Perhaps the funniest thing about reading Gideon the Ninth for the first time was, for me, you start it up and you're like: Wow these guys are in a weird fucking bone cult. They're on like fantasy Pluto and they're obsessed with bones.
And then you get used to them. You go yeah they're obsessed with bones but it's like literally normal. Every culture can have things that seem strange, even unsettling to outsiders, but is actually totally benign, and here's it's bones. It's literally superficial. People die and they reuse their skeletons and it's just recycling.
And then you get to Canaan House and you realise. No one else in this world is like this. It's literally just them.
And to the other Houses you're like, guys, chill. They're literally just wearing skull make-up, stop being rude.
And then casually like 3/4s through the book Gideon casually mentions that everyone in the Ninth house bathes using soap made from human flesh and you go. Ah.
