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Is Gideon The Ninth Worth Reading?

2026-03-11 14:20:23
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3 Answers

Owen
Owen
I’m a little late to the party here, as Gideon the Ninth is a highly acclaimed novel that has earned many fans. It has a wild blend of necromancy, swords, and dry humor, and so far I have found that it either immediately clicks with me or it leaves me bewildered. The bulk of the novel reads as a locked room mystery set in a Gothic, space-based setting of a long-abandoned palace. But that’s just the surface. As you dive deeper into the book, you are treated to a ton of emotional depth. Yes, it can be a bit of a challenging read, as the author throws a lot of unique terms and complex world-building at the reader very early on, but if you manage to connect with the Halfmaid protagonist, Gideon, you will absolutely devour this in short order.

I think one of the things that makes Gideon the Ninth so great is how it spans all different tones so naturally. Some chapters had me cackling with Gideon’s angry internal monologues, while others left me feeling totally broken and bereft – including one particularly powerful, quiet moment between Gideon and Harrow that I really wasn’t expecting. As for that “lesbian necromancers in space” tagline? Yeah, that doesn’t even begin to capture the depth of Gideon and Harrow’s complicated relationship, which is sort of at the center of the whole book. And then there’s the ending, which I sat around staring at the wall for ten minutes or so afterward in a daze. The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, is reportedly even more confusing, but in a way that I trust will be worth it.
2026-03-12
Xander
Xander
‘Gideon the Ninth’ is like a party where everyone has been enjoying a joke all evening and you have no idea what they are talking about until suddenly it all clicks into place. The book’s greatest asset is Gideon. She is fantastic. Muir’s created a wonderful, snarling, furious, nervous and suppressed person in her main protagonist and her narration of these largely otherworldly stories is great fun, particularly when she’s describing her necromantic rituals. The alternative universe that Muir has created is also extremely elaborate and largely Gothic in feel but with some great sci-fi elements that somehow work.

Where Gideon and Harrow go, darkness follows. And it’s not always easy to follow. But when it all clicks, it’s amazing. This story is at its heart a complicated and transformative relationship between two complex, half-abandoned characters. It’s not an easy read, and there are a lot of twists and turns, but it’s worth it in the end.
2026-03-16
Keira
Keira
I have mixed feelings about this one. I had thought that Gideon the Ninth by Rebecca Muir would be a good murder mystery set in a haunted gothic-style church with rival necromancers. It’s got a great structure for such a story, but instead of that, it’s really a deep character study of Gideon, searching for loyalty and acceptance. All told in a weird, trashy, full-of-bone-puns-and-swordfights- all-the-way, style that’s surprisingly full of references to all sorts of stuff, both very high and internet-meme-culture. Reading it the first time is kind of tricky (it feels like you’re reading a dense, language-rich novel), but it’s much easier and very rewarding to read again.

It does what you’d expect in terms of subverting expectations for a “hero” – Gideon is not nice, is very rough around the edges, and is utterly relatable at her worst. Her relationship with Harrow is antagonistic and fraught with unexpressed affection, and their dialogue is enough to carry the emotional weight of the novel. While the world-building is opaque enough to make you feel lost along with Gideon, it pays off in a major way by the end of the novel. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys stories that require active engagement with the plot, and who don’t mind there being a few things left unexplained. And bring a copy of Wikipedia to look up all the various Latin references.
2026-03-17

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Gideon's fate in Gideon the Ninth was one of those moments that split the fandom into those who had seen it coming and those who were crying into their pillows by chapter's end. The writing was so vivid that even when the moment could be seen coming it hurt. Gideon's bravado cracks in the occasional quiet moment to reveal the woman beneath, and those scenes were tense in the extreme. We'd cheer her on despite the book's title bearing her dead founder's name, and the aftermath was a messy glorious tangle of unresolved tension. The kind of death that wasn't an end but rather a spark to ignite greater chaos.

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