Gideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth, the New Zealand writer Tamsyn Muir's science fantasy novel, appeared in 2019. It was her debut novel and opens The Locked Tomb series, which continued with Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth and Alecto the Ninth. The series mixes necromancy, swordplay and a space empire, and it is told with a good deal of dark humour.

Gideon has spent eighteen years in indentured servitude at the Ninth House, a death cult whose duty is to guard a locked tomb, and she wants to join the Emperor's armies and never come back. Her latest attempt to leave is stopped by Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the heiress of the Ninth, who needs a cavalier for the trials the Emperor has called at Canaan House. Gideon agrees in exchange for a commission, and the two of them arrive at a decaying mansion full of necromancer heirs and their sword-wielding bodyguards.

The trials are puzzles in a ruined house, the other houses are not all honest about their dead, and the prize is a place among the Emperor's Lyctors, immortal necromancers who have served him for ten thousand years. Gideon and Harrow have grown up hating each other and now have to work as a pair, which the book plays as both a comedy and a problem. Muir keeps the narration with Gideon, so the necromancy is partly explained by someone who does not practise it.

The series continues with the three later books, which change narrators and setting while continuing the same story. The first novel establishes the Nine Houses, the Emperor, Canaan House and the two leads.