Books like Gideon the Ninth
—because what makes Gideon unforgettable is not simply necromancers in space, but the collision of macabre invention, insolent humor, intricate mysteries, and feelings sharp enough to slip through the armor. These three novels pull off similarly dangerous combinations.
If you liked Gideon the Ninth, you’ll love these
Not lookalikes — kindred books. Each one shares something essential with Gideon the Ninth, and we tell you exactly what.
Carolyn and her adopted siblings were raised by a terrifying, possibly divine man called Father, each assigned a different branch of his secret knowledge. Now Father is missing, the Library is inaccessible, and family rivalries are turning apocalyptic.
Like Gideon the Ninth, this cult favorite keeps forcing you to revise what kind of book you think you are reading. It is a murder mystery, cosmic horror story, vicious family comedy, and metaphysical puzzle box, often within the same chapter. Hawkins makes grotesque violence startlingly funny without neutralizing its horror, while seemingly throwaway oddities click into an audacious design. Few novels make omnipotence feel this strange—or damaged people this painfully human.
Lanie Stones is a necromancer born into an illustrious family of assassins—and she is violently allergic to violence. That contradiction gives this novel its wonderfully peculiar pulse: death magic full of grisly specificity, a heroine whose kindness is hard-won strength, and a treacherous household where love and danger are hopelessly entangled.
Cooney’s language is more fairy-tale baroque than Gideon’s contemporary snark, but it has the same delight in audacious names, morbid jokes, footnotes, and sentences that show off because they can. Beneath the exuberance lies a tender queer story about surviving the roles your family wrote for you. Its World Fantasy Award for Best Novel recognized what devoted readers already knew: this is not merely charming gothic fantasy, but a lavish, singular book with an enormous heart beating under all the bones.
Captain Kel Cheris must share her consciousness with the preserved mind of Shuos Jedao, a brilliant military strategist and notorious mass murderer. Their uneasy partnership powers a space opera built from impossible tactics, weaponized mathematics, political cruelty, and the unnerving question of who is using whom.
The kinship with Gideon lies in the dangerous intimacy: two fiercely intelligent personalities trapped together, trading barbs while trust becomes both indispensable and potentially catastrophic. Lee expects readers to enter an alien system without hand-holding, then rewards attention as its logic emerges. A Hugo finalist and the opening of the Machineries of Empire trilogy, Ninefox Gambit has earned lasting admiration for making cerebral science fiction feel feverish, queer, and emotionally volatile. If you loved discovering that Muir’s jokes were concealing a far more intricate machine, this machine is waiting.