On Supernatural Underground Now: Worldbuilding in Fantasy #6 — “Gideon the Ninth” by Tamsyn Muir
This year on Supernatural Underground I’m celebrating the wide, wild, and wondrous worlds—and worldbuilding skill—of Fantasy literature. Why? Because worldbuilding, imho, is the vital glue that binds the different strands of the genre together: that’s why!
And also because, quite simply, fantasy worldbuilding is So Much FUN. 😀
This month, I’m featuring a very new Fantasy world, but one that’s already generating a lot of positive attention, with Award-nominations galore. Including, as I announced here on Monday, the Locus Award 2020 for First Novel.
Awesome, huh?! And it’s by a homegrown author — yep, I’m talking about Gideon the Ninth by New Zealand writer, Tamsyn Muir.
Year of Worldbuilding in Fantasy #6 — “Gideon the Ninth” by Tamsyn Muir
To give you the flavour, this is space fantasy with a pervading atmosphere of shadow and decay, along with plenty of necromancers & skeletons, duels and dungeon crawls and sorcerous rivalry, as well as featuring a lesbian love triangle at its heart.
#YoW YearOfWorldbuilding #WiF WorldbuildingInFantasy
I finished reading Gideon the Ninth last week and it is really good. It is a very fine first book. I also found it a very compelling “who did it” mystery.
Do not be put off by the cover. The final quarter of the book was mildly horror in places and it does have horror elements, but it is not a horror genre book. Despite the opening pages, there is also very little sexual content in the book.
Book 2 – Harrow the Ninth. There is a very decent size free preview to download here from the publisher if anyone wants it.
https://publishing.tor.com/harrowtheninthactone-tamsynmuir/9781250774385/
Thanks for that feedback, June, and the link to the HARROW teaser. I’m glad you liked GIDEON, too. 🙂