I’ll be honest, I don’t even know how to summarize this book. I don’t even know how to review this book. All I know is that Gideon the Ninth may just be my favorite book in 2019, maybe ever since Strange the Dreamer. This book took me by complete surprise, especially as I was originally put off by the beginning few chapters.

This book kind of just drops you in this large, extensive world without a guide, and while I was originally quite lost, you very quickly learn to just go along with the characters and plot and trust the author to give you the pieces as you need them. Even after finishing I don’t have a clear picture of the world and how it’s set up, but I believe the intrigue is quite important to the story and how it will develop later on. There was also a lot of in depth necromancy talk, which was sometimes like reading a science textbook too high above your level, but it was understandable enough to get the story + it wasn’t necessary to fully get it either, as the character you’re following doesn’t get it all either.

The characters were also all quite well-rounded and haunting in how real they felt, you came to understand all of their motivations (even if you don’t agree with them all), and you come to feel for their pain and their mistakes. Almost every single character was explored and given an in depth background, meaning you were always aware of the people at play in scenes and situations. It all also tied well into their actions and emotions, making the story feel overall consistent. Our two main characters, Gideon and Harrowhark, also had such an interesting relationship, and the exploration of that alone made this book fantastic.

The prose, while being something to get used to, was also beautiful in a quite unique way. It was quite dense prose, describing almost everything and using long chains of large paragraphs and stretching sentences, but was constantly broken up by Gideon’s trademark sarcasm. While snarky and sarcastic characters are very quickly getting old, Gideon was her own brand of witty, and there were many serious moments made hilarious by a small snide comment on her end. It was just fantastic.

The plot was also fantastic, as it kept winding and twisting throughout the entire novel, never truly settling in any one place. It was a journey both for the characters and the reader, even as they stayed in one place. It was also just an extremely well-constructed plot, the answers to every question hidden in every part of the storyline. While some reveals were shocking, none were pulled from nothing and everything had more than enough build up and time to truly form. It was also just an extremely thrilling and gripping plot. From page 200 onwards I couldn’t stop reading, and I was on the literal edge of my seat at points, rushing through to see what would happen next.

Gideon the Ninth, while gruesome and full of skeletons and death and the ghosts of the past, was also just a beautiful book. It explored the relationships of the living through these ghosts and through death while also just constructing a lyrical and moving story. I couldn’t get enough of it, I still can’t, and I’m honestly debating reading it already.

I had high hopes for this one, because I always love queer contemporaries, but this just wasn't it.

The biggest thing for me was that it was just all, kind of, boring? Not much happened, and there was never much to get me into the book itself. It was largely about dealing with the past, and while books like that can be very good, this one still had so many scenes going on in the present as well, except they never really led to anything at all. There was just, not much, which feels odd considering how many emotional/relationship plot lines were actually being juggled all at once.

I also just, ended up really disliking, or well despising, Maia. It's honestly really hard to get me to dislike a narrator in a book, because I usually find myself understanding them on some level, but I just couldn't handle her. She's actually just a pathological liar, and couldn't tell the truth ever, basically, but when this is brought up in the book, it's just a quick drop of it and then the story moves on? Like please, get help??? I also just wasn't just finding her compelling, even before I started disliking her, and found her sections the most bothersome to get through, even though I liked her audiobook narrator.

I don't feel like I can really speak on the trans rep, but overall, I don't know how well this was done overall. I've seen many complaints in other reviews, and there were definitely so many triggering scenes that could have been done better/less graphically. There were also many things I wish could've been expanded on more, especially when it came to Chris's relationships with his mom and Mai. It was an almost 400-page book, where not much really happened, and yet this all still managed to feel glossed over? This aspect of the book was definitely what made me request this book in the first place, so I was frustrated with how it overall was handled.

Overall, this really just wasn't the book for me, and I do wish I had DNFed when I first realized, instead of spending the rest of my afternoon finishing it.

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I honestly had really high hopes for this one, because what’s not to love about a queer The Great Gatsby remix? It had all the components of something I should adore: references to a classic that was the beginning of my literature degree, a massive queer cast, and a writing style that kept my eyes glued to the page. However, I was expecting something closer to a retelling, and maybe that’s on me. This is my first of the classic remixes line, and I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to how close this book would stick to the original.

I think I would’ve enjoyed this book a lot more had it not been carrying the expectations of a Gatsby retelling. It easily could’ve been a book set in the same time period, with different character names and some other small changes to fully deviate it from Gatsby, and I think I would’ve loved this. Instead, it’s deviations from the original book seemed to hurt it, as I found myself constantly comparing the two. While I adored the massive queer cast, I disliked the plot changes made, and this is especially true for the final few chapters of the book. It almost seemed to make the book too simple or easily resolved, and just didn’t match the feelings that Gatsby brought in me.

My biggest frustration, though, was the jarring contrast between what the characters were doing and their actual age. Now, I haven’t closely studied this time period of American history necessarily, so maybe it was perfectly normal for teenagers to be doing all of this. But it was just hard to stay fully inside the story whenever we were reminded of just how young these characters actually were. It didn’t make any sense to me, and just served to take me out of the book at moments.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, but I don’t know if it ended up making an impression on me, or at least not a particularly positive one. It did, however, convince me to read more of this author’s work, which I’ve been meaning to do! I did really enjoy the writing style and how easily I was able to stay in the story. And overall, I did like what this book tried to do, even if it didn’t entirely work for me. I definitely want to try more of these remixes, but now with slightly different expectations going into them.

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

Winter’s Orbit was not on my radar at all until I heard it was going to be the Illumicrate pick about a year back, and I ended up requesting an ARC and absolutely adoring it. When I heard there was going to be a new book in the universe, I was ecstatic. Not only did I just love the characters and their relationship in Winter’s Orbit with my whole heart, the setting, and world was so incredibly interesting that I was excited to dive back in more and find out more.

I think it was an excellent idea to set this book in a different part of the world. It meant I didn’t have to struggle to remember too much from Winter’s Orbit (it has been a while, after all!), and it gave a new perspective on the same universe. It also means that this book can easily be read without having read Winter’s Orbit, which is always great in series like these. It means you can start wherever interests you most, and go further from there!

For those that have read Winter’s Orbit, I feel like I can safely say you will enjoy this one as well, even if this is definitely not just Winter’s Orbit 2.0. Tennal and Surit are very different from Kiem and Jainan (though there are some parallels that can be drawn between the characters + relationship dynamic!), but I found myself adoring them just as quickly. There’s also less romance in a sense, though the amount of pining more than makes up for it. Just everything about the characters and the way they interact is amazing, especially the banter.

I also really liked the plot in this book, and overall it feels a bit more memorable and important than the plot of Winter’s Orbit, as it seems to bring more of the universe and it’s workings into it, rather than an internal political plot. It also meant that we actually got a lot of new information about the world in this book, and I sincerely hope we get more books in this universe, so I can keep learning more. I also found the ‘magic’, or talents in humans that resulted from experimentation, especially interesting, and I feel like it added an extra layer of depth to the plot, the world, and the relationship between Tennal and Surit.

Overall, this book solidified my love of Maxwell’s writing and character building, and I cannot wait to see what she writes next!

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

I love that we’re getting more and more queer YA fiction with each passing year, but it does mean a few slip through the cracks when it comes to me learning about them. This was one of them, and it wasn’t even on my radar until I got an email inviting me to read an early copy. I’m honestly so glad for it, because I really ended up enjoying this.

This book was soft and sweet and so full of queer joy, even alongside the pain and hardship that often comes with belonging to a marginalized community. This is most present in Miles’ piano playing, where so much of it is centered in finding who he is and what music he wants to play, and how much joy can come from playing music that means something to you while fully being yourself. It led to some really beautiful moments, and I loved how his music blended with some other plots in the story.

I also really enjoyed how this book looked at Miles’ parents, and the parents of some of his queer friends, and seemed to show a range of varying levels of acceptance. Miles especially struggled with his parents, but in entirely different ways. It was interesting to see and led to some heartfelt moments at the end, and honestly some of these final scenes had me in tears.

This book also had a few plot lines that I almost always dislike, and I was worried when I first saw them appearing in this book. While I’m still not overall a fan, and it made me quite anxious at certain points, I do love the perspective that these plot lines brought to the story. It forced us to look at and analyze certain things about being queer/coming out that not many LGBTQ+ stories necessarily touch on, at least not to this extent. It made this book stand out a bit more for me, and I love that we’re getting more and more LGBTQ+ characters that sometimes make mistakes and make the wrong decisions, but grow from them and try to fix them.

Overall, this book was exactly what I wanted it to be, and what I needed right now. It was amazing, and a fantastic break from some of the heavier, more intense books I’ve been reading!