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Gideon the Ninth
The Locked Tomb #1
Tamsyn Muir

Dark, dismal, dingy, disturbing, paranoid, cold, bitter, oppressive. All in positive ways, of course! This book has some incredible atmosphere, but it can start feeling somewhat taxing. The only scraps of levity we get are from the protagonist Gideon's sense of humor, saying and thinking the stupidest shit especially in the most inappropriate moments. It is amusing, but in general her style of humor isn't my favorite.

I didn't realize until the end, but this is one of those books that has stuff like a glossary, explanation of naming conventions, pronunciation guide, character profiles, etc. Rather than all that being extraneous info for sickos only, it all feels naturally embedded into the world, giving a richness and gravity to the story. Those extra sections feel immediate and relevant, actually serving the characters and story, filling in the last bit of missing detail.

Unfortunately, I didn't discover these sections until I finished the story; and I have the type of brain that struggles to quickly comprehend "lore stuff" and hates to interrupt the story to do research. Plus, there are quite a lot of characters to keep track of who remain relevant throughout. All this meant the impact of some big important events was delayed as my brain background-processed who was that again and what does that term mean again.

All that said, this was still an incredibly fun ride, dripping with atmosphere, packed with stuff that made me go "woah gross cool what the fuck".

Side note: I felt like the queer tags and promo language oversold that aspect of the book. It made me expect more explicit queerness, but it was really just a background aspect of some characters, a lens that we see through, often totally imperceptible... but maybe that just tells me something about myself.