If Ianthe reached out to touch your arm, you were afraid you might not understand whose arm she was touching. Harrow can deal with that fine. Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. It has been in there from book one, it saturates the book. In Gideon, Harrow is a literal bloody mess a lot of the time, caused by the strain of performing bone magic. Did you think we left the gothic house behind in October with Mexican Gothic? You become a kind of horrifying saint and are super-famous and work directly for God as one of his right-hand men or women. Ianthe will reach new heights of being absolutely goddamn dreadful. I realized it was a sex scene going in. So how did you strike the balance between keeping us within Harrows perspective, but then also having Gideon needle at her periodically, so that we sort of get the idea as we read that theres something more going on there? We have quite a few people who want to know about Harrow calling Gideon Griddle and where that nickname came from. Everyone wants to be a lyctor, so every house from across the galaxy sends their finest specimens to the creepy mansion to take a crack at the trials. Its like, Gideons a fireman! Gideon is not a fireman, that has been tragically excised from the mythology. In this amazing novella, Molly is a young girl whose blood brings about murder. Harrowhark might win and prevent the Ninths ultimate demise, but only if she can keep Gideon at her side There is meant to be a romantic element to it, even if it is not something that is a relationship element, if that makes any sense whatsoever. And whenever I recognize one Im like, Oh! and then I just keep reading. So in the first editor pass, my editor was like, Nah, this is not Harrow, people are going to immediately see. But then again, I see lines that are so plainly obvious that got left in. That isn't a front-row line. You were so afraid she might touch you. And for those joining us who dont know, the Draco in Leather Pants is the fanfiction trope of a character whos morally ambiguous and kind of lounges around saying sexy bitchy one-liners to the hero. The Eighth House attempts to bring her to justice for the murder of her cavalier, but they are killed when Colum the Eighth is possessed by an angry ghost, who in turn kills his necromancer. Personally, I dont think Muir is playing into the Bury Your Gays trope so much as she is setting herself up to subvert it. The Houses in turn are ruled by the Emperor, an impossibly powerful, immortal necromancer whom they have worshipped as a god for the past ten thousand years. As someone who always roots for hyper-competent women, I am torn between Abigail, Camilla, and Ianthe. She comes from such a privileged position. Muir acknowledges that her writing "includes useless memes and jokes for the reader that nobody in my universe would get. In the myriadic year of our lord the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! The Vox Book Club is linking to Bookshop.org to support local and independent booksellers. Her plans of fleeing to join the Emperor's armies (called the Cohort) are quickly foiled by her lifelong antagonist and heiress of the Ninth House, Harrowhark "Harrow" Nonagesimus. The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfootI took you to this killing field as my slaveyou refuse to die, and you pity me! When you tack all of the above onto the fact that Harrowhark is a religious zealot who spends much of the book growing at least a little bit more disillusioned with the god she ostensibly serves, well, this book is Emily catnip, even if I cant explain half of what happens in it to anybody. Oicchu says, Ive always been really drawn to the concept of violence and rage within women, as it is a side of us that is heavily suppressed and denied by society. We were all told pretty ceaselessly about what achievement looks like. For some readers of the novel, that death is just the latest iteration of the infuriating Bury Your Gays trope, in which lesbians are introduced in popular culture only to be immediately killed off, never left with a happy ending of their own. Because Lyctorhood, as all that gothic foreshadowing suggested, depends in the end on betraying the bond between necromancer and cavalier. Do you think Gideon is coming back in the end? Entering the tomb, Nona remembers having done this before, proving after many increasingly clear hints that she is none other than Alecto: the body in the tomb. To my eye, this book suffers a bit from second-volume-itis: It has a lot of cleanup from volume one to take care of, and a lot of pieces to put into place for volume three, and it more or less pulls off both, but you can see the strain. The resultant tension is part of what animates this trilogy, and its mysterious backstory, and even the romance between Gideon and Harrow. So I hope that every girl who got told off for being angry, and who, like me, in their secret heart of hearts, just kind of pretends that she has a huge broadsword or ax and hits people, its for them. No one ever has to spend a week in a haunted house only to find it filled with, like, puppies and cake. And heres another thing I noticed: I think Muir got much more confident as a writer between book one and book two. Because Harrow when shes thinking of herself is not how she talks. In these surrounds, Gideon rewarded herself with a little plastic bag of porridge. One of the things thats really impressive to me is how carefully its delivered. How does the spikiness of this book function for you? Harrow the Ninth is very much a book about grief, trauma, and mental illness, all of which inflects Harrows distanced, unreliable, second-person narration. But I mean, there are so few female characters who are like Ianthe. I have always been fascinated by stories about people with dissociative identity disorder, because it feels like it lives next door to the dissociation I forced myself into to survive my childhood, and whats interesting about Harrow the Ninth is that it seems to be in conversation with stories about people who have alternate personalities inside themselves, working to absorb some of the burden of life. First of a proposed trilogy, Gideon the Ninth is a freaky science-fantasy-horror-romance mash-up that owes its innards to M.A.S.H. They are opposing archetypes (sweet jock versus vicious goth bitch, or, if you will, Sweaterboy versus Absolute Nightmare), so of course they must despise each other. That Harrow is so careful. We have at the heart of this mythology this relationship between the necromancer and the cavalier. Gideon mined enormous amounts of tension and humor out of the contrast between its lurid goth world and Gideons straightforward it looks like a sword, I want to fight it worldview and her dirty jokes. They seem to be a little divisive. And in book two, you are hopefully slapped in the face first thing with just how ferociously Harrow hates herself, and the violence with which she does. Does that strike you as the case? As our central cast of characters tries to navigate the trials left behind for them by the original Lyctors, they find themselves getting picked off one by one. He should run again. Ive taken a lot of joy out of people who are like, Its really cool that this relationship isnt necessarily out-and-out romantic, that this isnt necessarily a ship. Below are discussion questions to guide your conversation on Gideon, either in the comments below or in your own communities. The survivors battle throughout the House, but Cytherea is apparently invincible. I will confess to a brief disappointment in this fact I wanted the books depiction of dissociation to be more explicit, I guess but the eventual reveal of Gideon as, more or less, the voice in Harrowharks head ended up having a real power to it. (Plus, trying to summarize a plot this complicated any other way is a fools game.). Or is it the other way around? I think that if you looked at the ages of the people involved, they grew up as women identifying as women in that era, and I think its something that pissed off a hell of a lot of people. Is the denial of Peter something you deliberately thought about when writing about Harrow forgetting Gideon?. It isn't precocious or precious enough. Ive had to really guard myself to make sure that I dont just let Ianthe run riot. I agree with you that John is a true achievement. Despite their clashing personalities and mutual hatred of each other, Gideon is Harrow's only real choice of cavalier, primarily due to an atmospheric contamination incident around the time of their births that killed the rest of the Ninth House's children. Cytherea explains that she killed the real Dulcinea and her cavalier shortly before arriving at Canaan House and assumed her identity; likewise, she was the one who killed the Fourth and Fifth Houses, in the hopes that doing so would lure the Emperor back to Canaan House. The Emperor reveals that the Empire is in decline and most of the Lyctors have fallen in battle or gone insane. I wish that I was writing into the void, where I could just be interrogated for what it is, not for what people bring into it. Ive spoken to some people who feel sort of like they get taken out of the flow of the story by them. I wont go into too much detail about my mental illnesses, because Im super private about them. Classically, bathtub scenes are a great equalizer. And, in all honesty, I truly have no idea what is happening at the end. This long metafictional spree is doing both character work and literary work, and for my money its doing both incredibly well. newsletter. With that said, the stuff we get in this book about the Lyctor mythology is incredibly rich, and Harrows reactions to the Emperor-God/John are one of the deepest wells of irony in the whole book. But in terms of Harrow and Ianthe, it is so explicitly gay. Emily: I will be totally honest: For as much as I love the Locked Tomb books, I find the world-building so trope-y that I kind of gloss over it. I think one problem is that I am kind of poking fun at myself as a writer. Theres biblical allusion that I havent even begun to mine. God, what came first? We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. My personal favorite is probably the scene where Augustine informs Harrow that if he wants Ortus the First to go, hell be giddy-gone. Harrow finds this to be a nonsensical statement, but once we understand that Harrows brain is overwriting Gideon the Firsts name as Ortus, it starts to make sense: Augustine is making a terrible pun on Gideons name. And much of the way we read it will depend on what comes next. WebGideon the Ninth snagged at my attention, and I was beguiled by the promise of an atmospheric, Gothic-flavored chiller, packed with catacombs and sarcophagi, resurrections and revelations, fantasy and horror. The way that the cavalier-necromancer relationship plays out between the Eighth House, with Silas and Colum, is totally different yet again to the way that it plays out in the Sixth House with Camilla and Palamedes. Which, of course, I recognize that at no point in volume one do they make any explicitly romantic declarations. So how do you think making that trope feminine changes things? Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. So I wanted to ask about what your goal and thought process was when creating such a tone for the story.. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Absolutely. Im sorry. Harrowhark can try to study the other Lyctors relationships to John, but she ultimately doesnt really care. My experience of my gender identity prior to coming out as a trans woman presented a lot like Harrows experience of her entire identity. I was wondering if you could please elaborate on this further and tell us how you work around them. Millions turn to Vox to educate themselves, their family, and their friends about whats happening in the world around them, and to learn about things that spark their curiosity. Large chunks of the novels first half are given over to Harrow and Gideon (mostly Harrow) attempting to convince the rest of their party at Canaan House that they know what they are doing and that they come from a house as wealthy and powerful as anyone elses. Its the same plot as Agatha Christies mystery And Then There Were None, which sees a group of strangers on a remote island dying one after another. Thats part of why I always summarize this book as lesbian necromancers in space. It feels a little reductive, but it also comes as close as anything can to gesturing at all the trope-swirling glee going on here. WebThe New York Times on Gideon the Ninth Her city is under siege. So many have attempted it and so few have succeeded! Harrow kills Cytherea before falling unconscious. Get up [30], In 2021, NPR listed Gideon the Ninth and the Locked Tomb series as one of the 50 best science fiction and fantasy books of the 2010s.[31]. Theres a hell of a lot of Bible stuff in there too. I wish that I could say that Gideon fell onto a griddle when she was 4 or some adorable baby backstory. Also a fan of liminal spaces. I love stories where the protagonists realize that they have inadvertently stumbled into somebody elses much older, weirder story. The trilogy as a whole is quite chaste. Never! All the weird, all the violence, all the rebellious snark and darkness live in that one line. Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. Something went wrong. Constance: Muir is definitely taking more risks in book two. WebSPOILER Thoughts on NTN [Discussion] I just finished up Nona The Ninth and I greatly enjoyed it, despite some issues with pacing at the start I liked the characters they introduced, particularly Nona herself and the various supporting characters along with the depictions of the returning characters. See our ethics statement. So the Vox Book Club spent December and January with two of the most fun books Ive read in a long time: the first two volumes of Tamsyn Muirs Locked Tomb trilogy, Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. Now what? Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. Its just me indulging myself. Hell, to be honest, necromancy comes about because of the type of person Harrow needed to be. The two of them hate each other. Theres a hell of a lot of references to Greek mythology, to Homer, to The Iliad. The opening line of Tamsyn Muir's debut novel, Gideon the Ninth, is, in effect, a primal distillation of everything that comes after. 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