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The Language of the Night: Lesbian Necromancers -- In Space! [1]

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Date: 2022-07-11

In the Myriadic year of our Lord — the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! — Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.* (from Chapter 1)

So begins what I believe will be one of the most stylistically innovative and influential science fiction/fantasy novels of at least the first half of the Twenty-first Century.

The “lesbian necromancers” crack, by the way, is not my invention. It’s a common shorthand description of Tamsyn Muir’s debut novel Gideon the Ninth. I have to admit that I bounced off the first couple of chapters when I started the book a couple of years ago (it was not at all what I expected). Then I loaned it out and never got it back. So when I finally got another copy, I settled down and prepared to be confused again, but sufficiently intrigued to give it a fresh look.

Nothing — not the cover copy, not the remembered hype around the novel’s release three years ago, not the parade of fan art that appears on my Twitter feed, and not my own memories of the opening — prepared me for how much I was going to be intrigued, delighted, and moved by Gideon.

Some novels you read for dazzling prose, others for intricate plotting, still others for compelling characters. Then there are the books where plot is a secondary (still necessary, but definitely secondary) element: you read for the voices, the situations, the sheer inventiveness and audacity of the whole thing. Murderbot falls into that category.

But Gideon heads the listing.

The book defies genre. It does Alien’s conceit of “haunted house in space” one better and mashes up all the genres. It’s science fiction (hard tech), fantasy (magic), goth (black couture and lots of skulls), romance (sexual tension and deadly enemies), a locked-door murder mystery (hello Agatha Christie!), a haunted house (a decaying mansion with no way out and no way to call for help), horror (lots of gross gibbering guts and slime), a swordfest (why all the rapiers? Oh, that’s another mystery) glorious mess that works. It works wonderfully.

Mostly it works because of the protagonist. Gideon Nav is an indentured servant in a dying House on an almost-dead planet, and she’s fed up. After countless efforts to escape, each one foiled by her nemesis Harrowhark, necromancer, skeleton specialist and daughter of the noble House, and also the only other person (living or dead) on the planet under the age of...well, crepuscular dotage, Gideon agrees to one last assignment in exchange for a guarantee of freedom. She has to serve as cavalier to the young woman who just about exists to torment Gideon, even when she desperately needs her. And Gideon? She’s a soldier; a red-haired, golden-eyed sword fighter; an irreverent, wisecracking, black-clad cavalier with antique sunglasses and a mandatory skull painted on her face; a pure soul; a damaged child; a hero.

Gideon the Ninth is the book that will launch a wave of imitators, who will try to replicate the marriage of rotting and gothic lushness with deadpan snark, and who will mostly fail. Or at least not succeed as startlingly as Muir has. For instance, facing a skeleton/construct/monster, Gideon sees:

The rib cage was banded straips of thick, knobbly bone, spurred all round with sharp points, the skull — was it a skull? — a huge knobble of brainpan…. [most people would have noped right out of there, but] “Put me in there,” said Gideon. That brought Harrow up short, and her eyebrows shot up to the top of her hairline. She fretted at the veil around her neck, and she said slowly: “Why?” Gideon knew at this point that some really intelligent answer was the way to go; something that would have impressed the Reverend Daughter with her mechanical insight and cunning. A necromantic answer, with some shadowy magical interpretation of what she had just seen. But her brain had only seen the one thing, and her palms were damp with the sweat that came when you were both scared and dying of anticipation. So she said, “The arms kind of looked like swords. I want to fight it.” “You want to fight it.” “Yep.” “Because it looked … a little like swords.” “Yop.” (from Chapter 14)

I’m not going to even try to explain the world-building. In the short run, it’s bewildering, but you’ll catch on as you read. Same goes for the magical systems. It’s not as confusing as Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen. Just go with it and trust that you’ll catch on. You will.

The plot is probably the weakest element in the book, and it’s not a weak plot. For reasons that quickly become evident, Harrow and Gideon are obliged to join the necromancers and their cavaliers (bodyguard/confidant/counterpart to the necromancer for reasons that are mysterious and important) from the seven other Houses in tests to see who will become lyctors, immortal saints/servants to the First House of the Emperor Undying, who has ruled the universe for ten thousand years and needs some replacements. The candidates meet at Canaan House, the Emperor’s original palace on its own First House planet closest to the star Dominicus. But for the animated skeletons and a handful of priests, Canaan House has been abandoned for ten thousand years:

Back in its day, at least, it would have been a monument to wealth and beauty. In the present it was a castle that had been killed. Many of its white and shining towers had crumbled and fallen down in miserable chunks. Jungling overgrowth rose from the sea and wrapped around the base of the building, both green slimes and thick vines. The gardens were grey, filmy canopies of dead trees and plants. They had overtaken the windows, the balconies, the balustrades, and clung there and died; the covered much of the frontage in a secretive mist of expired matter. Gold veins shone dully in the dirty white walls. The docking bay must have also been elegant in its era, a huge landing swath that could have held a hundred ships at a time; now ninety-two of the cradles were desolate and filthy. The metal was caked with salt from the water, salt that now assaulted Gideon’s nose; a thick briny scent, overpowering and wild. The whole place had the look of a picked-at body. But hot damn! What a beautiful corpse. (from Chapter 7)

Aware that I’m behind the curve in reviewing Gideon the Ninth, I still recommend it highly. The novel works as a mystery; it works as experimental (and highly sophisticated) worldbuilding; it works as a character study and a startling light-show of stylistics. You might not believe that Edgar Allen Poe’s eldritch sensibilities would marry so seamlessly with a wise-ass, very gay cavalier and her hyper-intelligent, hyper-ambitious necromancer, but it works. As does the growth of two mortal enemies into a team, so much so that the ending of the novel hits hard. Unexpectedly hard. Unexpectedly resonant. It’s easy to forget the pain, the loss, and the abuse that both Harrow and Gideon have lived with all their lives. Harrow is unspeakably cruel to Gideon from the start, and she might not have great reasons for her abuse, but the reasons are compelling. Two damaged kids carrying the responsibility of the cosmos on their shoulders, one far too serious, the other making “that’s what she said” jokes all the way.

Given the popularity of Gideon the Ninth, I expected its sequel, Harrow the Ninth, to be more of the same — a clever take on an old plot device with a two twists and a double double beam dismount. I could not have been more wrong. Next time, Harrow the Ninth, and something completely different.

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