![]() ![]() The bulk of Gideon the Ninth takes place in Canaan House. Gothic Houseĭid you think we left the gothic house behind in October with Mexican Gothic? Never! I love a gothic house novel more than most things, and Gideon the Ninth has a particularly lurid one. Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth (but none for its sequel Harrow the Ninth) follow. This novel is a lesson in genre-mixing, and in how to stick an impossible landing. So for today’s Vox Book Club discussion, I wanted to go through some of the foundational tropes in Gideon the Ninth and talk about how they work and why. (Plus, trying to summarize a plot this complicated any other way is a fool’s game.) That’s part of why I always summarize this book as “lesbian necromancers in space.” It feels a little reductive, but it also comes as close as anything can to gesturing at all the trope-swirling glee going on here. ![]() ![]() The combinations really shouldn’t work, but somehow they do. Sometimes I imagine Muir as a cackling mad scientist in a lab, grabbing beakers labeled “enemies to lovers” and “in space” and “ that incel meme about studying the blade” and swirling all their contents together. One of the things that makes Tamsyn Muir’s fantasy novel Gideon the Ninth so deeply satisfying to read is the giddy joy it takes in playing with different genre tropes. ![]() The Vox Book Club is linking to to support local and independent booksellers. ![]()
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