Gideon the Ninth

A friend sent me this, and I felt so seen when it arrived and the blurb on the bottom of the cover is, “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!”! Totally my jam! I've been doing this a lot lately, but this book might become a 4-star review later. It's not yet because my feelings are currently about the end (don't worry, no spoilers here), which I understand is both PERFECT and also SAD and I am leaning into SAD WHYYYYYY right now. Muir is laugh-out-loud funny as a writer, especially with her dialogue full of zingers (I didn't know I needed a just-post-adolescence protagonist who makes the occasional well-timed “That's what she said” joke, but I did!), and this book is clever, poignant, and campy in excellent proportions. I could have used a little less plot complexity (bones, so many ways of using bones, sometimes in ways that are hard to transmit the visual idea of via writing) for more explication of Gideon's very complicated relationship with her peer/dictator/it's complicated Harrowhark, although the (SAD) ending still rang true. Will read the 2nd for sure, but will give myself time to get over the ending first.

(Still thinking about this weeks later! My feelings are less hurt by the ending. 4 stars!)