also absolutely hate when people say “this is set a million years from now and there’s still racism and homophobia? #problematic” and then you read it and it’s a scathing and concise yet meticulous examination of our current views on race and gender and sexuality. you don’t understand what the point of science fiction is. escapism is not the pinnacle of the written form that all genre fiction should aspire to. you’re annoying me
the fantastical setting allows for the writer to make our current day issues larger than life and therefore more easily examined and deconstructed. in genre fiction fantasy is often used as a microscope and through it we can try to better understand what’s gone so wrong with us in the modern day, we can try to point to the cancer in the cells. it’s natural to want to escape sometimes (i love a good romcom for example) but you do need to confront a mirror every once in a while. the solution to your pain is not to bury your head in squeecore. sorry i said squeecore
a specific detail i love in stories is when two characters who share a deep understanding of each other nevertheless only addresses each other by their title or last name, which somehow makes it even more intimate than if they were to just call each other by their first names. it’s about the veil of propriety, the false detachment and imposed distance, it’s about the restraint, the high esteem held in each other, the meeting-each-other-at-the-boundary-and-stop-before-crossing-it, making it even clearer they both KNOW where it is; all at once both full of yearning and of fond contentment
i could fix him. by dragging him through the endless path of pain and misery, so he understands what he’s done to others, feels genuinely fucking sorry, and spends the rest of his life trying to fix his wrongs
i wouldn’t fix HER though, enjoy your war crimes queen
hey, can we talk for a second? it’s about your girlfriend. yeah, she’s great. no, yeah, I agree. It’s just that… she seems really devoted to you? Like really devoted. Almost as if you were the sole, fragile line mooring her to the shores of humanity. No, that’s not romant—ugh. Listen. Me and the girls, we’re worried you might be the last good thing to happen to her and that were some tragedy to inevitably befall you, she would tear the gods from their thrones and dye the infinite western seas wine-dark with their ichor. Do you think you could introduce her to a new hobby or something? we don’t want to have to argue over what color “wine-dark” is supposed to be
“lesbian necromancers in space”: 5/10. technically true, except that gideon isn’t a necromancer and for the most part they aren’t in space. can also be tonally misleading; implies a fun space opera adventure and fails to mention the impending emotional devastation. that being said it is iconic and (mostly) effective
“murder mystery in a haunted gothic castle”: 8/10. MUCH better at capturing the tone and plot of the first book, but still a little off. imagine picking up the book because of this blurb and then watching gideon nav make a mean girls reference in the first 20 pages. the whiplash could kill you
“a locked tomb mystery”: 5/10. nondescriptive and a little misleading, but i can’t give this any lower than a 5 because the pun is very good. gideon would love this one and that should count for something
“gay goth among us”: 10/10. i’m not even going to pretend like this one doesn’t nail it. try and argue against this. you can’t. captures the murders, the space-y setting, the queer characters, the tone and aesthetic, AND the contemporary humor. chef’s kiss
“enemies to lovers ‘i hate everyone but you’ slow burn”: 1/10. true if you squint. the relationship between gideon and harrow would make booktok weep
“catholic homestuck”: 9/10. this means nothing and explains everything
this tweet by tamsyn muir:
[Image ID: A tweet by “tamsyn should be writing” @tazmuir: “sure, I edited from 12 o'clock to 4.30, but how much of that time did I spend on the discovery that the basis of my novel is 'what if these two were… teenage girls’”, followed by an image of Skeletor and He-Man. /end ID]
10/10. conveys the pop culture savvy of the series, the complex dynamic between the main characters, and the humor of the writing style all at once. also makes me laugh every time i think about it
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