Month: September 2023

Book Discussion: Melding Genres in Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment

Since we’re entering spooky season, it’s a great time to discuss Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth. One of my favourite novels, this book blew me away with its originality and creativity. Today I’m going to be looking at how Tamsyn Muir fuses genres to create a story which is both harrowing and humorous.   

This post may include mild spoilers for Gideon the Ninth.

When Gideon the Ninth opens, the titular Gideon is waiting for a shuttle to take her away from the Ninth House. At this moment, we are seemingly entering a familiar subgenre of science fiction – a space opera. Any illusions that this is a typical space opera, however, disappear when we are introduced to Gideon’s beloved longsword which, as it happens, she is rather skilled at using. A sword may appear to be a small detail to comment on, but this element, although small, sees the beginning of the fantastical creep into the story.

Said fantastical aspect of the novel comes marching in like a whirling storm when Harrow sweeps into the scene – a necromancer with the ability to create skeletal constructs with scraps of bone – and we know that this is absolutely, definitely not a typical space opera. There is something apt about necromancers in space. Outer space is vast, cold, empty, deadly.

Gideon and Harrow travel to the First House for a contest that will see the victorious party become a Lyctor. The sprawling and dilapidated manor they find themselves staying in brings a feeling of the Gothic into the novel. There is something incredibly eerie about the house. The necromancers and cavaliers of the nine necromantic houses are collected together in a building served by skeleton servants and devoid of any other life.

The necromancers’ abilities are tested through tasks in a basement laboratory, and they seek to understand the principles behind the necromantic tasks they accomplish. This layers an element of science to the magic that makes the necromancers’ skills seem more real. There is something unsettling in the way Harrow scientifically examines the tasks. It makes what appeared at the start to be a mysterious magic, to seem completely, plausibly scientific and real. There is no warmth in this magic. It is hard, cold and scientific.  

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Audiobook Review: Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

Genre: Fantasy  

Publishing Info: Audiobook by Hodder & Stoughton, narrated by Kristin Hvam

Star Rating: 4/5

Back Cover Summary:

It began with Daughter of Smoke and Bone. It continued with Days of Blood and Starlight. It ends with Dreams of Gods and Monsters.

Common enemy, common cause. When Jael’s brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz…something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world. What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera, and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theatre that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy. At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

Dreams of Gods and Monsters is a good conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, but it didn’t have the same impact as the first two. I adore Laini Taylor’s writing. It’s beautiful and flowing and she paints her stories so beautifully. However, this style slowed the pacing too much at times in this instalment. Some scenes, while written very well, dragged and it sucked the tension out of them.

The first half of the book was also too slow, and if I hadn’t already been invested from the first two, I may have put the book down. Which is shocking, considering how much I loved the previous books. If it had been trimmed a little and made a tad shorter, the pacing would have been improved. There were also a lot of scenes from a new character which I struggled to be invested in. While I understood their importance and, by the end, it made sense why she was included, I wanted to spend time with the characters I’d come to know and love across the series and was more invested in following the main plotline.

Despite being slow in places, there were also plenty shocking, heart-racing twisty scenes and set pieces. Moments that wrenched at my heartstrings and left me devastated, yet clinging to threads of hope. Laini Taylor does this so well across the series.

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