Gideon and Mary
Sep. 12th, 2022 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThis week, I listened to Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, described to me by a friend as 'lesbian necromancers in space'!
The narrator was Moira Quirk, one of my favourites, and she was a very good choice for the irreverent tone, which masterfully managed to stay just on the right side of crass. Gideon, as an unwanted baby left at the mercy of the largely skeleton-populated Ninth House, makes for a very interesting and layered protagonist. Her relationships with all the other characters are complex and engaging, and I was invested in finding out what would eventually happen to her. What actually happened, though, was unfortunately the main reason I decided not to carry on with the series...
Plus, whilst the initial setup and introductions were entertaining, amusing and intriguing, the main thrust of the plot was very slow and rather stalled once Gideon and Harrowhawk arrived at the First House.d
Still, it's a well-drawn and innovative sci-fi world, with lots of house politics, rivalries and layered inter-relationships.
I also read The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow, which tells the story of Mary Bennett - before, during and after the events of Pride and Prejudice. It started off really well, as Mary's perspective, growing up the middle child of the Bennett sisters, is an interesting (though very sad) one. The prose is excellent and the concept appealing. However, once the actual events of P&P began, it quickly became very tedious, as the scenes were Mary was present in the original were related almost verbatim (just with a few added lines to give Mary's thoughts) and those where she wasn't were related in detail to her by one of the other characters after the fact.
I was about to give up, when there was a time jump of two years around page 215 (just after Charlotte married Mr Collins), which re-engaged my interest, as suddenly all the content was going to be new. But then, the intervening events of the rest of the original book were summarised at length, followed by a large section of 'telling' as Mary journeyed to various different places and found it hard to establish a place in the world.
However, it was interesting enough for me to carry on, and then the second half of the book ended up being pretty good, as Mary gradually came into her own, developed a lot as a character and discovered her role as heroine in her own story at long last. So, while the first 325 pages were a bit of a struggle in places, it was well worth persevering for the second 325 pages. In my view, since that's the length of a fairly decently sized novel, the first half could pretty much have been dispensed with altogether. Especially as it's not as if any readers of this book will be unfamiliar with the original.
The narrator was Moira Quirk, one of my favourites, and she was a very good choice for the irreverent tone, which masterfully managed to stay just on the right side of crass. Gideon, as an unwanted baby left at the mercy of the largely skeleton-populated Ninth House, makes for a very interesting and layered protagonist. Her relationships with all the other characters are complex and engaging, and I was invested in finding out what would eventually happen to her. What actually happened, though, was unfortunately the main reason I decided not to carry on with the series...
Plus, whilst the initial setup and introductions were entertaining, amusing and intriguing, the main thrust of the plot was very slow and rather stalled once Gideon and Harrowhawk arrived at the First House.d
Still, it's a well-drawn and innovative sci-fi world, with lots of house politics, rivalries and layered inter-relationships.
I also read The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow, which tells the story of Mary Bennett - before, during and after the events of Pride and Prejudice. It started off really well, as Mary's perspective, growing up the middle child of the Bennett sisters, is an interesting (though very sad) one. The prose is excellent and the concept appealing. However, once the actual events of P&P began, it quickly became very tedious, as the scenes were Mary was present in the original were related almost verbatim (just with a few added lines to give Mary's thoughts) and those where she wasn't were related in detail to her by one of the other characters after the fact.
I was about to give up, when there was a time jump of two years around page 215 (just after Charlotte married Mr Collins), which re-engaged my interest, as suddenly all the content was going to be new. But then, the intervening events of the rest of the original book were summarised at length, followed by a large section of 'telling' as Mary journeyed to various different places and found it hard to establish a place in the world.
However, it was interesting enough for me to carry on, and then the second half of the book ended up being pretty good, as Mary gradually came into her own, developed a lot as a character and discovered her role as heroine in her own story at long last. So, while the first 325 pages were a bit of a struggle in places, it was well worth persevering for the second 325 pages. In my view, since that's the length of a fairly decently sized novel, the first half could pretty much have been dispensed with altogether. Especially as it's not as if any readers of this book will be unfamiliar with the original.
