Rating: 3.75/5

Before I even begin this review, please do know that this review might come off as though I did not enjoy this book due to how critical I got during analyzing this book. However, I truly did enjoy this book a lot, it was such a fun book to read, and was such a joy to see the characters interact with one another, and learn bits and pieces of this complex world and magic system. When I do decide to review books, I tend to be very nitpicky about everything and I tend to break down the entire thing and highlight the flaws a lot, no matter how much I enjoyed a story. (trust me I can break down all of my favorite books into their biggest flaws but that doesn’t mean I love them any less!) This review will be split into showcasing, the plot, the world-building, characters, and writing.

ALSO BEWARE THAT THIS REVIEW IS KINDA A HOT MESS IDK WHAT HAPPENED BUT YEAH ENJOY

Plot: Gideon the Ninth follows Gideon Nav, at the beginning of the story, we see her getting ready and preparing on making her grand escape from the Ninth House planet, as she had lived there her entire life in isolation. However, after being caught she was then brought into a position of cavalier, which she had never trained for her entire life, in order to leave with Harrowhark Nonagesium, the heir to the Ninth House, who had been summoned by the empire to participate in trials in order to rise to the power of Lyctor. However, after arriving at the First House, where the trials are being held, other heirs and cavaliers are found dead, opening up to the mystery and seriousness of the situation that they now are in. Going into this story, I truly had no idea of what I was getting myself into, I did not know that this story was going to end up being a murder mystery at the end, which is completely fine with me since during the time I was searching for some fantasy murder mystery to read and somehow one just miraculously ended up in my hands without having to search for it too hard! This story was fun to follow and having Gideon as the main character to figure out this mystery added even more to it, however, due to the writing which I will go more into later in the writing section cause woo, I have lots to say about that, it had made the entire plot pacing feel so strange. In the story's first act everything felt like it was moving so fast that I truly had no idea what was going on, especially in this new and complex world. Then, we got into the second act all the way halfway to the fourth act I would say, everything began to slow down. I feel like a huge contribution to this problem was the fact that during the start of the second act, Harrow disappears off to do her own thing, forcing Gideon to navigate on her own due to orders that her necromancer had given her. As well since the writing style was definitely a struggle to work through, just caused the middle section of the book to feel so slow and felt like it was being dragged on despite the amount of high tension and suspense this part of the book provided. Then there was the ending. I won't go into too much detail about the ending to preventing on causing any spoilers, however, the ending, despite how heartbreaking it was for me and how much it steered away from the typical ending you would see in my eyes, I felt as though it didn't deliver the punch it was supposed to be. The main factor to this I believe is because the plot didn't provide the tension and the risk factor of the conflict as a whole. The conflict felt like it was just there, instead of showing how many problems this can cause, despite people dropping dead like flies. I feel like the ending could've been so much more impactful the way it is, if only the plot was much more structured and developed because at the end if we look at it as a whole, the plot did feel underdeveloped due to that pacing issue and the way everything was revealed, or better yet, not revealed and should've been.

Writing: Oh boy, now when I went into this book, I have heard from many others that this book was confusing, but oh my god I was not expecting this. I understand how sci-fi can be difficult to understand genre due to how complex the worlds that this genre can contain, however this book I feel like taking it to a whole new level of confusion. The writing style was something that I never really got the hang of at the end of the book. There were lots of long paragraphs where at the end you don't really know what in the world you had just read. I feel like there's really no way for me to explain how confused I felt the entire time reading this book due to the writing style and the world-building. I've heard from others that this writing style was meant to be one that made you feel homesick, however, not once I had ever gotten that feeling while reading this book. It was truly just an utterly confusing style that never really did come around at the end sadly.

World: Now lets talk about the world. I really do wish that the author had just gone down the route of info dumping because I feel like this is the biggest reason why it hindered my reading experience. This world is taken place in a universe where there are different planets, which are called Houses. There are nine total houses. I personally feel like I learned absolutely nothing about this universe except for the history of the Ninth House when Harrow went and confessed to Gideon about something towards the end of the book, that chapter was my favorite for multiple different reasons, one for how tender and vulnerable it was, and also I got more of a sense of how the world of the Ninth House worked at least. However, if you were to ask me to explain the world of this book I wouldn't really be able to give you a clear answer sadly. From the power structure, to why there are multiple different planets, I have no idea. This honestly sucks a lot of cause, this world is so complex, from the world itself to the magic system, which we know there are necromancers, however, we don't learn a lot about their magic as a whole solid foundation. I wished that we were able to dive deep into the history and the magic system of this world, cause even now I'm still so intrigued with the little snack-size information that we were given.

Characters: My favorite part, going in deep about the characters. This book has an extremely wide and huge cast of characters from all different Houses/planets. However, with so many characters and not really understanding the housing system, it was quite difficult for me to keep up with who is who if they weren't Gideon of Harrow. However, in the end, I remember a few more characters, however, I still don't remember a huge chunk of the other half. I won't go in deep about Gideon and Harrow and their character arcs and I will be looking more at their relationship with each other instead. These two are not in a relationship and rather a partnership, I didn't really know whether or not these two were going to end up being a couple due to fandom art I've seen and the start of the book... however I can say that their friendship was one of a truly rocking one. They both grew up together, being the only ones of their generation in the Ninth House, and absolutely and utterly hated each other since the day they had met. Watching these two interact was a true joy, seeing Gideon being the sarcastic and joking person who is constantly poking at Harrow and Harrow being the serious, no-play person in response.

Spoiler

I feel like there was not enough time to properly develop the friendship that they could've had at the end. At the end of the book, you could see the two coming into a similar ground and beginning to appreciate each other and forgive one another and start to care about one another with seeing lots of vulnerable moments. I wished that this was more developed and had more time since I feel like this would've been the main and biggest factor in making the ending truly heartbreaking and showing how much of an impact it had made.

However, despite me highlighting and airing out all of the flaws of Gideon the Ninth, don't think I hated this book because in the end I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun read and I felt like I didn't give this book the proper appreciation it needed and deserved, so I am definitely planning on rereading this in the future. Gideon and Harrow were a joy to read and I love the two so much, I’ll definitely be reading the sequel to this story soon. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to read a complex science fiction murder mystery with complex world-building and absolutely sarcastic characters