ulysses or Nova Express?

[halfeye]

Did anyone like Ulysses or Nova Express?

I mean, I don't like them, is there anybody who does?

[Ionathus]

I mean, I don't like them, is there anybody who does?

Never read either, sorry. Ulysses at least is one of those memes I see about completely impenetrable and unenjoyable books (i.e. the joke being "if you say you enjoyed Ulysses, you're either a liar trying to be pretentious or an alien trying to be pretentious").

[warty goblin]

Finished Forged in Fire, the third Sarah Beauhall book. This one was in a lot of ways better written and structured and more complex than the previous books. Unfortunately this also came at the expense of the weirdness that made the first two books fun. This was a normal piece of urban fantasy, and fine for that, with even some parts that rate as quite good. But it's a very normal book, no moments of unhinged horniness, no genuinely terrible decisions on the part of the protagonist, just the standard boilerplate found family matters message.

But it isn't bad, as I said, in a lot of ways its quite good, I've certainly read worse. But it isn't as fun as the previous books.

[Wookieetank]

Finally got around to starting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (been sitting on my shelf a couple years now) this past week and it's been a fascinating read. About 2/3rds of the way through it at this point. For having a relaxed pace on things, and being 600ish pages long, it reads surprisingly quickly. Already owned the sequels, so planning on doing a full readthrough of the trilogy now that I've started it.

[Ionathus]

Finally got around to starting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (been sitting on my shelf a couple years now) this past week and it's been a fascinating read. About 2/3rds of the way through it at this point. For having a relaxed pace on things, and being 600ish pages long, it reads surprisingly quickly. Already owned the sequels, so planning on doing a full readthrough of the trilogy now that I've started it.

I stalled out on it around the first 1/4 I think. It was interesting, I think just not to my tastes.

Does the book pick up quickly? Maybe I should try again.

[LaZodiac]

I picked up at a book store a documentary book called "You've Got Red On You", all about the creation process behind Shaun of the Dead. It's a fascinating read, if a little dense in the weeds at times. It's all for a good cause though; a reminder of how even with great auteurs like Wright and Pegg and Frost behind something like this, it's really a culmination of every little piece coming together.

[Wookieetank]

I stalled out on it around the first 1/4 I think. It was interesting, I think just not to my tastes.

Does the book pick up quickly? Maybe I should try again.

Not really, its been pretty much the same pace throughout so far. Does get a bit uncomfortable at times with how one charcter ends up getting abused, just as a heads up if you do continue. Definitely outside my normal reading as well, but its a fascinating, if uncomfortable at times, read.

[Ionathus]

Not really, its been pretty much the same pace throughout so far. Does get a bit uncomfortable at times with how one charcter ends up getting abused, just as a heads up if you do continue. Definitely outside my normal reading as well, but its a fascinating, if uncomfortable at times, read.

Thanks for the warning. That was the only part I knew about going into it, and knowing how dark it gets probably affected my interest level too.

[Eldan]

Back to randomly reading my way through SF classics, now reading Joe Haldeman's Forever War, a sci-fi novel very clearly about Vietnam. For how brutal it is, it's a surprisingly quick and easy read. Just blew through the first act in an afternoon. And it has pretty solid worldbuilding, on a technical level. I enjoy all the thought put into the workings of the weapons and the space suits.

[IthilanorStPete]

Back to randomly reading my way through SF classics, now reading Joe Haldeman's Forever War, a sci-fi novel very clearly about Vietnam. For how brutal it is, it's a surprisingly quick and easy read. Just blew through the first act in an afternoon. And it has pretty solid worldbuilding, on a technical level. I enjoy all the thought put into the workings of the weapons and the space suits.

That's a great book, though hard to discuss on here due to forum rules. Have you reached any of the points where the main character returns to Earth yet?

[Eldan]

Just about. That said, I must say I'm already familiar with quite a bit of the general plot of the book just from having it heard discussed several times before and people were quite explicit in telling me why I should read it. Not that I think it hurts the experience that much with this one, it's not like there's plot twists, as such.