It definitely feels unique among the books I've read, yeah. I liked it once I understood that it was supposed to be anachronistic and fun to read.
The hardest part about reading Gideon the Ninth for me was keeping track of all the settings (different room layouts, a big castle with winding hallways, etc.) and people (basically Hunger Games--style; 2 people from each of 9 sections of a nation). Maybe it would be more helpful for OP to start with something easier for these reasons.
Thank you, the 20 transcriptions allowed per month is more than enough for me. It is unfortunate that it's not open at all, but it is what it is, I suppose.
They're clickable, but they open up in a browser. To stay within your instance, you (a hypothetical Lemmy user) need an instance-agnostic link formatted like !community@[instance].
Fries aren't a vegetable though :(