Gideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth is a mordant fantasy novel about a group of young necromancers taking part in a dangerous competition. Its strength lies in its snarky protagonist, whose voice can be felt throughout the whole narrative: her tone infects the narrator’s voice, interfering with the descriptions and the overall sense of humor. The novel’s plot and magic system can get a bit too nonsensical, but the characters are strong enough to make up for it.

The protagonist is Gideon, a young girl who lives in the Ninth House of necromancers, under the rule of another young girl, called Harrow Nonagesimus. They hate each other very, very much and are not subtle about it, frequently verbalizing their animosity. One day, however, after a failed escape attempt, Gideon agrees to become Harrow’s official cavalier: they are to travel to a special place and enter a competition so Harrow can earn the right to ascend and become a lyctor, the immortal protector of their undying emperor. If everything goes according to plan, Gideon will get her so desired freedom. But the situation, of course, doesn’t take long to derail.

Gideon is the heart of the novel. She’s sardonic, sarcastic, fierce, crude, and harshly honest. She has this “I don’t give a damn” attitude going on and she really lives up by it, often shocking the other characters with her complete lack of decorum, respect, sensibility, and common sense.

The book is narrated in the third person, but her voice is ever-present. When the narrator is describing characters or events, we can clearly see Gideon’s point of view in the adjectives and overall tone of the text. Take this excerpt, for example: “The Ninth would be coming out of their cells after morning contemplation, getting ready to head for orison, and the Drearburh retainers would be preparing for the day ahead. They would perform many a solemn and inane ritual in the lower recesses.” The text seems objective at the beginning, but quickly shows signs of the protagonist’s point of view: it’s Gideon who deems the rituals inane, after all.

But Gideon’s voice is usually much more pronounced than that. The novel is all about necromancy, being full of vicious and morbid descriptions of the dead and their rituals – which makes the sudden outbursts of informality stand out even more, such as in: “The enthroned Lord and Lady should have taken charge of the sacred ritual, but they couldn’t, because they were mega-dead.”

Character descriptions are also affected, often ending with ridiculous details that work almost as punchlines of a joke: “He had the eyes of a very beautiful person, trapped in resting bitch face.”  As Gideon abhors her world, the Ninth house, and everything related to it, her inappropriate manner ends up being framed as a form of defiance – and one that is felt ceaselessly by the reader.

Gideon’s voice is everywhere: it’s in the descriptions of characters and places, in the nouns and adjectives used by the narrator, in the ironic tone of the text.  Gideon is full of snappy one-liners, she’s constantly dismissing important things, breaking the tension whenever she can, and easily throwing around sexual analogies. She’s coarse and crude. This leads to a problem, however: her voice stands out very much, so having it infect the narrator as well can make it overwhelming for the reader and lead to a repetitive experience. It’s simply too much.

Gideon, nevertheless, still manages to be an interesting character. She has lived a horrible life – who wouldn’t, living with necromancers – and she has become a fierce individual in return. She’s a warrior, a person who tends to solve everything with her dual blades and is often described as a brute: “Gideon Nav knew in the first half second that Magnus was going to lose: after that she stopped thinking with her brain and started thinking with her arms, which were frankly where the best of her cerebral matter lay.”

Gideon’s personality is a rebellious one. Her constant sarcasm is not only a way of coping with all the terrible things she witnesses, but it also works as a form of defiance. When she’s informal at an important meeting or makes a pun during a tense situation, she’s either undermining the local authority or putting herself above all the tragic things that are happening around her.

One consequence of this is that the overall tone of the narrative becomes much softer than it had any right to be. Gideon the Ninth feels almost like a lighthearted story about a group of necromancers being slaughtered by bone constructs. It doesn’t help that Gideon and Harrow’s competitors for the position of lyctor are all young people as well. They worry about unimportant things, they party, eat and drink together, are mostly civil and the good ones even try to help each other.

The competition is a mysterious one. Gideon and Harrow are locked in a strange building with the members of all the other houses, and they must solve the puzzles hidden in the place with almost no guidance whatsoever. The tests are already dangerous, but to make matters worse for the main characters, there’s also a killer among them, eliminating them one by one.

The side characters are all sufficiently distinct from one another, making an eclectic and interesting group to observe and try to find out who’s the culprit. There’s Silas Octakiseron, who’s a self-righteous young man who seems to mold his sense of justice to better fit his ends, and Colum, his honorable bulky cavalier. There’s Palamedes Sextus, who is often the smartest guy in the room, but stands out for being a gentle soul, who doesn’t hesitate to do the right thing. There’s Dulcinea Septimus, who’s is a fragile, sick girl with a kind heart, but there is something off about her that everyone but Gideon and Palamedes – who are basically infatuated with her – seems to notice.

But the most important element in the novel is the relationship between Gideon and Harrow. They claim to hate each other deeply, from the bottom of their heart and with everything they have – and Gideon was indeed given plenty of reasons to loath Harrow all her life. But their banter often feels like they are just two friends teasing each other. And it doesn’t help that Gideon’s plans of revenge are usually this cruel: “Gideon would have immediately made plans to get into Harrow’s wardrobe and do up all the buttons on her shirts, making sure that each button went into the hole above the one it was meant to go into.” Nonetheless, their growing friendship – which reaches insane levels at the climax – still feels like a very severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.

The narrative, however, often falters when it comes to exposition. Important elements of the story – such as the undying emperor – are never fleshed out, which means that when characters oppose him or try to become his personal guard, we are left without a clear notion of what that actually means. The emperor remains an elusive presence throughout the whole novel: we don’t know what policies he stands for; what his presence signifies to the common people; or even what are the dangers that he claims to protect them from. This lack of information undermines all the plot points that are somewhat related to him: because we don’t understand the emperor, we aren’t given the means to understand some character motivations.

A similar problem occurs with the twists that encompass the novel’s magic system: they are usually surprising not because we didn’t see it coming, but because we couldn’t. Again, information is withheld from us, the readers, and so the twists are usually about things that we didn’t know were even possible in that world.

There’s so much information withheld from the reader – and from Gideon – that the story reaches a point where a key character needs to come to the protagonist, near the end, and flat out say, “The time has come to tell you everything.”

Gideon the Ninth is a peculiar fantasy novel, with a great protagonist and a creative, if somewhat confusing world. Its narrative can get a bit overwhelming, and the final twists are not very well prepared, but, in the end, the novel still manages to impress.

October 07, 2020.