- basically I spent this whole book confused.

- the World building is clearly amazingly original, but was never explained-- I was in desperate need of an info dump to parse out the history of this house/world/culture, especially when it came to the necromancy elements-- which were cool, when I knew vaguely what was happening

- my whole book club's complaint was this same thing-- the consistent "...huh?" was not fun and in my opinion not resolved

- there were too many characters, each with four titles/names;

-Gideon's voice / speech patterns were funny but unlike everyone else;

-so much jargon amidst dense writing;

-pacing increased with every chapter, the last 30% went by too fast;

-at the end... Is she gone? What is a lyctor?;

-the romance basically didn't exist in my opinion

re-read as of 9/27/22:
Just as good as the first time, but this time I actually understood most of what was going on.
-----
Gideon says puns are always funny and so do I

I forgot I wrote a whole note with a review so here’s my actual review:

When I first started reading this about 6 months ago, I just couldn’t get into it and ended up putting it back on my to read shelf. I picked it up again to read with a friend and this time I was hooked. The beginning is a bit slow but once they leave the ninth it really picks up.

A few things:
I cried throughout the whole last chapter and then the epilogue. I got so invested!

I was constantly having to look up words, so I guess this is a good book for SAT prep.

Prose was really interesting. Rough but beautiful. Very accessible and I absolutely love the use of language to indicate the different house personalities.

I am still left with a lot of questions about Gideon’s backstory and where her mother was from. And also the alluding to another Gideon in the far past. Maybe that will be in future books

3.5.

I’m finding recently that if I read anything that’s been super hyped up I only end up with middling to negative thoughts, because the book just cannot meet the expectations that have been so unfairly set for it. My experience of Gideon the Ninth definitely suffered for this - but I still mostly liked it overall.

I love Muir’s prose, it’s a great example of strong voice and was really engaging and hit the emotional/humour marks it wanted to very well. It did, however, make things a little confusing at times, as it was easy to lost in synonyms, unorthodox sentence structure and a multitude of character nicknames.

Gideon is a fun protagonist, and I really liked where the book ended with her, but I felt she was a bit underused in the plot somehow. A good chunk of the book is Gideon purposely not talking to other characters and wandering around this one location overhearing important plot stuff. Which is just kinda dull and I almost DNFd it at one point. It was definitely more engaging around half way through. Another, bigger chunk of the book consists of other character making choices and doing stuff, whilst Gideon just… is there? I wish Gideon drove the plot and scenes a bit more, as we are in her head in the book.

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how good the character writing is in this is, and I don’t disagree per say, but I will say I found it hard to keep track of different characters (especially in the first half) and remembering who people were was a real issue for me at times. It doesn’t help that there are two female characters who are kinda similar to each other, and who the main character describes by ogling most of the time they are around. As the plot gets going this issue gets resolved, but still.

Finally, and It’s a little spoilery, but I think there’s a decent conversation about victims forgiving their abusers somewhere in this book which I would have liked to be explored more. But overall, this is a decent read. I think the world is interesting, even if we only spend time really in one location, and the magic is cool. Characters like Harrow really pop of the page and prose is really great. I’m curious to see what the next one is like.