[I received an advance reader copy of Gideon the Ninth from the publisher at ALA Annual 2019]

I’d been hearing great things about Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir from most of the authors I follow for a couple months leading up to ALA, so when I saw it at the Tor booth I definitely asked for a copy. Then I saw the Charles Stross blurb on the cover:

Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!

All of those things are true about this book, and the tone of the blurb also resembles Muir’s narrative voice. The action was great, but what I loved about this book was the sense of a handful of warriors and mages trapped in a sprawling complex abandoned by mystic forerunners. It was everything I loved about Destiny without being forced to grind my character’s power level so that I could get stomped in a newly unlocked form of PvP.

I think that Gideon the Ninth has joined my short list of favorite debut novels with Infomocracy, Ninefox Gambit, and Ancillary Justice. I highly recommend all of those, and I can’t wait to read Muir’s book 2.