Everyone else at Canaan House sees the Ninth and they're like "oh no, shadow cultists, they're so intimidating and intense! Let's be polite/distant/intimidating back to avoid getting involved and/or insulting them!

Palamedes meets them and says "holy shit they're both dumb as rocks I need to adopt them immediately" while Cam is telling him he has to stop bringing home pets.

Horrible little Ninth gremlins <3

Old Sex Pal scratch

Calling all locked tomb enjoyers. I am sick over this animatic, and I need you all to be similarly ruined.

I'm gonna puke, I love it so much. Actually crying.

If everyone already knows about it, I'm not sorry. Everyone be not-okay about this with me.

Edited to add: The creator is here on tumblrdot om! @scalierpepper

stavo riguardando un po' di film disney e mi è venuto un lampo di genio. spero che non l'abbia già fatto qualcuno.

ho visto gli scheletri nell'ade e ho pensato "uuughghh Harrow"

Someone shared these bejewelled exoskeleton thingies on twt and had to sketch Harrow in one of them -- no time to work on this unfortunately, but I thought I'd share the thought living rent free in my brain

You know that tlt post going around like "I am not a beach read I am a lifelong commitment"? Yeah, if you relate to that this question is for you. When did you realize this series had, as we love to say, permanently changed your brain chemistry? I loved gtn and htn but for me it was nona.

More shots of my Gideon cosplay from today for those that can read 📚

I got recognised a couple times and also got some of my books signed by T Kingfisher, which was really cool! I did have to go home on the tram and then through the drive through in my costume/facepaint lol

EDIT: LOL I'm just noticing my dog in the last photo omg 🤣

Okay it’s been over a year since I read Gideon the Ninth so I think I’m ready to give a critical review:

Cards on the table I love this book series, the characters are complex and interesting, I thoroughly enjoy the world-building and I am anxiously awaiting Alecto the ninth.

My main issue with GtN, and the rest of the books in the series tbh, is the pacing. The first act of basically all the books in the series is dedicated to setting up the world in which the characters live, which especially harms the pacing of GtN because the majority of the book doesn’t even take place on the ninth. A similar world-building-heavy section occurs when Gideon and Harrow arrive at Canaan house, and it isn’t really until halfway through the second act that the stakes are raised when Gideon starts helping Harrow with the lyctorhood trials, and the plot really begins.The murder mystery aspect doesn’t start until act 3 in a 5 act book. From there the pacing is break neck, and it just feels so at odds with the previous two acts that drag in comparison.

As soon as I got through the first two acts I couldn’t put it down, but really getting through those world-building heavy acts is what makes or breaks the experience you have reading Gideon the Ninth.

I really appreciate how the world-building is handled however. Muir doesn’t talk down to her readers, which is commendable. The thing that I hate most about middling sci-fi or fantasy books is the exposition dumps that normally occur in the first few chapters. For this reason I wouldn’t recommend GtN to anyone looking for a light fun read, the kind you can enjoy without too much thought (nothing wrong with that but this isn’t the book series for that)

I can’t speak to her other works, but based on the pacing of all the books in the locked tomb series I do wonder if this pacing is a stylistic thing for her? And I’ve seen others praise this pacing, so maybe this is just a me issue.

I realize this is really ramble-y so I’ll wrap it up here:

Provided you get through the first two acts, Gideon the Ninth is an amazing opening to the Locked Tomb series, and the writing only improves with each installment. The characters are engaging and dynamic, and I can honestly say I’ve never been as emotionally affected reading any other book as I was when reading GtN (except maybe HtN). If you enjoy fantasy I would highly recommend GtN. Fair warning, it will leave you an emotional wreck.

harrowhark getting her lobotomy done at claire's

(ps: merry christmas eve! you can't see but we just hit 10k on here... my christmas gift to the world, thank you dearly)

you ever think about how canaan house is probably the most life gideon’s ever seen?

this has been sitting in my wips forever, so i decided it’d be better to post some version of it than let it languish in procreate forever.

edit: due to popular request, this piece is now available on my shop!

If I could pick one location described in Gideon the Ninth to see in illustration, it would be the half-crumbled terrace Gideon finds while searching for Harrow. For whatever reason, it's that location that lives so vividly in my mind, and yet I have such a hard time picturing. In my mind's eye, I see a dozen different dramatic and beautiful images, and every line brings to me a different vision. Twice in one line, some times!

Honestly. If anyone has a landscape they've made or they've found someone else made of specifically that crumbling terrace in chapter 12, that gave Gideon acrophobia, where you can see the landing docks overhead and the windows of the Ninth's quarters, that's still really high above the ocean. Dry soil gardens are described, stretching "as far as the eye could see", making me think this is the stair-step farming-style terrace bot the "another word for a porch" definition. She leaves this place via the wrought iron spiral staircase that takes her up to the hallway with the statue Cam had broken.

Or I guess if anyone knows someone who has both read GtN and does landscape commissions, I think I'd be interested in that.

Animated TV show this, stage musical that. I think we all know what medium Tazmuir wants TLT to be adapted into.

Harrow's necromantic power includes the ability to create underlighting whenever it's necessary.

Bonus:

Isn't it funny how this is almost canon?

Inspired by this post.

The Sixth House | Book One

Camilla Hect | Palamedes Sextus