Gideon the Ninth

Um, it's not better, but it gave me a different perspective.

So there's a book called Gideon the Ninth, and it's by Tamsyn Muir, and it is unbelievable.

I love this book.

Um, I read this book, and then I went online because I'm like, "I have no idea what this book's about.

What book did we read, you and me, for this week's show?

We read Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

By Tamsyn Muir, the third out of four.

The surprise third.

And it's true of Nona too.

So that's something I really love about them as well.

She's known in the Ninth, but I understand what you mean.

Thank you.

How often does an author's first novel arrive, looking less like an introduction and more like a declaration of war? The 2010s gave us The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Night Circus, Ready Player One, Ancillary Justice, Red Rising, Bird Box, The Poppy War, Gideon the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire.

And those are only nine of the 30 best debut novels we're discussing today.

Some launched blockbuster series.

Baby Teeth offers the sharper commercial premise.

The Rust Maidens wins through literary power, supernatural imagery, social depth, and lasting critical reputation.

The big finishing year of the decade starts with debut fantasy winner Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir.

Gideon Nav wants to escape the Ninth House.

Instead, she is forced to accompany her lifelong rival Harrow to a decaying palace where heirs to the Empire's houses compete in a necromantic trial that becomes a locked room murder mystery.

I think I asked before if anybody had recommended this.

There's a book, a novel, Gideon the Ninth, which is one of my favorite, I don't know if it's sci-fi or fantasy novels.

Good question.

And the usual pitch for this book is lesbian necromancers in space.

And now it's like, all right, now you have my attention.

That's cool.

How are we going to differentiate all these different wizards and make them cool? Gideon the Ninth is a book where you said, okay, what if we have a whole bunch of characters and they're all necromancer wizards? So we're just taking one specific subset of wizards and like, can we come up with eight different kinds of them? And I'm like, this seems like this is going to be a really interesting design project and amazingly sticks the landing.

And at the end of the book, you're like, wow, I totally get it.