I cannot stress how much I loved this book!
I was on vacation a few months ago when I finished the one book I had brought with me two days before I was scheduled to leave, and I hadn’t thought to bring my Kindle with me. If that’s not a great excuse to go book shopping, I don’t know what is!
So I went to the adorable little book shop near where I was staying and browsed the shelves until I found this gem by Tamsyn Muir. I think I had heard of it before because the title sounded familiar. When I picked it up and saw the blurb on the cover that said, “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space,” I said, SOLD!
I regret nothing.
Gideon the Ninth is an orphan who was raised in the Ninth House. In this world, there are nine houses, the first belonging to the emperor (who’s immortal?) and each of the other eight houses have their own necromantic specialties. For some, it’s talking to the dead, for others, it’s soul sucking. For the ninth house, it’s bone magic.
That means the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, Harrowhark Nonagesimus (a.k.a. Harrow) is a necromancer who relies on bones to work her magic. All she needs is to be touching a bone and she can make any nearby skeleton do her bidding (and there are a lot of skeletons laying around Ninth House.) She can also throw a small bone, such as a finger bone, and cause it to grow into a full skeleton that will then do her bidding.
As a result, she always has a lot of bones on her. She wears a lot of bone jewelry and literally keeps bones hidden up her sleeve so she always has something to work with.
She’s just a year or two younger than Gideon, and for some reason she has always hated Gideon, so Gideon hates her right back. Harrow delights in torturing Gideon, who just wants to get out of there and go to the front as a soldier, but Harrow has other plans for her.
Apparently the immortal Emperor has a bunch of cronies called Lyctors who are also immortal. They became Lyctors by uncovering some sort of necromantic secret. But I guess the Lyctors aren’t all that immortal because a bunch of them are dying and the Emperor needs a new batch of Lyctors. So he is summoning all the necromancers and their cavaliers to the First House to compete to solve a puzzle to become the next Lyctor.
Each house has one necromancer born to their ruling family, except for Third House with has a set of twins, so they have two necromancers. Each house also has a cavalier primary chosen from their ranks of fighters. The cavalier primary is supposed to be the best of the best. From the extra material I read at the end of the book, it seems like this wasn’t always the case, especially for Harrow and Gideon.
Harrow’s cavalier is utterly useless and has no desire to risk his life in a suicide mission, so he and his mom run away in the shuttle Gideon had been planning to use to run away to the front. Instead, Harrow convinces Gideon to come with her as her cavalier primary. The only problem with that is cavaliers tend to use a rapier as their primary weapon, whereas Gideon’s preferred weapon has always been the two-handed broadsword. That means she has a very short amount of time to learn how to use a rapier well enough to convince other cavaliers and necromancers that she’s really a cavalier.
When they get to the first house, they are told that the secret to Lyctorhood lies somewhere in the mansion, but the priests who are acting as their hosts claim they have no idea where it is. They encourage their guests to explore the mansion, but they cannot open any door that is locked without permission.
They also say that the necromancers and their cavaliers have to act as one in this mission. If the necromancer fails, their cavalier fails, and vice versa. If the necromancer succeeds, the cavalier succeeds, and vice versa. I just realized as I write this what that means, but I can’t tell you because it’s super spoilery.
Despite being warned that they have to do this challenge together, Harrow spends almost all her time out exploring the haunted gothic palace while Gideon explores on her own and even manages to socialize with the other cavaliers and their necromancers a bit. When Harrow doesn’t come back after a couple days, Gideon sets out to find her.
It turns out Harrow worked herself so hard trying to solve one of the challenges that she passed out. Gideon takes her back to their room so she can recover in bed, and you would think Harrow would be grateful, but no. She insists she was just resting before taking another shot at the challenge.
For some reason, Gideon decides she’s going to help Harrow on her quest. No good reason is ever given as to why she decides this, but despite how much they claim to hate each other, there always appears to be this undercurrent of they-hate-each-other-but-they-really-love-each-other kind of energy.
They manage to complete the challenge, but as they’re leaving, they find two of their competitors dead. Not just dead, but pulverized.
I should warn you that a lot of people die in this book and there is a LOT of blood. Consider this your trigger warning.
So, in addition to trying to figure out the challenges, they have to figure out why their competitors keep dying brutally violent deaths and what are the chances they’ll be next?
This book was so good and so well written! There’s a rule in writing that you don’t use adverbs because most of them are extraneous — they don’t add anything to the story. Muir manages to only use adverbs when they add something to the story. They say something specific about what’s happening or they make you feel a certain way about what Muir is describing. It’s masterfully done!
I’m so glad there are more books in this series because I can’t wait to read more! Unfortunately, my favorite character died, which makes me slightly less excited to read the sequels, but I’m still going to read them.