Gideon the Ninth

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tamsyn Muir is an author to watch y’all.  If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be pining for the next book in a necromanc7 series I would have laughed in your face.  But with Gideon the Ninth Muir has set up a sprawling future universe that seems to be in decline.  It was totally different from anything I’ve read before, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the magic and mythology as the series progresses.  The book opens with Gideon locked in a power struggle with her childhood rival, but right when she thinks she’s finally won the game changes and their world expands. I really enjoyed reading a hotheaded, verging-on-dumbass teenage girl who’s most focused on how hot/kissable other characters are and how to best piss off her nemesis at any given moment.  This is a personality combination usually reserved for young men, so I found it odd at first but then refreshing.  (To be clear, she isn’t perving on everything that moves. No creepy vibes, just hormones and angst.)  

Despite the consistently high stakes Gideon still feels very young, which I appreciated in a genre plagued with teenage Chosen Ones who are a little too serious and emotionally mature for their age.  Her relative inexperience is played off against the rest of the cast once we meet them and get into the real political maneuvering.  All of the characters we meet have very well fleshed out personalities.  I occasionally struggled to keep up with who was who (virtually everyone has one of two titles for their respective Houses, and we meet 8 Houses at once) but I could usually click back in quickly thanks to the disparate temperaments.  It was impressive how clearly Muir was able to sketch out the motivations for each character even if they had comparatively little page time for her to work with.  

Considering how many people Muir was balancing, the pacing of the book was very well done.  My only real complaint was in the heavy-handed foreshadowing of the big reveal about an incident in Gideon and Harrow’s past.  It’s first mentioned right at the beginning and was referenced consistently until we finally got to learn the full story towards the end.  I don’t have a lot of patience for big reveals that don’t feel like they’re going to change anything.  As far as complaints go though I can admit it’s a petty one.

Overall Gideon the Ninth is a strong start to an ambitious series.  The genre-bending choices make it harder to predict where the plot is headed, and Muir had a solid balance of questions resolved in this vs questions left hanging to continue the series.  She did have a creative choice at the very end that I had strong thoughts about, but I won’t know if I love or hate it until I read the next book.  Instead I’ll just say that if every character I thought needed therapy actually got it, books would probably end up a lot less interesting then they are now.   As a last bonus I’ll add that there’s some good LGBT representation throughout.  Several of the characters are women who express interest for other women, although all of the romantic relationships in the book very much take a backseat to the political maneuvering. 

I paired this with the White Widow cocktail specifically because I wanted some bone-white drama in honor of the sheer number of skeletons in this book. This drink was so difficult. The one in the picture is my 5th or 6th attempt, and it was still just passable. I ended up reducing the lemon/lime juice slightly, and I’m either over or under shaking it…if I ever figure it out I’ll update. Also it was WAY harder to freehand a skull using gel food coloring than I thought it would be. Luckily the drink would frankly be much tastier skipping the melodrama in favor of a light dusting of cardamom. Good luck, and let me know if you try it! The actual flavor was adjacent to a creamy key lime pie with a hint of ginger and cardamom, so I would drink it again for sure.

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Ingredients

• 1.5 oz gin

• 1 oz heavy cream

• 1 oz coconut water

• .5 oz ginger cardamom syrup

• .5 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice

• .5 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

• 1 egg white

• black gel icing for garnish

Steps

1. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker but DON'T add ice.

2. Shake for literally as long as you can (at least 100 shakes), then add ice to the shaker and shake again, just until chilled.

3. Pour into a coupe or martini glass and watch in awe as an incredibly stable, tasty foam forms.

4.  You can stop there and get drinking, or be a Halloween hero and make a widow's web garnish.

5. Use a small black icing tube (the kind meant for lettering on cakes) to draw 4 concentric circles, then drag a toothpick through the icing in lines radiating outward from the center to make the spokes.

https://bestfriendsforfrosting.com/scary-good-cocktails-halloween/