If Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil left you craving villains who weaponize redemption, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir turns necromantic betrayal into your new obsession.

If you devoured Schwab's unrepentant villains clawing toward redemption through blood-soaked ambition, Gideon the Ninth delivers that same intoxicating moral vertigo—razor-sharp necromancers locked in immortal power plays where loyalty is currency and betrayal is scripture. Muir's prose slices with poetic brutality, transforming skeletal armies and desperate vendettas into visceral art that refuses to flinch from the psychological wreckage of characters who've cheated death too many times. The queerness here isn't decoration; it's marrow-deep, fueling rivalries and desires that burn with the same authentic tension you craved in Schwab's outsider antiheroes.

This is world-building as philosophical warfare—death becomes negotiable, power demands sacrifice, and every twist unearths secrets that recontextualize everything you thought you understood. The emotional gut-punch lingers long after the final page.

If moral vertigo and skeletal armies sound like home, you're already late.