Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) in ✮ chaotic queer readers!!! ✮

Mar 27, 2024 KateLynn Luzier rated it it was amazing

Shelves: really-enjoyed, queer-rep, club-eerie-inklings, challenge-bingo-2024, rep-sapphic, genre-paranormal, genre-witches

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐🐊🐊🐊🐊🐊

I am at a loss of where to start. The characters were beautiful. They were full of depth and personality and imperfections and motives. They were so well-written and I became attached so very quickly to each of them. Gideon as the protagonist was so likeable, real, and unabashedly queer. The characters being so well-fleshed out are why this book is equal parts ambition and tragedy.

At times, I thought it was a bit too smart for me, but I would catch up enough to find my place again. Th ...more

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Aug 17, 2025 lj ♡ rated it really liked it

Shelves: humor, series-starter, fantasy, lgbtq-plus, completed-review, sci-fi, gay-witches

whoa
rtc

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my expectations for this were VERY high. just about everyone i know who's read this, irl and online, has gone feral for it. and... i get it. i completely understand. i'm deeply in love with gideon and harrow and ianthe tridentarius and palamedes and everyone else in this weird-ass space fantasy bone-crunching bloody space magic universe.

it took me about 3 tries to actually properly start this - the beginning is a tad confusing but it gets better, i promise. once you get use whoa
rtc

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my expectations for this were VERY high. just about everyone i know who's read this, irl and online, has gone feral for it. and... i get it. i completely understand. i'm deeply in love with gideon and harrow and ianthe tridentarius and palamedes and everyone else in this weird-ass space fantasy bone-crunching bloody space magic universe.

it took me about 3 tries to actually properly start this - the beginning is a tad confusing but it gets better, i promise. once you get used to gideon's narration, it's so much fun, alternatingly silly, sarcastic, and serious when it needs to be. gideon overall is such a fun character, surprisingly complex and emotional under the hard surface of dirty jokes and sword-waving. she's loyal, and she's fierce, and she truly cares about people. one of my favorite parts about this story, a tapestry of interwoven character arcs, was gideon's growth as she starts to feel like the ninth is her home. that hit me right in my feelings.

and that hit so hard because muir's worldbuilding and descriptions are top-tier. it's not handed to you by any means, there's no pause for a catch-up lore dump, so if you're not used to that in sff, you'll probably be lost. but it worked perfectly for me, and i let myself submerge in the gloomy gray bone-marrow turns of phrase that outline the ninth and later the creepy magic mansion that gideon and her archnemesis necromantic princess harrow explore as its halls fill with ever more danger and death.

the other favorite part of this book for me was the relationship between gideon and harrow. i love me a good enemies to lovers, and i have to say that's what i was originally expected, but i kind of love this even better. enemies to guard/royal. enemies to trust. enemies to friends, maybe, but the connection is so much more complicated, so much stronger, than that. friends doesn't feel like the right word.

one complaint i do have is that i was... confused for a bit. i kept reading things and then being like wait what was that. and then i would go back. also thank god for the character list at the beginning because wow there are lot of people. (spoilers but... that will get easier as we go due to... a decrease in characters). however, each character has their own secrets and nuances and mystery to them. the 'teens' as gideon calls them were some of my favorites. ugh i love them.

and of course the mystery!! the magic!! the plot!! so much is going on and there's so much more that i can sense is going to unravel in this world. this, despite its enormous stakes, was only the very beginning. there are so many directions we could go from here, and i'm not sure what path muir is going to take, but i have heard that the rest of the series gets incredibly confusing. sooo i'm not anticipating that, but i am excited to get more of these bloody death-wielding wlw baddies so best believe i'll be getting my hands on the next book asap. ...more

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Feb 21, 2025 Lionelle Pmuls (That's Slump Backwards & It's What I Do) added it

Shelves: a-queer-rep, a-new-authors, a-hot-conjuring-horror, a-lgtbqia-plus, a-pnr-slash-fantasy, a-not-too-much-darkness, a-new-adult, a-young-adult-book, tamsyn-muir

DNF ~ ~ 50% (going to try to read this again later)

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Oct 02, 2023 Bebo Saucier Carrick rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, fantasy, horror-thriller, lgbt, favorites

I really enjoyed this book! The pacing at the beginning was a little slow and I was very confused off the bat with all the terms, however the glossary helped this a lot. Once Act 3 started, I was absolutely sold. It's got a little bit of everything: murder mystery, sci-fi, necromancy, lesbian pining, and some awesome sword fighting sequences. I ended up making a little chart of characters to keep the necromancers and cavaliers of each house straight, and this greatly helped me as well since ther ...more

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May 09, 2024 Teah rated it really liked it

Shelves: queer

4.5

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Dec 31, 2023 Stephanie rated it liked it

It was recommended to me by multiple people who have excellent taste. I really want to love this book. I might try rereading it.

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Nov 05, 2023 Sophia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, sapphic, queer-in-general, books-that-made-me-sad, books-i-want-to-live-in, if-i-was-in-this-book-id-be-dead, books-i-actually-own, books-ive-read-with-covers-i-loved

Kiss me Gideon🫶
When I die bury me with this book
Before reading this I never thought I'd ever find a book that could be my absolute favourite, but now I've found it
This book has such a chokehold on me, I get so emotional when thinking about it it's kinda embarrassing
I know this book won't be for everybody, but please if you don't like it don't tell me because I want to live in a little bubble without criticism
This book is like crack I can't stop rereading it

Reasons why I LOVE this book
- THE CHAR Kiss me Gideon🫶
When I die bury me with this book
Before reading this I never thought I'd ever find a book that could be my absolute favourite, but now I've found it
This book has such a chokehold on me, I get so emotional when thinking about it it's kinda embarrassing
I know this book won't be for everybody, but please if you don't like it don't tell me because I want to live in a little bubble without criticism
This book is like crack I can't stop rereading it

Reasons why I LOVE this book
- THE CHARACTERS, they're so unique, and I get so attached to them, even the ones that appear for about 5 minutes before getting skewered or stabbed. I've fallen in love with literally every single character to exist in this book and it's becoming a problem
- The plot, even though everyone says it's really confusing, I wasn't actually that confused till we got the Nona The Ninth, or towards the end of Harrow The Ninth. Even so, that's not a bad thing, because now every time I reread this book I notice something new and everything starts to make sense and it makes me feel like I've got a super high IQ
- Of course I can't write a review without mentioning the cover. As a ginger I very much enjoy this cover and Gideon just looks so badass it's great
- I love the sapphic rep, because it's just sapphics existing (actually most of the time they're going through some crisis but that's not the point) and it's comforting to me that they aren't in relationships with other women for the most part, because it shows that you're still sapphic whether you're in a relationship or not. It's nice to see characters being queer but also being so much else and having so much depth to their character
- The balance between tragedy and humour, one page I'm genuinely giggling out loud because of Gideon's jokes and the next I'm hysterically crying because this book doesn't hold back

Anyway I'm literally begging you to read this book and the rest of the series, and if you're anything like me it will consume your life and all your thoughts until you end up not being able to do anything because your brain is fixated on Gideon Nav😍
(I'm failing my maths GCSE rn because I spend too long scrolling through Pinterest to find all the absolutely stunning tlt fanart instead of revising, but it's worth it) ...more

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