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.  

Thus far, Tamsyn Muir has brought together aspects of science fiction, fantasy and the Gothic. But there is more to come. The novel becomes a murder mystery as the candidates begin to be found dead one by one, reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Similar to the classic detective novel, the necromancers and cavaliers are trapped on an island with no means of communicating to the outside world as someone, or something, picks them off. Tamsyn Muir also draws on the horror genre through gruesome deaths and the monstrous creatures which Gideon and Harrow face.

Necromancers, skeletons, monsters and murder could combine to make something very dark indeed. And yet, layered over this amalgamation of dark themes is Gideon’s sarcastic, swearing, and humorous voice. This completely shifts the tone of the novel. While there are dark moments, the humour provides an overlay, like a colour filter, to alter the way we absorb the book’s contents. Gideon’s voice is full of life, at odds with the death all around her.

Gideon the Ninth is a melting pot of genres and tropes. It doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does. By combining elements that wouldn’t usually be melded together, Tamsyn Muir has created something original and unique – a novel that is engaging in its unexpectedness.