Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Check out the review of Gideon the Ninth.

Review Part One

Originally published on March 10th, 2021 on Instagram.

After completing the Lyctor trials in Gideon the Ninth (spoiler line of which you have now officially crossed), Harrow is, along with the rest of the Lyctors, taken by the Emperor to a secret space station on the other side of the universe, where they prepare for the attack of the ghost of one of the planets that were killed ten thousand years ago during the Resurrection (very necromantic).

Welcome to my thoughts on Harrow the Ninth, or as I like to call it: Meet the Lyctors™.

Now, you would expect someone who has been around for the last ten thousand years to be pretty chill. The whole wisdom of the ages thing and whatnot.

But these guys are not chill. In fact, we can do a little thought experiment to illustrate just how un-chill these guys are: Take all the paranoid, pubescent, and all-powerful pricks that we met in the first book, and give them some ten thousand years and the entire universe to run around and do even more stupid and evil shit that will (in some cases quite literally) haunt them for the rest of their never-ending lives. Congratulations, you now have the Saints of the Emperor, his hands and gestures, the Lyctors.

The thing I love about the Lyctors is how (despite being a myriad old) human they are. They act all high and mighty, but each of them has their own little quirks and issues, and they all have their heads stuck inside their own asses (although this might be true of all of Muir's characters in general).

In their first scene together, they're at Cytherea's wake, this once-in-a-decade big family reunion, and like every other family, it takes them all but five minutes to start bickering and hissing at each other over some tiny thing from (thousands of) years ago. It made me feel right at home with them and with this book.

Review Part Two

Originally published on March 12th, 2021 on Instagram.

Despite learning in the last couple of pages of Gideon the Ninth (spoiler line of which you are now officially crossing) that Harrow has successfully completed the Lyctor trials, here we find out that there is something seriously wrong with her (spoilers done, I think... idk, you should still be careful reading these).

The elephant in the room when it comes to Harrow the Ninth is the bold choice by the author to write a large chunk of the book in the second-person point of view, and I've got to be honest, I was afraid it was going to make reading the book much less enjoyable for me. But, once I got through the first twenty pages or so, the yous faded into the background and I was able to fully enjoy it.

The choice, quite obviously, has everything to do with the plot (the first book was written in the third-person point of view).

You see, Harrow the Ninth is a huge mystery, and Tamsyn is very clever with her mysteries. In Gideon, it felt like we were fed small reveals every couple of pages. In Harrow, Tamsyn took a fundamentally different approach. This is appropriate, seeing that this is a fundamentally different book than Gideon the Ninth and changes many of the familiar things (while still giving so much fan service to the fans of the first book).

In short, Tamsyn alleviates the pain of waiting too long for answers simply by making the answers obvious. No, really. I can't imagine anyone not knowing exactly what is going on after reading the first fifty to a hundred pages of this book. You'll be sitting there all smug (as you should be), thinking about how clever you are and all, which is exactly the kind of attitude that will make you lower your guard and allow Tamsyn to sneak one (or several ones) right past you and ask you, also quite smugly: You didn't really think the reveal would be the reveal, did you?