my mascara'd eye doth espy ... spoilers

[allchildren]

Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth is the first in a planned trilogy of horror-tinged SFF books, following a teenage dirtbag and butch sword lesbian as she is forced to team up with her bitterest enemy, a prissy goth teenage dirtbag and necromancer priestess, on a journey through space to a mysterious haunted palace full of yet more dirtbag teens. Shit gets real, hijinks and murder ensue, God gets involved. Etc. I strongly recommend, providing you can deal with a bajillion animated skeletons, several grisly deaths, and some genuinely gross necromantic tricks.

 

I was lucky enough to read an e-ARC at the very end of 2018. Now that it is a real live published book, I have reread, and thought I would record some bits and pieces that I found noteworthy, or missed the first time through. Seriously: very many spoilers.

Part One: The Clues

The Third House

• "I would not attract attention from the necromancer of the Third House." (100) (emphasis mine)
• They knelt side by side, holding hands, and for all that Ianthe had made fun of her sister’s intellect Corona never broke a sweat. It was Ianthe who ran wet with blood and perspiration. (188)
• (There's a bunch of other little moments of Coronabeth Not Doing Necromancy, but this one is followed by an exciting moment of foreshadowing: Ianthe eating bits of Naberius.)

Dulcinea

• "Not much can hurt me anymore." (216)
• "It's very easy to die, Gideon the Ninth... you just let it happen. It's so much worse when it doesn't." (227)
• Asked why she wants to be a Lyctor, she answers in the past tense: "I didn't want to die." (231)
• "I’ve been dying for what feels like ten thousand years." (294)
• "I'll probably live forever... worse luck." (295)
• Palamedes wonders why she didn't target the Eighth: "...due to how easily they could have outed you – any slip would have shown an Eighth necromancer that you weren’t what you claimed. He would only have had to siphon you to know." (399)
• Hence, you know, Protesilaus punching Silas in the face when he tried (191).

Protesilaus

• Harrow, sussing him out: Then she strode off to catch up with – of all people – Protesilaus, apparently with the aim of engaging him in conversation. (216)
• Harrow, having reached a conclusion: "And I dislike her cavalier even more – " ("Massive slam on Protesilaus out of nowhere," said Gideon.) (222)
• Naberius's opinion: "Should be interesting to see the cav; he’s not remotely like his rep, is he?" (252)

Teacher
Judith: "Does anyone else want to take this opportunity to admit that they’re already dead, or a flesh construct, or other relevant object? Anyone?" ...[two dialogueless paragraphs elapse]... Teacher: "Maybe later, Lady Judith." (343)

You know what? Let's put Gideon in here too. What are the clues to YOUR true nature, Gideon the Ninth?

What's Up With Gideon

• Preceded 10,000 years ago by another, also brave Gideon
• Fell out of the sky with mysterious mother in hazmat suit, already dead, whose spirit could only be induced to scream "Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!" before fleeing (23)
• Rare hair: mother and baby were both gingers, which may be a Third House trait (317)
• May be worth noting that the only other person to remark on Gideon's hair is from the Third House (254)
• Rare eyes: amber eyes are noted to be prettier than the previous Gideon's eyes (424)
• Survived 10 minutes of nerve gas (353)
• Bounced back from avulsion, despite Palamedes's predictions of a coma or brain damage (234)

Part Two: The Plot

Tracking the Keys

0. Facility key: covertly asked for and granted by Teacher to the Ninth, Sixth, Eighth, Seventh, Fifth, Fourth (retained by Teacher) and Ianthe acting alone.

1. Scarlet key: won by the Ninth in Imagining & Response; Lyctoral lab contained perpetual bone theorem, evidence of Second House necro and cav (presumably "P. & G."), the Gideon note

2. Grey key: won by Dulcinea, studied by Palamedes, confiscated by Silas, reproduced by Harrow; referred to (possibly in editing error?) by Palamedes as the "Sixth House key" (304); challenge (find skeleton with missing molar) also completed by Palamedes; Lyctoral lab entered by Sixth and Ninth houses together, containing the Teacher experiment and note referring to "E.J.G" signed by one "Anastasia" which btw is a name that any amateur liker of historical conspiracy theories will tell you means "of the Resurrection"

3. White key: won by the Ninth in Avulsion!; shared with Dulcinea; Lyctoral lab explored offscreen by Harrow, during which time she also accidentally destroyed Protesilaus

4, 5, 6. Three keys won by Sixth House.

7. One key won by Eighth House.

8. One key won by Fifth House, hidden by Cytherea inside Abigail's body, stolen by the Third; lock stopped up by Cytherea, cleared by Harrow; Lyctoral lab containing "YOU LIED TO US" message written by Cytherea and what Ianthe referred to as step four in the Lyctoral megatheorem (fix the soul in place so it can't deteriorate)

More Things Palamedes Understood Before I Did

• “FIVE HUNDRED INTO FIFTY” refers to souls and bodies, respectively. Teacher is represented by "one enormous pinsplotch: more than a hundred of them in a rainbow of colours, thickly clustered around one in white." (367)
• Palamedes detects Dulcinea/Cytherea's thanergetic signature in the final Lyctoral lab: "one of his thumbs was tracing the edge of a black-painted letter, but the rest of his body was rigid. He looked as though someone had turned his power switch off." (383)

Sex Pal Can't Help Us Now: unaccounted for at novel's end

• Judith
• Coronabeth
• Camilla
• Gideon (dec.)

Part Three: The World

The Empire

• At least 6-9 planets orbit a star called Dominicus.
• Sixth, Seventh, First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Houses are confirmed to have their own planets in that approximate order (56, 67, 301).
• The Emperor and his Lyctors hang out deep space (442), which is weird, since empty space is allegedly a necromancer's worst nightmare (57).
• Cytherea's plan was only to draw the Emperor back to the outer edges of the system (401).
• Emperor must not or cannot land on Planet First House. (374, 443).
• Also mentioned: sweet space stations (56), hold(ing) planets, post-colony planets, and frontline planets yet to be invaded (126, 287).
• FTL travel must exist, not only for the benefit of deep space exploration, but because the Ninth travel to the First in about an hour (compare Pluto to Earth = ~300 light minutes).

The Crux of the Thing

• Ten thousand years ago, the Houses and their planets were dead and dying (382)
• The Necrolord Prime/Emperor All-Giving/King Undying/Kindly Prince of Death/God was the First Reborn (39)
• More epithets: ransomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death, Emperor who became God, God who became Emperor, God who became man, man who became God (81, 239)
• The Nine Houses were "reborn together" (171)
• The original Lyctors seem to have been made just after the Resurrection (83, 173)
• Resurrection was made possible through the unrepeatable defeat of his one true enemy, the Death of the Lord, the abyss of the First (354)
• That enemy is embodied as a girl holding a sword, buried in chains under ice behind a rock behind the Locked Tomb (357)
• And though the Ninth House's whole deal is guarding said Tomb... they do in fact pray that that which is buried lives (42).

So, But

Is this our world, ten thousand plus years in the future? Nine planets, the watery one third from the sun, the Catholic feel to the religion, the Latin and Greek (and Sanskrit, it turns out) names certainly made me think so. But I was so caught up in the emotion of the moment, and I guess others were too, because I missed it and I haven't seen anyone else point out the smoking gun embedded in Gideon's last words:

"The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee," said Gideon. "See you on the flip side, sugarlips." (438)

THAT IS THE BOOK OF RUTH, MOTHERFUCKERS. Ruth 1:17, Douay-Rheims Bible, to be exact.


 

So yeah, I have some questions.