Tamsyn Muir Books

Tamsyn Muir was a short-fiction writer from Auckland, New Zealand with a stack of award nominations to her name when Gideon the Ninth arrived in 2019 wearing its marketing hook like a leather jacket: lesbian necromancers explore a haunted palace in space. The book won the Locus Award for best first novel, was a Hugo and Nebula finalist, and became one of those rare releases that people physically press on strangers. Tor marketed it hard, but word of mouth did the heavy lifting, because there was, and still is, absolutely nothing else like it on any shelf.

The setup: Gideon Nav, a foul-mouthed orphan swordswoman, has spent her whole life trying to escape the Ninth House, a dying cult planet of bone magic and painted skulls. Her lifelong enemy is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Ninth's brilliant necromancer heir. When the undying Emperor invites each House to compete for ascension to immortal Lyctorhood, Harrow needs a cavalier, Gideon needs an exit, and the two of them travel to a decaying gothic mansion full of rival necromancers who begin, naturally, to die. It is a locked-room murder mystery, a swordplay showcase, and an enemies-to-something story so combustible that the fandom essentially runs on it. Gideon narrates in modern profanity and meme cadence from inside a deep-space gothic, a voice choice that delights most readers and genuinely repels some. You will know within a single chapter which camp you belong to.

Then the series gets strange. Harrow the Ninth (2020) rewires everything through an unreliable narrator whose memories contradict the first book, much of it in second person, and it is either the best or the most infuriating thing you will read that year, with opinions split right down the middle. Nona the Ninth (2022), originally the opening act of the finale that outgrew its container, follows a sweet amnesiac in a collapsing city, six months to live, surrounded by faces the reader knows and she does not. The concluding volume, Alecto the Ninth, has been delayed repeatedly and remains unreleased as of mid-2026, and the fandom has spent the wait theorizing with an intensity usually reserved for unaired television finales. A novella, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (2020), offers Muir in miniature: a fairy-tale skewering with teeth.

Spice level: 1 on our 0-5 scale, and even that is generous. The Locked Tomb runs on devotion, repression, and sacrifice rather than anything explicit; the phrase one flesh, one end carries more erotic charge than most authors manage in an entire open-door trilogy. This is yearning as a load-bearing wall.

Why romantasy readers should care: because underneath the bones and the jokes, these books are about love as annihilation, about what you owe the person who owns your soul, and Muir writes that with more feral commitment than almost anyone working in romance proper. Sapphic readers in particular have made Gideon and Harrow one of the cornerstone pairings of the decade. Honest warnings: the plots demand real attention, character names multiply alarmingly, rereads are practically mandatory and widely considered part of the fun, and anyone who needs a finished series before starting should weigh the Alecto wait honestly before committing. The fandom wiki is not cheating. It is infrastructure.

Start with Gideon the Ninth, obviously, and read in publication order; there is no other viable path through this series. Give it until the characters reach the First House before judging, keep the dramatis personae page bookmarked, and accept that confusion is a feature you are meant to be marinating in. When you finish Harrow the Ninth, you will either immediately reread it or throw it across the room. Either response is correct, and either way you will be standing in line for Alecto with the rest of us.