Okay, let’s get this out of the way. This is not that good. The opening chapters especially, and especially when you know what Muir is going to do with the rest of the series, read like a cookie-cutter template the publishers send to all their YA authors. Even once you get going, i did find myself grimacing ever chapter or so at a clunky expression or a weird paragraph construction. It needs an editor. Sometimes it simply needs another draft altogether. The pool scene? Sorry, i know why it’s necessary and i see the appeal but it’s too contrived and just feels wrong - i’ve read Harrow, i know she could’ve done it better.
My reference to a publisher’s template is not entirely ironic. i really do suspect that at some level, this was not actually the book Muir wanted to write. i’ve not managed to get around to reading Nona yet but Harrow, at least, is one hundred times more complex, at the level of structure, language, the whole works. It almost feels as if she, or somebody involved, knew the best way to get people to read her speculative post-Nabokovian epic about cannibalism was to market it as YA first. Which, fair play to them, it worked, right? But it does leave the impression that Gideon is essentially a vehicle to get you where Taz wants you, which is, emotionally invested enough to let her write half of book two in the second person.
All that said. Once you get going, it really is a very fun vehicle. At its core, it’s a detective story comprised of all hidden passageways,[1] mostly narrated by squabbling teenagers. Having bitched about the pool scene, the Harrow/Gideon relationship is actually beautifully subtle and well-executed, not exactly romantic but deeply fascinating - especially for the enthusiastic reader of Chris Chitty’s work on homosex as exposing the fault lines in interclass contact.[2] Theirs is an obsession driven by a basically feudal relationship, and one that was precisely designed to drive such an obsession. The conclusion to that (and i am trying to avoid big spoilers as much as i can) is deeply satisfying to read not so much as some perfect hetero-Christian romantic sacrifice, but simply as embracing the inevitable. “If the whole world’s gonna piss on me and say it’s raining I may as well get a hard on.”[3] It’s not so much beautiful as horrifying, but it’s perfect.
All of this is, of course, made better by having finally read Lolita between reads (this is my second go at Gideon). Whilst the real greasy details of hierarchised sexual power fantasy don’t get fully fleshed out (no pun intended) until later in the series, knowing that it’s coming does make the earlier details sing. i also think Nabokov’s influence helps to explain Taz’s distinctive tendency to drop random references to memes in the body of the text. Yeah, i know this is a Homestuck thing as well, but if you understand Nabokov’s intertextuality as essentially textual, about the play of language, formalist wordplay, rather than diagetic, presenting the reader with in-depth narrative or character parallels, the memes suddenly make a lot of sense as a device.
If hierarchised sexual obsession and rich linguistic depth is not enough for you, can i say again that it’s just fun? The duels are good enough as they are, but as you enter the book’s crescendo, where they are combined with many tentacled bone creatures, rains of broiling fat dripping from the ceiling, and life or death stakes, they really come into their own. i should read more silly action novels..
Anyway, i get why this isn’t for everyone. But i personally find it pretty hard to resist - which is, i guess, the point.
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[1] Here, i’m thinking of Ronald Knox’s ‘10 Commandments of Detective Fiction’ published in 1929, which postulate that there should be a maximum of one hidden passageway per story. They also say you should never feature ‘a Chinaman’. Apparently that one refers to how often detective fiction of the period featured a ‘sneaky’ orientalised Chinese character, rather than being pure racism. Either way, they’re sorta weird rules by today’s standards. Link
[2] Read more about Chitty here: link; or here: link.
[3] i will never miss an opportunity to recommend that people read Trans Fag Home Video: link.
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