At the conclusion of last year’s gruesomely fun Gideon the Ninth, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House…
[Warning: This review contains SPOILERS for both Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth.]
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At the conclusion of last year’s gruesomely fun Gideon the Ninth, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House achieved victory over death and became one of the Emperor’s Lyctors at immense personal cost. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that those murderous trials were just the beginning. After being rescued from Canaan House by the Emperor’s shuttle, Harrow finds herself ensconced on God’s space station: another set of claustrophobic quarters full of dangerous companions. As an unwinnable war against the ghosts of dead planets bears down on her, she must fend off attempted murders, struggle against the betrayals of her own mind, and attempt to determine why her Lyctorhood doesn’t—quite—work right.
Before she dies a much more permanent death, and the Nine Houses with her.
Second books are tricky: a universally acknowledged truth. “Middle books” in trilogies are even more notoriously wonky—issues of pacing, development, and coherence tend to run rampant. I’m gentle with middle books, I’m gentle with second books. But as it turns out, I had no reason to soften my expectations for Harrow the Ninth, because Muir smashes through them with seemingly-effortless, somewhat deranged intensity. The flap copy calls it “a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem,” and I couldn’t say it better myself. Harrow the Ninth works as an independent novel with a provocative, break-neck plot, but it also serves well as the gripping, rising-action-middle of a larger narrative.
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Harrow the Ninth
By layering mysteries on top of mysteries on top of immediate threats of violence, all trapped within the contained space of the Mithraeum, Muir drags the reader along at a constant what next, what next? pace. The chapter subheadings alone set up a great deal of tension—for example, the prologue is labelled “The Night Before the Emperor’s Murder.” Well, okay: how’d we get to that? Then the start of the first chapter (fourteen months before the Emperor’s murder) drives the nail home, because Harrow remembers assigning Ortus to be her cavalier on the trip to Canaan House.
Someone important is, we come to realize, missing from the narrative.
The structure of this novel and its central conceit make it literally impossible to discuss without SPOILERS. UNAVOIDABLE SPOILERS FOLLOW. I experienced a moment of consternation, as I write critical essays with spoilers generally, but try to hold some stuff back. That is not going to be the case, here, you’ve been warned.
Because the plot has multiple layers and all of them are fucking awesome. At the height of the twisty-turny-complicated ending I did need a second read to ensure I’d grasped the machinations and revelations… but they’re foreshadowed so thoroughly in the first book and throughout Harrow that, once I had the clues on lock, I wanted to do a slow-clap. Even small moments matter. A childhood fight between Gideon and Harrow led to the opening of the unopenable tomb—because it turns out that Gideon is the Emperor Undying’s genetic kid, thanks to a long-game assassination plot from his remaining Saints involving his semen extracted in a drunk immortal threesome, the Commander of the Blood of Eden armies, and a lost baby with golden eyes. Which led ultimately to Gideon’s blood under Harrow’s nails when she flees to the tomb to commit necromantic-magic-suicide. The tomb which apparently contains John the Emperor Undying’s cavalier in stasis? Oops.
And that’s just the large-scale, series plot. The actual central mystery of this book, why Harrow remembers everything that happened in the prior novel as involving Ortus, with Gideon forgotten and Harrow mad as a hatter, is deliciously convoluted. She wrote herself a set of letters, had Ianthe help her give herself brain surgery, and rewrote her memories to keep from digesting Gideon’s soul into her own—and that’s why she’s a shit Lyctor. But as it turns out, when we meet Original Gideon, perhaps there’s a way for them to coexist in the same body… except we’re not sure about how, either. Can’t wait to see where all that goes, frankly. For all the questions answered in Harrow, more and weirder questions—about the world, the Emperor, necromancy, and our protagonists—are proposed.
One reason the Locked Tomb books rocketed up to favorite-status for me is Muir’s ability to combine a wild pace and gonzo, almost-pulp sensibility with a seriously precise attention to detail on a prose level. These books are goofy, grim, and fun; they’re also deliberate, purposeful, and clever as hell. Muir hands us the clues we need from the first page, at the dramatis personae list with its typographical hints (‘Ortus’ in a different font, Harrow’s cavalier line blocked out). Another significant clue is that the narrator uses second person until Gideon emerges from her brain-box and shifts to the first person. On a second look, the reader might note the occasional crass phrases slipping through that are very Gideon and not very Harrow.
Harrow the Ninth also returns to the thematic center that I adored with Gideon: these young women might be absolute monsters to one another, but their circumstances shaped them into the kind of people capable of that violence. Muir doesn’t retreat from writing problematic queer women, and I use that word on purpose. While there’s an amount of policing and purity-harping present in a lot of online spaces for queer content, lesbian or f/f works tend to bear a heavier brunt—and all we have left that’s ‘okay’ to read and write is soft, fluff, no-conflict, no-trauma content. It brings me, as a grown adult, immense pleasure to read novels that deal seriously with questions of trauma, brutality, and how people work on their relationships when they, themselves, kind of suck as people.
There are a handful of lines near the end of the novel that emphasize this point, which I highlighted and underlined, that begin with the phrase: “The problem was that she had never been a child.” Both Gideon and Harrow had to grow up fast, becoming women as kids under the intense crucible of violence and pressure they lived in, and in so doing demolished each other over and over again. That matters, and it informs their whole relationship, but it’s also not entirely their fault. What matters is where they grow from there. Love that as a thematic argument.
On a lighter note, speaking of queer aggression and humor, Ianthe is a horrible delight. Her attraction to Harrow, despite knowing it will come to nothing, is really something. The interactions between her and Gideon-in-Harrow’s-body are some of the funniest moments in the novel, with a special nod to the fisting joke, thank you, Tamsyn Muir. Harrow the Ninth stays funny in a ‘laughing at the end of the world’ kind of way. Plus, a lot of referential internet humor that I actually suspect is narratively important (is this set 10,000 years in the future from now?). Oh, and then there’s the alternate-universe mind bubble Harrow has created for herself, what a genius, that cycles through a handful of fanfiction trope universes before solidifying. Gay brilliance, all of it.
I’ve restrained myself from speaking at length about the genetic inheritances (hah!) of the Locked Tomb books so far, but I adore when I can trace inspirations and sly nods to other material. Needs must be said: the Homestuck of it all is a winking ghost haunting Harrow the Ninth. The playful nods are many—the style of humor; the fleshy, grim, horny weirdness of bodies and violence; the fuckery with genetics, timelines, alternate universes; the “Saint of…” construction. It’s utterly different in the Locked Tomb series, of course. But as a fan of, well, fanfiction and Homestuck and the bizarro internet I too grew up on… these novels smack a whole lot of personal fun-buttons on top of how absolutely excellent they are on their own terms. (The barista meet-cute AU reference made me groan-laugh so hard.)
Harrow the Ninth is, without a doubt, a powerhouse second book both for Muir and for the Locked Tomb series as a whole. Rather than crumbling under the pressure of the debut, this book doubles down on structural cleverness and total commitment to its (sexy, weird) necromantic aesthetic. I read the damn thing in almost one sitting, then read it again. And in pandemic-hell, reading one book a single time has presented a challenge. To have the desire to immediately re-read is the highest praise I can possibly offer. Harrow has the frenetic energy and grim humor I need at the moment—it’s gay, it’s rambunctiously violent, and it’s got a real heart beating under all of that.
And that last chapter, y’all. The last chapter, again. What’s next?
Harrow the Ninth is available from Tordotcom Publishing.
Lee Mandelo is a writer, critic, and editor whose primary fields of interest are speculative fiction and queer literature, especially when the two coincide. They have two books out, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction and We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-telling, and in the past have edited for publications like Strange Horizons Magazine. Other work has been featured in magazines such as Stone Telling, Clarkesworld, Apex, and Ideomancer.
Thanks for that first paragraph. Guess I don’t need to read it now.
Reading this now. I’m actually glad for the spoilers in the review as it gives the proceedings some much needed context. Gideon missing may be part of the plot, but in the early going, at least for me, it hurts the book.
Harrow’s consciousness may be fractured, but it’s a bit headache inducing to try to follow the shifts. Not really a fan of shattered, disorienting perspectives. This may coalesce later, but for right now, I need an aspirin… No wonder Harrow vomits so often.
I love Gideon! I love Harrow! BUT I GOTTA KNOW MORE!!! >:0 the third book can’t get here soon enough!
PS: For some book-inspired tunes, try “Ashes, Ashes” by Royal Canoe (my pick) and “Baby Don’t Sleep” by clipping (my roomate’s pick).
@1 – While the paragraph spoils a major plot point, it definitely doesn’t spoil the book. The characters, plot, and setting are great fun even re-reading and knowing everything. If you haven’t read it, consider doing so even with the foreknowledge. The journey vs. the destination, etc.
@brit-mandelo – Thanks for the review. I just finished Harrow last night and am giddy. I didn’t really start to warm up to it until I realized how head-on the book deals with grief and absence, and then Act V came along and paid off all the twists and turns and mysteries, and asked a whole bunch of new questions, and damn you Tamsyn for toying with our hearts this way.
And also, God makes a Dad joke!
I’m about 160 pages in. I hope my toil so far has a pay-off (re the plot)
Can someone explain the Great Locked Tomb Factfinding Conspiracy to me?
They wanted to break into Alecto’s tomb to discover… what? The context makes it sound like it’s about the eyeball switcheroo, except that they already know Alecto has yellow eyes. I assume they would have noticed if Emps and AL changed their eye color, so the lyctoring must have happened before they met either of them. (Admittedly the general Resurrection-adjacent timeline is… confusing. I’m hoping this is because we don’t know enough yet and not because I’m just clueless). Were they just trying to get a genetic sample? But they already had a, ahem, genetic sample from John, they could have tested the eye genes from him. Certainly would have been easier than a complicated plot involving rebel commanders and sacrificed babies.
My thoughts on the book as a whole is that it Needs More Gideon. Harrow was an interesting character, to be sure, but it never really took off for me until Griddle took the wheel.
My thoughts on one very specific part: the timing and context of The Dad Joke was so throughly awful it came all the way back around to comedy genius.
It is a book that has to be read twice to make sense; almost every page doesn’t reveal its meaning till later, when we — and Harrow — are in possesion of new information.
Incredibly brave of Muir, as a writer, to trust her audience and do this.
It is brilliant. Exuberant, funny, deeply structured, at several scales, from sentence up. And with real emotional weight, it is not pointless linguistic pyrotechincs and video game horror. Though it has all of that, and visceral body horror.
Also a scathing take down of our dystopian tech bro entrepeneurs, and their wet dreams of transcendence.
@7.Anon: ” a scathing take down of our dystopian tech bro entrepeneurs”
Ironic then that she’s working in video game writing these days?
“One reason the Locked Tomb books rocketed up to favorite-status for me is Muir’s ability to combine a wild pace and gonzo, almost-pulp sensibility with a seriously precise attention to detail on a prose level.”
This is perhaps the most perfect assessment of why this series works. Muir’s prose is beyond excellent!
Yes, yes, the book is wonderful and convoluted and well-written and clever and all (and in my haste to finish it I overlooked a crucial point about how Harrow was able to open the Locked Tomb, so I’m glad to have it pointed out) … but I would like to direct your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the phrase of Harrow looking like a “sacrificial parsnip” in her Lyctoral robes.
SACRIFICIAL PARSNIP.
I giggled like an idiot for ten solid minutes.
This is definitely a book that’s going to require a second reading for me to have a better idea of what’s going on. I also found it quite a different read to the first one, I think mostly due to the differences between being in Gideon’s irreverent head, to now being in Harrow’s fairly damaged brain.
There’s no universe in which I don’t pick up the third book.
#8 — it would be ironic if she was working for Thiel, Bezos, Musk, etc….
The makers of games are the tolerated middle class, the salarymen, precarious middleclass.
They do have influence, with a 10-20 year delay, when the imbibers/consumers of their dreams and stories become the next generations workers drones and queens. When their audience ‘grows up’.
They’re not the ones acting out wet dreams of transcendence and unable to recognise others as human, ‘like them’,
So not ironic. Perhaps just a change in distribution media, from teaching in classrooms, to telling stories in text and phone.
@6
We don’t know their precise motivations. But it seems likely that they saw this as the easiest way to kill God, per the context we get from the Ninth House liturgy.
@6 to find out if the Emperor really killed Alecto as he promised them he did. If she was not dead, then his betrayal of them would be confirmed and they would kill him.
Ah, thanks. That makes more sense.
@6 @14 @15
Agree with 14/15 on this… that’s why what’s in the tomb would be the death of the emperor and he fought it once but could not fight it again because the Lyctors would know the truth and come after him
I would like to state here that I also have a massive case of Nonagesimitis.
*insert black hearts and skulls*
(SPOILERS) @Sunspear (2nd comment) You really nailed it! I spent the first 350 pages craving for Gideon to appear, while puzzling over what was going on with the narrative. I spent the next 100 pages believing the fog was lifting, only to discover that in the last 50 pages of expository writing, I was way off. The hints and clues scattered throughout were not enough to give me that craved for “Aha!” moment; but instead the reveals left me feeling slightly strung-along. 90% of the book was Harrow living in a miasma of convoluted half-awake confusion, while the last 10% was Tasmyn Muir saying, “Oh if you must know, the characters are all someone else, there’s a 20 year massively complicated plot to kill someone you don’t know, Gideon is God’s daughter, Harrow lives in a mind bubble, and is being haunted, the villain in the orange suit is also someone you don’t know, friend-ghosts have been helping, the Emperor is an asshole, but we’re not sure why, but he’s also nice, and he’s the center of the universe, sort of, and Harrow had Ianthe lobotomize her, and wrote herself letters to explain, so Gideon could live, also sort of. Ultimately I feel that all of that info could have been spaced out evenly over the entire book, instead of alluded to and then stuffed into the end. Plus, more Gideon!! — The upside is that Muir is a phenomenally talented writer, and I never would have finished the book had she not artfully drawn me through the entire experience. I just hope her 3rd book is a little more grounded (like Gideon the Ninth). I’m the kind of reader who needs to be spoon-fed the plot every so often.
Lee, you totally nailed it. This was not an easy read but the payoff was infinitely worth it! I’ve read it cover-to-cover multiple times, and various passages at least a dozen, and each time I glean something new (I finally got Augustine’s “giddy-gone” joke last night; ugh, I’m so slow!). Muir’s writing is incredible: “But when I am in heaven I will remember your mouth, and when you roast down in hell I think you will remember mine”. I CANNOT WAIT FOR ALECTO.