Gideon the Ninth

I'm really not sure how to rate this. I enjoyed reading it, but it also took me a long time to finish. It has lots of intriguing ideas, but it takes its time setting them up. The chief characters are memorable and I formed some attachments, but too much of the main relationship is told instead of shown. Gideon is hilarious and snarky, but her lingo can also disrupt the tone.This book is inventive and confusing, textured and conflicting. It's like a Brian Lumley novel and an Agatha Christie novel had a baby, and occasionally John Scalzi babysat, and the baby's ambition is to be [b:The Final Empire 68428 The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1) Brandon Sanderson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480717416l/68428.SY75.jpg 66322] when it grows up.I think I can only give this three stars, despite having a ton of quotable lines and being incredibly bold and interesting. Three main problems: pacing, the central relationship, and unsatisfying mysteries.First, it is a bit slow, taking a long interval to set up both a totally unfamiliar setting and a huge cast of characters/suspects. I was happy to read a bit each night, but rarely felt like I needed to know what would happen next.Second, the current state of the central relationship is very clearly drawn through real-time interactions. Such as, “Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I'd do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I'd do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.' The only job I'd do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.” “That's three jobs,” said Harrowhark.But the backstory of how they came to hate each other, and the final development of their relationship, are both quickly told (not shown) in the midst of a bunch of action, and compared to the robust view of their real-time interactions, seem pretty thin and unconvincing. Third, the world building and central story raise many tantalizing questions, wafting the promise of revelations to come by story's end, that will make things fit together in a satisfying way. Here is a spoilered list of “ooh, what about . . .?” questions I was looking forward to learning the answer to (or at least some further, revealing clues about), which are ALL just left dangling:-they fight with swords and write with nubs of old pencils on salvaged paper, but they use words like "pizza" and "doughnuts," use modern-American slang, and have spaceships. Why the weird mix of technological prowess?- the Emperor is "the Supreme Necrolord" who saved the world 10,000 years ago and has been resurrected and become immortal, and the whole society is based around death magic/religion - wait, is this a view of Christianity off kilter by a few degrees?- nine houses; nine planets; weirdly modern references but tons of decrepit tech; is this our solar system in the far, far future?- what was Cytherea's deal? How did she relate to the stuff they discovered in the labs? There were some tantalizing hints that she was part of a team that created Teacher, but why? What did she do between then and now? What is she trying to accomplish at this point?- Who is the girl in the Locked Tomb and why is she there and what is her relationship to the Necrolord and what does Harrowhark think about all that?- Gideon has a mysterious origin. Maybe she's someone special! Her name is in an old note! Cytherea says she . . . knew someone else with the same name in the olden days. But then implies there is more of a connection! But the final answer for the reader is . . . go fuck yourself. I guess we're meant to assume there will be revelations about this stuff in the sequel, but given how little satisfaction we got in this book, I'm not feeling confident in that. It would have been more alluring to get a couple things more definitively tied up from this plot, which then opened up further questions to be explored later.