It is only fitting that I start this off with the ship that launched a thousand… ships? Seriously though, I need to be completely honest and say that this is the book that started everything for me. I’m going to be incredibly careful here and emphasize that I am only really talking about Gideon the Ninth, and while I have voraciously consumed the subsequent sequels with the same energy that drove me to pound through nearly a thousand pages of Twilight because just f*ck already goddammit, I am still a little leery of where the author is taking her story, so I want to focus on what lead me here, and what then took me on my own 98-thousand-word publishing experience.
I was doing a 9 hour turn and burn to New Jersey mid-pandemic (seriously, everyone should try it sometime), and knew I would be hitting it solo. My wife had been begging me to read this book for a while and my constant reaction was that I just didn’t have time for reading in my life. And I wasn’t wrong. I have a lot of hobbies. I didn’t really need something new to consume my finite resource of spare time (with, like a day job and everything). But 8+ hours in Turnpike traffic will open all sorts of possibilities to you, so I accepted the audiobook format. When I got home and my wife asked me what I thought I was probably five or six chapters in and replied with “it’s alright, but are these two girls supposed to have this much sexual chemistry?”
I had to start over, without the traffic, so I picked up the hardcover. I don’t think I left the couch for the next 12 hours. It was one of those brain-chemistry-changing feelings. It itched. I slammed immediately in to the second book, and that did not help. So there I was, with a burning obsession about to grow in similar size comparable to the ones I had nursed for Xena, Buffy, and Harry Potter if we are going back far enough (let’s not). It was nice to obsess about a book again, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t need to have something else consume my whole life.
The biggest problem was that I wanted more. And it was a very specific “more.” It really had been a minute since I had allowed myself to sink into available recent works, but I was absolutely floored by the idea that publishers were willing to publish something so downright… gay. These were characters saying and doing the exact same things I had said and done as a young idiot, and here they were, on printed paper, published by Tor no less. It was revolutionary. And it was hysterical. I mean, I really did not fare well with the academic literary scene. I usually figured my life was full of enough brain-drain with the day work (the rockets and all) that if I were going to let myself read it was going to be the trashy equivalent of a B-Grade double feature with popcorn and a smuggled off-brand cola from CVS.
Look, like I mentioned, this is an ongoing series, with the ending still up in the air. I can’t vouch for the final content here, but I can say that this first book had a tone and protagonist that I connected with immediately. It put to shame my entire concept of what reading meant, and launched me on a new surging obsession. I wanted more lesbian-centric science fiction where the gayness isn’t inconsequential, the characters are allowed to be as awful and amazingly real as I can remember myself being, and the story isn’t set aside for the sake of making some statement about the fact that they are gay.
So, in true fashion of how I tend to treat a lot of things (read: many hobbies) I figured, if I want to see it done, better do it myself.
I cannot compare myself to Tamsyn Muir, not by a longshot. But I do want to point out the aspects of Gideon the Ninth that sat with me the longest and lent the largest swath of comparability to my humble offering towards what turned out to be a more robust pile than my limited readership had been aware of back in 2020.
Gideon as a protagonist, is probably my favorite part. She is this pissed off, somewhat self-absorbed, snarky, sarcastic asshole. She hates everything around her, and actively looks for ways to antagonize the system, but is genuinely still a good person, who desperately wants her heart to be in the right place. And the entirety of this is captured in the whole tone of this book, which is honestly what stayed with me the longest. Up until this point I figured most protagonists needed to be generally likeable, in a dull, every-person sort of way. Even some of my other favorites out there (Breq from Imperial Radch) still needed to be overall superior in some way shape or form. It was just fun to read about a walking hormone trainwreck, just like I was at eighteen. It was one of the first things I realized I wanted more of (aaaaand, without spoilers, probably one of the reasons I’m only talking about one book here).
The unashamed nature of the fact all the cast is queer in some way shape or form is another major detail I need to recognize. I need to be careful here, because I have read a LOT since this, and I have a LOT more insight into what’s selling these days, why its selling, as well as some Opinions on the matter. But, this book still remains an outlier. There was certainly a point where I made what I assume other readers not actively reading queer-norm literature assume: “well, if that character is gay, and that character is gay, well, that’s a lot of gay characters. The others couldn’t possibly also be gay… there aren’t that many of us, what are the odds.” What, am I the only one doing statistics while I read? Ah, sorry. Engineer, remember? But, yeah, the fact that after a while it was very clear they were all some version or flavor of queer, and it wasn’t even brought up, just floored me. Because why the hell not? Its ten thousand years in the future why does there need to be the same statistics? Gideon has trashy novels, the twins are omnivorous, Cam is… Cam. And there’s no weeping, wallowing “woe is me I must come out to my unaccepting family!” Well…. not that way at least. Look, coming out stories and “but they were lesbians!” have their place in literature but holy hell, I’ve been out for over twenty years, and wow did I love reading a book where the perils of being gay didn’t even need to register on the Richter scale. Dating your Cavalier? Maybe. But no, not the gayness. We just got to roll with it, and it was great.
Which is part of the last reason. This book has a really well-developed story. It’s a best seller. It has fans who are not just lesbians. Necromancers in Space is already a hell of a tagline, and it’s got incredibly clever plot development, an arsenal of Chekhov’s guns, and a following who scrutinize every last detail to figure out the missing pieces. It’s pretty masterful, no matter the conclusion of the story. But more to the point, the queerness of the characters is, A.) not the central part of the story, and B.) not a throwaway side concept that can easily just be replaced with whatever else or removed altogether. It’s so well knit together that I could only hope to capture but a frayed fragment of its capability.
Look, there’s things in this book that I didn’t like. If I tell you there’s necromancers, it’s not spoilery to say it still kinda suffers from “Bury the Gays.” But then, they are all a little gay, and they are necromancers. In Muir’s own words, it’s a hard trope to avoid in that situation. Then, as mentioned above… there’s a certain drive going on here fueling everyone’s rabid consumption because goddammit I said f*ck already (really glad Arcane only made us wait 2 seasons… and three years). I’m not a fan of angst, personally. I don’t really vibe the best with fantasy elements, but that’s also a personal taste, not an issue with the book itself. I actually think Muir does a great job with building a system that is easy for readers to consume. As far as series go, I certainly have diverted from being as obsessed as I felt myself getting after reading the first book. But I will always have to give credit here, where credit is due.
So, hats off to this one. Hats off to Tamsyn, and Tor, and everything that grew this gem. Over four years later and I can still faithfully say it is the book that launched my obsession with putting my own lesbian science fiction/horror mashup out into the void.
AZ ROZKILLIS 