2020 Reading Challenge: A book recommended by your favorite blog, vlog, podcast or online book club
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I came into this book because it was mentioned on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour in their segment "What's Making Me Happy." I do not recall who on the podcast recommended it but I jotted it down onto my TBR list.
It ticked many of my "things I like" boxes... cultist necromanic sword and sorcery in space.
The Emperor Undying has called for the Nine Great Houses (each dedicated to a different aspect of necromancy) to send a necromancer and their cavalier (rapier fighter/bodyguard) to come and endure a test in which the end could find the necromancer being selected to be part of the Emperor's elite Priesthood.
Gideon was raised in the Ninth House - priests and priestesses dedicated to the Locked Tomb (the supposed resting place of the Emperor's enemy that made him undying) and osteo-necromancers - they have the still to raise skeletons and manipulate bone. She wants nothing more than to leave and join the Empires equivalent of the army. The Reverend Daughter comes to Gideon and says that if she acts as her Cavalier during the trials, she will give Gideon the release to go. Begrudgingly, Gideon agrees, even though she is a heavy sword fighter and not a rapier one. They travel across space to the House of the First. Upon getting there, strange happenings make everyone wonder what was really going on.
I very much enjoyed this book and Moira Quirk's reading of it was highly entertaining and I am adding her to my list of narrators to find other things she's read.
If fantastical sci-fi is your thing, I would recommend this book.
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