July was a very busy month – I was travelling most of it, first to Iceland (thanks for letting me stay with you Beth!) and then to Belgium and the Netherlands. This was also a very stressful month for many other reasons so I didn’t have much time to read at all. Whenever I get very stressed I go to the mind-numbing pleasure of crocheting instead. Here I’m including the two books that kept me company during that time (even though I technically finished them both in early August).

Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir

The moment I learned that this book was a bout lesbian necromancers in space I had to read it. This is a good example of how you can make any idea work if you are a skilful writer. I’ll be definitely using it as an example to encourage my students to think out of the box when they write horror and SFF – they don’t need to write carbon copies of well-known books like The Lord of the Rings or It by Stephen King, there’s so much potential within these genres to let our imagination run wild and write about whatever takes your fancy.

Because this book works. Oh, yes it does. It’s a dark, necromantic, nerdy Hunger Games of sorts with a narrator I adored from the first page (because she’s so wonderfully extra, so confident, such an optimistic) and many other characters that you won’t forget.

In the myriad year of our lord – the ten thousand year of the King Undiying, the kindly Prince of Death! – Gideon the Nav packed her sword, her shoes and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth. 

Tasmyn Muir

The horror starts somehow comedic (we begin the story on funerary planet, The Locked Tomb or Ninth House, inhabited by cadaveric necromancers and a bunch of decrepit nuns) but the horror dials up as the book advances – there are plenty of genuinely terrifying, violent scenes. 

The book follows the story of Gideon, a young woman with a talent for the sword and a liking of dirty lesbian magazines who is ready to live the Ninth House, the planet where she was brought up as an orphan. Her plans go awry when she’s forced to become cavalier for the Ninth Houses’ leader, seventeen-year-old Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Now, I loved Gideon, because how could you not, but I also loved, loved Harrowharth. She was moody, she was evil and sassy and powerful and a pain in the ass. The way these characters evolved through the book was fantastic – and their love-hate relationship hilarious and tender.

The lady of the Ninth House stood before the drillshaft, wearing black and sneering. The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering. It comprised 100 percent of her personality. Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe seventeen years and wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance. 

Tasmyn Muir

The book’s main action is set in the House of Canaan, a temple of sorts in the First House, where representatives from all the other Houses (there are nine in total) have been called to compete amongst themselves and see who will become a new lyctor to the Emperor. This is were the Hunger Games-esque part starts, although I’ll say is much slower in terms of tension built-up and violence. At the beginning I must confess I got a bit lost with all the names as we have a necromancer and a cavalier for each different house. I mean, some of them were a bit too similar – for example, I kept confusing Palamedes with Protesilaus, Camilla with Colum… Thank the (necromantic) gods the book had a character cast list at the beginning.

But, but. Learning the characters’ names pays off and by the last third you already know everyone, you know them well, and you root for your favourites.

With Harrow there, suddenly it was easy, and her horror of the monster turned to the ferocious joy of vengeance. Long years of warfare meant that they each knew exactly where the other would stand – every arc of a sword, every jostling scapula. No hole in the other’s defences went unshielded. They had never fought together before, but they had always fought, and they could work in and around each other without a second’s thought.

Tasman Muir

The last third is also when a lot of plot twists are revealed and I enjoyed them because they surprised me and made the story richer. Since this is a series, the ending is of course open, so I’ll be reading the second instalment as soon as I’m able to and I can only hope it’s as good as the first one.

The lore of the book is superb, although I was slightly put off by all the Biblical references, I don’t know exactly why, it’s just that the religion and the inherent queerness in this book didn’t seem to match? Although maybe that was the point all along?

This is one of the best horror fantasy books I have read in a long time. Also, Tasmyn Muir said in this interview that Swordspoint is one of her favourite novels of all times – which made me so happy, because it’s mine too – I can actually see some parallelisms between Gideon the Ninth and Ellen Kushner’s work, which I think is delightful.

Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

A friend from my queer book club recommended this book when I mentioned that I enjoyed reading about realistic lesbian sex scenes in One Last Stop. She said this book was an underrated gem, and that I wasn’t going to believe it had been written and published in the seventies.

My library had it (yes, I love libraries) so I dived in straight away. This is a semi-biographical story narrated from the point of view of its main character, Molly, who at the start of the book is only seven years old. She’s the adopted daughter of a working-class couple living in 1950’s Pennsylvania, Carl and Carrie, and she’s smart and confident, never letting anyone tell her what to do. She likes running along with boys instead of playing dolls with girls (to the dismay of Carrie, who wants her to be more lady-like) and when she falls in love with her classmate Leota she embraces the feeling and goes for it, no shame, no second thoughts.

I began to wonder if girls could marry girls, because I was sure I wanted to marry Leota and look in her green eyes forever. But I would only marry her if I didn’t have to do the housework. I was certain of that. But if Leota really didn’t want to do it either, I guessed I’d do it. I’d do anything for Leota.

Rita Mae Brown

From them on, the novel follows Molly sexual and romantic encounters. She lives in a society that is highly gendered and homophobic and yet she never feels shame about being who she is. She has relationships with both women and men (although at different parts of the book she says she prefers women) and behaves however she likes (not paying much attention when people complain she is too ‘masculine’). In a way, and even though the book never addresses this specifically, Molly is enacting a certain gender fluidity. Her confidence is both admirable and inspiring.

“‘Oh great, you too. So now I wear this label ‘Queer’ emblazoned across my chest. Or I could always carve a scarlet ‘L’ on my forehead. Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don’t even know if I’m white. I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?'”

Rita Mae Brown

One of the most heart wrenching moments of the novel is (spoiler alert) when Molly is forced to leave the University of Florida the moment it’s discovered that she’s in a romantic relationship with her roommate, Faye. Up until this point Molly has focused on school as a way to escape the poverty of her upbringing. All she wants in life is to become a film writer and director. All this dreams are shattered the moment she loses her university scholarship because of ‘moral’ reasons. It’s terrible to believe this could happen in the 1960s in the States – and it could even happen in some places in this country even today. But, true to her character, Molly refuses to bend down and after being forced to spend a few days in a psychiatric because of her ‘deviation’ she leaves, and from then on the harshest time of her life starts as she moves to New York homeless, still following her dreams.

Eventually Molly will find a life for herself in New York and also new love interests. There’s lots of sex in this novel, mostly lesbian sex, and it’s mostly romantic, and hilarious, and exciting. It’s so good to read the coming-of-age novel of a queer woman which celebrates sex with abandon.

This is also a book about family and how sometimes we need to break free from our own family to be who we are. Molly’s relationship with her adoptive parents is interesting – her father Carl is supportive (cheering her up as she decides to go to university, which wasn’t all that common for a young woman at that time) but he’s barely at the house because he has to spend all of his time working. Carrie is critical and often cruel against Molly (going as far as to call her a bastard when she misbehaves a a child). Yet one of the most moving scenes in the book is when Molly goes back to see Carrie in Florida. At this point, Molly is a bright young woman who, against all odds, has managed to make a living in New York and is now finishing her film degree in NYU. As part of her final assignment, she decides to record a documentary and Carrie is one of the people she interviews. Their rencounter is bitter but also tender.

Yes, my friend was right, I can’t quite believe this book was published in 1973. It should be in the reading list of any queer fiction module. No, it should be on the reading list of any novel module, as it’s a great example of a coming-of-age, autofiction plot. Definitely a classic. (And if you are intrigued about the title, as I was, yes, there is an explanation for it later on in the novel).