I read this book for my book club, but it had already been on my list because necromancer lesbians in space just sounded like something that I should read. And I enjoyed it, for the most part, but it didn't click for me the way it seems to have clicked for a lot of people, and I've been trying to figure out why that is since I finished it.
The basic set up is that there are these nine houses, and the leaders of each of them get called to solve a task in order to be chosen to ascend and serve the big high god, and if that sounds a bit vague it's because that's how a lot of the worldbuilding actually felt to me, like there was this huge system that I was supposed to be able to figure out but that felt extremely opaque. I may have needed to be a better reader, genuinely, but so much of it ended up being handwaved for me, because the only real point is our protagonist, Gideon, who is the champion for the leader from the Ninth House, Harrow. Gideon isn't supposed to be her champion; she's an indentured servant for the House who is in the middle of attempting to escape once again when Harrow essentially strong-arms her into being her champion and fighting for her while Harrow does the necromancy work.
I did really enjoy the dynamic between Gideon and Harrow, and the ending was satisfying and caught me by surprise and made a bunch of the build up worth it to me. But everyone from all of the other houses blended together for me, and the result was that the entire race/puzzle/challenge/mystery they were trying to solve just felt like a horror film where I knew that everyone except for the people who truly mattered would die, and none of those deaths really landed for me. I've seen some fan theories about where the series will go, and I think that I probably will end up reading the next book, because the character it focuses on is pretty interesting to me, but it didn't hook me the way I had hoped it would.
Also, I did find that Gideon's persona was more enjoyable as a lesbian than it would have been as a male character, where her chauvinism would have simply been standard and fairly boring. But I had been hoping for more, both in terms of more queerness (and what that even meant in this universe) and more originality as a character.
Grade: B
The basic set up is that there are these nine houses, and the leaders of each of them get called to solve a task in order to be chosen to ascend and serve the big high god, and if that sounds a bit vague it's because that's how a lot of the worldbuilding actually felt to me, like there was this huge system that I was supposed to be able to figure out but that felt extremely opaque. I may have needed to be a better reader, genuinely, but so much of it ended up being handwaved for me, because the only real point is our protagonist, Gideon, who is the champion for the leader from the Ninth House, Harrow. Gideon isn't supposed to be her champion; she's an indentured servant for the House who is in the middle of attempting to escape once again when Harrow essentially strong-arms her into being her champion and fighting for her while Harrow does the necromancy work.
I did really enjoy the dynamic between Gideon and Harrow, and the ending was satisfying and caught me by surprise and made a bunch of the build up worth it to me. But everyone from all of the other houses blended together for me, and the result was that the entire race/puzzle/challenge/mystery they were trying to solve just felt like a horror film where I knew that everyone except for the people who truly mattered would die, and none of those deaths really landed for me. I've seen some fan theories about where the series will go, and I think that I probably will end up reading the next book, because the character it focuses on is pretty interesting to me, but it didn't hook me the way I had hoped it would.
Also, I did find that Gideon's persona was more enjoyable as a lesbian than it would have been as a male character, where her chauvinism would have simply been standard and fairly boring. But I had been hoping for more, both in terms of more queerness (and what that even meant in this universe) and more originality as a character.
Grade: B
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