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Harrow the Ninth

(The Locked Tomb #2)

Tamsyn Muir (Goodreads Author)

4.35 · Rating details · 10,116 ratings · 2,190 reviews

Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station.

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir co ...more

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Hardcover, 512 pages

Published August 4th 2020 by Tor.com

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Mar 28, 2020 chai ♡ marked it as to-read

Shelves: 2020-releases, fiction

what if we were goth necromancers in space who have to fight in a deathly war and we’re insistent on disliking each other and we were both girls 👉🏽👈🏽

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Nov 02, 2019 Hollis rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-reads, all-the-lols, coverly-love, lgbtqia, fantasy, finished-in-june-2020, seriously-kick-ass-lady-protag, scifi, ebook, grief-or-loss

No one does it quite like Muir.

"I could protect you, if you'd only ask me to."
"I would rather have my tendons peeled from my body, one by one, and flossed to shreds over my broken bones. I would rather be flayed alive and wrapped in salt. I would rather have my own digestive acid dripped into my eyes."
"So what I'm hearing is.. maybe."

And by that I mean no one confuses me so utterly, for so long, in such devastating ways, only to give me exactly what I want, and then completely messes with my min ...more

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Nov 25, 2019 Rebecca Roanhorse rated it it was amazing

After the wonderful GIDEON THE NINTH, Muir could have stayed with what worked - a snarky protagonist with a contemporary sensibility that while incredibly emotionally moving was also just a lot of fun - but she did not play it safe. In fact, she took safe and punted it out of the stadium and instead gave us this daring and challenging beauty of a book instead. HARROW THE NINTH is not always an easy read. The first half or so is in second person and is confusing and non-linear and I often felt a ...more

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Aug 12, 2020 Nataliya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reads

To sum up: it’s a lovely migraine of a book.

“I was not following all of this, because necromantic theory is a lot of hot bullshit even when I'm not busy having Complex Emotions.”

If you thought Gideon the Ninth was a bit bonkers, do I have a surprise for you. Enter Harrow the Ninth that makes “Gideon” seem like the easiest and most straightforward story there ever was. “Harrow” is so deliberately confusing, frustrating and over-the-top that I had to reach into my brain and forcibly shut off the part of it that’s responsible for logically trying to figure out what’s going on, instead just going along with a weird slightly insane ride where, like in a haunted ~~funhouse~~ madhouse nothing is what is seems and what it should be. I usually hate books that force me to do that. But with Harrow the Ninth it was ultimately worth it.

“I could protect you, if you’d only ask me to,” said Ianthe the First. A tepid trickle of sweat ran down your ribs.
“I would rather have my tendons peeled from my body, one by one, and flossed to shreds over my broken bones,” you said. “I would rather be flayed alive and wrapped in salt. I would rather have my own digestive acid dripped into my eyes.”
“So what I’m hearing is … maybe,” said Ianthe.

Our weirdo fanatical necromancer Harrowhark Nonagesimus (strange and creepy even by the murky standards of spacefaring necromancer society built on skeleton labor and bone magic and swordplay) has supposedly ascended to the coveted Lyctorhood at the terrible cost of a sacrifice of the only (living) person she ever cared for, becoming the superpowered magical knight to the Necrolord Prime, the Undying Emperor for the last 10,000 years. Or so it should have been. In fact, everything seems terribly and confusingly wrong. The powers are not what they are supposed to be, the memories are not what we know happened, the madness and insane confusion rule, and God seems to go by the name of John. Oh, also there’s a dead body ghost haunting you and a corpse that refuses to stay dead. And half of it is in second-person narration. And it refuses to make sense for two thirds of the story. Oh, and the time jumps, lets not forget that. And what I can only call reality jumps as well, in addition to time jumps.

Everything is just so *wrong*. And Harrowhark Nonagesimus seems to really be losing it.

“But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.”

Tamsyn Muir could have stuck with the snappy juvenile-ish snark that was both the best and the worst bit of Gideon the Ninth, the one that made me both entertained and a bit tired from all the eye-rolling. It would have been fun and familiar. But instead she throws us into the confused jumble of Harrow’s possibly insane and very much haunted mind without a lifeboat. It’s sink or swim narration, so grab the nearest piece of flotsam and stay adrift.

“In the real world, I have been fatally stabbed. The place that holds my body is about to be overrun by thanergetic monsters created by a galactic revenant. I am, put bluntly, on the verge of death. My soul is under siege, and I overwrote my real memories with a ghost-filled pocket dimension, which has now apparently been co-opted by some kind of poltergeist. From what I can tell I am stuck in here. I cannot get out. And I am about to die—I may even be dead already—which will render this all somewhat moot.”

Under all the craziness this is a book about loss and grief. It may be hidden and masked and avoided, but it’s constantly there, just underneath the surface, sharp and relentless. Harrow is grieving, even if she refuses to understand it. And she feels tremendous guilt. And let’s not forget the haunted bit either. She’s struggling to survive — all while around her the entire world is in danger, and dead planet revenants are threatening the fabric of existence, and the spaceship/boneyard can only protect them for so long, and while the whole Lyctorship has gone terribly wrong, and each chapter counts down to the Emperor’s murder.

And necromancers still have to make soup. That’s not a joke.

The clues to what is going on are scattered everywhere. You know those are all clues but putting them together is hard, and for the two thirds of the story you’d do better if you just collect them in your mind and let them sit there and wait until Muir comes to the part where answers start. It’s frustrating but also fun. Some of them are easy, some seem to come out of the left field, but they are all rewarding. There’s a cringeworthy immortal heretical threesome that made me (and Harrow) flee in terrified embarrassment. There are planetary homicides. There are poignant ruminations on very messed up childhoods full of cruelty and neglect. There are objectively terrible pop-culture jokes — and I am certain that Muir makes them glaringly obviously bad on purpose, as a self-aware mockery in this case. There are loving and horrifying descriptions of bones and viscera that would fascinate anatomists and graverobbers alike. Those who are dead make appearances (since when has death stopped anyone in a society of necromancers???) and some of those make me squeal with happiness, and you really should brush up on Gideon the Ninth plot prior to starting this book because otherwise it won’t be nearly as much fun.

"Do not fucking ask me for information. I could not be more lost right now."

Tamsyn Muir has created characters that are both immensely unlikable ((view spoiler)) and yet in the same breath real and complicated and worth rooting for. Morally grey and multifaceted is apparently easy for Muir to create. Kudos are in order. And there are enough power struggles and complex motivations to last a lifetime or two, necromantically speaking.

“Memory hit Harrowhark Nonagesimus with the inexorable gravity of a satellite sucked from orbit, flinging itself to die on the surface of its bounden planet; the world hit her like a fall.”

I think it took guts for Muir to flip the switch from inhabiting Gideon’s mind — fun, irreverent, sarcastic, snarky, and bristling with energy — to Harrow’s fanatical, obsessive, paranoid, glum, dark, confused, claustrophobic and for all intents and purposes insane mind. Taking the readers out of established comfort zone and plunging them into the new cold uncharted waters is a string and ballsy move, and after the initial shock I embraced it with all my heart. (view spoiler) It’s wickedly powerful, once you let it take your brain over. Or maybe it’s just crazy talking. Who knows?

“Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?” asked Augustine.
“What is the difference?” said God.

It’s cryptic, it’s fascinating, it’s frustrating, and it’s fun. If you hated Gideon the Ninth, you’ll hate this one. If you loved Gideon the Ninth, you still may hate this one. It’s prickly and often annoying and makes you really work for it.

It’s like a migraine in the book form that eventually unfolds into a beautiful creation.

I loved it. And I certainly will be queueing up to see how this bonkers and awesome story wraps up.

“I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.”

4.5 bone shards. Or stars. Whatever.

————
My review of Gideon the Ninth is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more

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Feb 07, 2020 Emily Duncan rated it it was amazing

So glad one of the greatest writers of our time is a memelord.

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Aug 05, 2020 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin marked it as to-read

OMG!! NUFF SAID!!

...more

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Nov 14, 2019 Nomadic Reader (Baba Yaga) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-hype-is-real, salute-mentale, adoro, sf-and-fantasy, 2020, lacrimoni, what-the-fuck, letto-e-riletto, amazing-romance, the-gays-are-rising

“Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?”
“Ultimate power. And posters of my face.”

Most writers try to chase trends. They rely on formulaic plots, popular tropes, and safe narrative choices, hoping to give the public exactly what they want.

Tamsyn Muir is not one of those writers.

It’s difficult to explain what makes Harrow the Ninth so extraordinary. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d say that this book made me reconsider how stories work. It challenged me to a point where I seriously quest “Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?”
“Ultimate power. And posters of my face.”

Most writers try to chase trends. They rely on formulaic plots, popular tropes, and safe narrative choices, hoping to give the public exactly what they want.

Tamsyn Muir is not one of those writers.

It’s difficult to explain what makes Harrow the Ninth so extraordinary. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d say that this book made me reconsider how stories work. It challenged me to a point where I seriously questioned my own sanity. If Gideon the Ninth was, as I often hear it described, a crazy book, its sequel dials the craziness up to a hundred; and what is most infuriating about it is that, somehow, it works.
It shouldn’t! It should fail spectacularly, going down like a shuttle falling into deep space (ahem). And yet, reading this book was akin to looking at a cubist painting for the first time: utterly confusing, in equal parts puzzling and fascinating. The most notable difference being that while a portrait by Picasso may certainly impress you, but will hardly make you laugh, Harrow the Ninth is also genuinely funny and moving. Muir’s writing is simultaneously full of heart and incredibly self-aware, as if the author was poking fun at her own characters and terrible puns.
This book has all the wrong ships done right, and all the right tropes done wrong; it’s raw, unflinching, and insanely creative. It takes everything you thought you knew after reading Gideon and turns it upside down, leaving you scratching you head and scrambling for clues.
It’s a Christopher Nolan movie – possibly Memento, or maybe Inception - tossed into a pool of lame Millennial humor and sprinkled with rainbow confetti; a love letter to fanfiction, 2000s pop culture, and romance novels, written with the lyricism of a biblical psalm.

It's also a book that is very frank about mental health, and the many ways trauma affects the way we perceive the world. I applaud how Muir portrayed Harrow's mental illness (which is based on the author's own condition), making it an integral part of the plot and delving deep into the consequences of grief and child abuse.

Harrow the Ninth is a science fantasy masterpiece, and my favorite book of 2020.
Now all I have to do is lay down in the Locked Tomb and hibernate until Alecto is released. ...more

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Aug 03, 2020 Eric Allen rated it it was ok

2.5 stars.

And trust me, no one on this earth is more depressed about my low rating on this book than I am. This was the piece of media I was most looking forward to this year. More than Final Fantasy 7 Remake or Cyberpunk 2077, More than freaking Rhythm of War or the return of the Dresden Files, More, even, than the Mandalorian season 2 or the half a dozen movies I wanted to see that are now pushed back indefinitely. So I am really, REALLY depressed that I didn't like this book very much. It's 2.5 stars.

And trust me, no one on this earth is more depressed about my low rating on this book than I am. This was the piece of media I was most looking forward to this year. More than Final Fantasy 7 Remake or Cyberpunk 2077, More than freaking Rhythm of War or the return of the Dresden Files, More, even, than the Mandalorian season 2 or the half a dozen movies I wanted to see that are now pushed back indefinitely. So I am really, REALLY depressed that I didn't like this book very much. It's been the year from hell, and with how much I was looking forward to this book, it kind of hit me pretty hard that it was basically boring, frustrating, uninteresting, confusing crap until the last 25-30% or so.

Okay. So. Up front. To be honest, this book reads like bad fanfiction. We all know the kind. Where all of the characters' personalities and motivations are completely wrong, and the writer fixates on the complete wrong things, and doesn't really know how to come up with a coherent storyline that makes sense. So then it just devolves into a confusing jumble of characters that happen to have the same name as those in a beloved piece of media, doing something because reasons, and it's really confusing, and you wonder how the fanfic writer got from there to here. And then they use a lot of really big words, and an overly verbose style just to show how smart they are. That's what the majority of this book feels like to me. Bad fanfic written by someone who didn't understand the first book, and is under the delusion that their wordsmithery is second to none.

The first two thirds of this book are extremely confusing, and, frankly, just not very entertaining on top of making absolutely no sense at all whatsoever. The Harrow in this book is really boring, and not herself, and the author doesn't let you know enough about what is going on to care WHY she is being really boring, and not herself until the very end of the book. Which, unfortunately is WAY TOO LATE for it to make a difference.

A mystery is set up almost immediately in the beginning, in everything you know being wrong. Not one single shred of information or progress is made in that mystery until the final third of the book. It's just sitting there, being mysterious. It's mystery, for the sake of mystery. There's no real point to it in the story except to be mysterious. And it completely fails at that because of one very important detail. Because the author refuses to give even a single shred of information for two entire thirds of the book, those two entire thirds of the book make absolutely no sense at all whatsoever. There's a pretty big difference between a compelling mystery, and not one single fucking thing in the entire book making sense for two thirds of its length. That's not a bold decision in storytelling, or breaking new ground. That is flat out terrible writing. Absolutely TERRIBLE writing. It's not entertaining to have no fucking clue what is happening and nothing to even work with on figuring it out for the majority of the book. THAT. IS. BAD. WRITING! Also, fast forward to the end of the book, and then look back on that letter Harrow wrote for herself, and, more broadly, the conditions for reading the other letters she has left. None of these things pays off. Not one. It's basically just gibberish that is completely meaningless to the story in the end, and serves no purpose within the plot except to start off the mystery. None of the points in that letter is even addressed, except for one single off handed comment by Ianthe about the tongue/jaw line. That is a COMPLETE failure to follow through on even the most basic aspects of the mystery that the author set up.

The fact that nothing makes any sense, is compounded by the fact that the author tends to overdescribe unimportant details to the point that they clutter almost every single scene, making it very hard to figure out what any given scene is actually about, and what is actually happening in it. I found it extraordinarily confusing. There are also several very gimmicky things the writer has done with the writing itself. Most notably would be the second person perspective that the overwhelming majority of the book is written in. Even knowing WHY it was written like that now that I've finished, it doesn't make any sense for the book to have been written like that, because it's not the character you think is narrating narrating, and even if it was, that character wouldn't have a reason to, because that character freely admits later on that she is not conscious for the vast majority of the book. It's just a gimmick that the author used to make the book stand out from others, that didn't really seem like she thought through entirely, because it doesn't work within the context that it's explained in the story. And it was really fucking annoying too, but that's probably just my personal tastes talking there. I couldn't make myself read it. I had to get the audiobook in order to get through it, because it was just that annoying to me, and the whole nothing making any sense thing was also killing my desire to read any more.

There's also another big problem with the mystery and nothing making sense. Even now knowing what's going on, it still doesn't make much sense, and it kind of invalidates almost the entire book leading up to the reveal. Because none of it really has a point except to be mysterious and make you ask what the hell is going on? And a lot of it is kind of really boring, because you're both confused and frustrated, and then the surface events that you are being shown aren't particularly interesting, and the character being displayed is someone completely different from the character she was previously. If I were to go back and read the book again, I still wouldn't really have any idea what's happening and why, because there's just so much going on that doesn't lead anywhere. It's just there to take up space and be mysterious. Two entire thirds of this book simply exist for the sole purpose of taking up space and not making sense.

On the other hand, the last third of the book is excellent, when the author FINALLY starts explaining things, and giving clues as to what's going on, like she probably should have been doing throughout the whole thing, the book is great. The second person perspective morphs into what I was assuming it was supposed to be, which is presented as a completely different POV within the story, which, kind of invalidates the entire reason the rest of the book was written in second person.

So, this one is hard to rate. The first two thirds of the book are a 1 star book. The last third is maybe a 4 star book. That last third DOES NOT make up for the rest of the book leading up to it, however. This book is annoyingly written, confusing, frustrating, and a lot of it just doesn't have a reason to exist. No matter how good an ending it has, that ending has a lot to answer for, and it just didn't deliver for me.

I love Gideon the Ninth. It's one of my favorite books. I've read it three times since I discovered it last year, and recommended it to pretty much everyone who will listen. I still do. Go read it if you haven't. It is a genuinely entertaining book. I will probably never read Harrow the Ninth again. The good parts are not worth the bad parts in my opinion. I'll definitely grab the third and final book in the trilogy, because I am still genuinely interested in where things are going, but I'm going to be kind of wary about picking up other books from this author in the future because of all the really bad decisions she made in telling this part of this story. I've lost a lot of trust for the author after this one. She's now on my do not spend money on ANYTHING without reading it first list. This is one of those times where someone really needed to be told no, but wasn't. ...more

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Sep 05, 2020 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing

Amazing sequel. I respect this book a lot for taking serious risks and pulling them all off. It's markedly different from the first book but also fully grounded in the larger universe of the story. And without giving anything away, there are twists that are so good and seem to be set up so early that now I want to read the first book all over again.

I'm going to run out of words for how much I loved this book. It's funny, heartbreaking, riveting, and also dense with details throughout. I want to ...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, arc, fantasy

The mindbending adventures of the necromancers continue! Full review, first posted on www.FantasyLiterature.com (along with 3 others from my co-reviewers there!):

Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to the Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated fantasy Gideon the Ninth, is incredibly ambitious, decidedly wordy, and highly confusing for about three-quarters of the book, at which point Tamsyn Muir (finally!) begins to gradually pull back the curtains.

Harrowhark, the heir of the declining Ninth House, a talented ...more

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Mar 07, 2020 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: horror, sci-fi, fantasy, 2020-shelf

I'm pleased to say that this sequel to Gideon the Ninth not only answers a few questions, but breaks the mold established by the first and plows through the fields of the dead to create (or destroy) all of creation.

I mean, what else can you expect when you're dealing not only with necromantic gods in a supremely hi-tech post-humanity universe?

Them to make soup?

Oh, wait... yeah.

Honestly, I was slightly bemused and slightly weirded out by the kind of pacing and style in the first part of the nove ...more

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Jul 29, 2020 Miranda Reads marked it as to-read

F*ck

When you're so emotionally wrecked by the first book and yet are totally ready for the second one to kill you even further...

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Mar 23, 2020 Boston rated it it was amazing

Shelves: f-f

I’m convinced 100% of this was a fever dream. Review to come.

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Oct 09, 2020 Phrynne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5000-2020, up-to-date-2020

Be prepared when going into this book to have to work hard to understand it for a number of different reasons. Then accept that you have to wait to the end before much of it becomes clear. Finally have your reading calendar cleared so you can go back and read it all again, knowing what you have finally discovered. The author weaves a very tangled web and I loved it!

Harrow the Ninth is a great character and a very special necromancer. We begin to discover how special as this book progresses and w ...more

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Dec 12, 2019 Mackenzi marked it as to-read

Gideon + Harrow 5ever

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Sep 05, 2020 Tatiana rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, ppb, 2020

I am not going to pretend that I understood everything that went on in this book, but I want more. Being confused is also not my fave thing, and yet, here it was fun to be completely lost. And I can’t resist the pleasure of saying names like “Necrolord Prime, The Emperor of the Nine Houses, The Prince Undying” or “Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter by Her Own Desire.” I like these wacky people and the incomprehensible necromantic sciences and the ghost underworld. Oh, and, of course, ...more

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Sep 12, 2020 lucky little cat rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-in-2020, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, space-opera-time-travel, and-not-in-the-good-way, where-was-the-editor

That was a train wreck pretending to be Inception. That was so, so bad that my ears are still ringing, and my edition was hardback, not audio.

I understood almost all of it, and I'm not happy. Here's a short list of things that disappointed me. Major spoilers. (view spoiler) That was a train wreck pretending to be Inception. That was so, so bad that my ears are still ringing, and my edition was hardback, not audio.

I understood almost all of it, and I'm not happy. Here's a short list of things that disappointed me. Major spoilers. (view spoiler)

I have theories about what *I* think all those hanging clues mean. So, here are a few maybe right but potentially-wrong spoilers. (view spoiler)[

*I* think, and sure I might be wrong:

*I called our woman Gideon God's clone because while the sperm "sample" came from God, the egg seems to have been collected *by* suicide-mission pilot Wake *from* whoever or whatever is in the Locked Tomb.

*I think Alecto is the egg contribitor from the Locked Tomb, and God is very touchy about whether Alecto is a who or a what. Apparently she's the Resurrected version of Annabel L, and Mercymorn doesn't think Alecto even *has* her own DNA profile, which would make Gideon genetically a God-copy.

*God meets girl-Gideon f2f at the novel's end, but it was Harrow's face & body, so God doesn't actually know what Gideon looks like. Yet.

*Harrow can't recognize girl-Gideon anymore either, which seems to be *exactly* what Camilla & her rebel friends wanted to verify when they got her to peek into their tiny shuttle on that doomed lush planet in ch. 49. Presumably the rebels were toting a portrait because Polaroid sticky film's disappeared from their corner of the galaxy.

*Camilla is lying to the amnesiac or "rinsed" redhead at the end of the novel, and that redhead is almost certainly Gideon. Camilla knows exactly who Gideon is. Also, Camilla & Gideon's mostly-dead body disappeared from Canaan House at the same time.

*Amnesiac Gideon still has her own eyes, not Harrow's, because amnesiac Gideon's not a lyctor.

*As her secret, Dulcinea almost certainly told Harrow that she and Palamedes had successfully swapped eyes (although why Pal still had them when the real Dulcie was dead feels like a glitch). Also, could Dulcinea's death have prevented Pal from attaining full lyctor powers? Because if he had "lyctor eyes" he should have also had lyctor powers.

Anyway, it's an almost certain bet that Pal's dreamy gray eyes were actually Dulcie's, hence gal-Gideon unaccountably swooning every time Pal removed his glasses. And we just thought Gidget was branching out.

That's all I've got for now, but if you ask, I'll try to thepo0rize some more. :D (hide spoiler)]

keywords: this isn't how the fuck it happens either; i've always had bette davis eyes, and none of you suckers figured it out 'til now; you weren't in your skull, so I left you a note; there were so many rebels in that little shuttle that it looked like a clown car; but if I repeat the iambic pentameter joke five times, doesn't that make it funnier? I did not have sex with that woman, we just swapped eyes ...more

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Nov 10, 2020 Brittni Kristine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 5-stars

If you enjoyed Gideon, I firmly believe you’ll love Harrow as well. While Harrow doesn’t have Gideon’s humor, what she does bring to the table in pure sass is truly enjoyable. Harrow, who was clearly the strongest character in the first book, is the underdog in her own story. We see her struggle and grow and I enjoyed every bit of it, even the confusing parts.

If you made it through Gideon and still liked the book, then you’re prepared to read Harrow the Ninth. Much like Gideon, the first 60% is ...more

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Mar 22, 2020 Veronica Belmont rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sl-laser, scifi

Ugh, I finished this and now I want the next book already, and this one isn’t even out until June!!

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Feb 23, 2020 Kogiopsis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kickass-ladies, fangirl-alert, galleys, not-for-the-sensitive, favorite-2020-reads, megan-reads-to-me, queer-stuff, reviewed, flawless

You are not ready for this book. I was not ready for this book. I am pretty sure that even when I re-read it, I will not be ready for this book.

Harrow the Ninth is like being put through a series of bizarre emotional windsprints. I laughed. I keened. I was buoyed up by triumph which was, even then, bittersweet. I spent the entire book not knowing at all what was going on and I still don't. Pressing questions were answered and even bigger questions posed without answers. New characters were intro ...more

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Feb 20, 2020 Emily rated it it was amazing

help.

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Sep 11, 2020 Mel (Epic Reading) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: library-print

After 200+ pages, few words written are not insane or from the eyes of our unreliable narrator, Harrow. She can’t seem to remember what we, the reader, know happened at the end of book 1. It’s infuriating, it’s slow reading, it made me start to think I might not reach the end, and lament how great I thought Gideon the Ninth was. And then things start to open up, there might be hope for Harrow and her shattered mind, and just when I thought things were realigning crazy, epic, unbelievable events After 200+ pages, few words written are not insane or from the eyes of our unreliable narrator, Harrow. She can’t seem to remember what we, the reader, know happened at the end of book 1. It’s infuriating, it’s slow reading, it made me start to think I might not reach the end, and lament how great I thought Gideon the Ninth was. And then things start to open up, there might be hope for Harrow and her shattered mind, and just when I thought things were realigning crazy, epic, unbelievable events happen. So unbelievable that without the drone of insanity I read beforehand I might have scoffed and not believed any of it.

As with book 1, I am unsure what I just spent 19 days reading. Harrow the Ninth has put me 6 more books behind on my reading challenge and I’m not even sure I know what happened in it; and I’m certain I don’t understand more than half of the subtle, and not so subtle, messages Muir is saying.
Did I like this book? Maybe. Do I want to read book 3? I dunno. Mostly I just want to read book 1 again and recapture Gideon. But at the end of the day absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? If true then Muir plays her cards well.

When Alice falls down the rabbit hole the reader experienced a mind expanding story. When Harrow wakes up on a grand spaceship; with blood, bones and vomit surrounding her, the reader will begin to forget they even have a mind. I wondered by the end of the novel how living and dying could be so complex given it’s just made of meat, bones, blood, and time.

Harrow the Ninth makes our messed-up, immoral, crazy world seem simple. And so I give it five stars if only because it strained my mind enough to have less time for the real world insanity that surrounds us all. I feel helpless to affect much of today’s news; just as Harrow felt helpless to comprehend how she was who she was. Perhaps that’s the brilliance of Muir’s lesbian necromancers in space literary writing; she convinces me the world I live in is simple, because her world is so complex. ...more

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Nov 12, 2020 Tricia Levenseller rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi

I’m not entirely sure what just happened, but this book was awesome.

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Oct 25, 2020 Claude's Bookzone rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-ending-whyyyy

Well I can't put my thoughts together properly yet, and if I am being honest, it might not be until after I have re-read both books. I can't emphasise enough how incredible Tamsyn Muir's writing is in all it's descriptive, foul mouthed glory. I know the overly descriptive stuff won't work well for everyone but I absolutely loved it! The seemingly overworked sentences are essential to the style of humour Muir has mastered - the intelligent, insult laden type that had me in stitches. I will write ...more

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Aug 10, 2020 Adah Udechukwu rated it it was ok

Harrow the Ninth was disappointing and the novel falls short of my expectations.
The novel suffers from over-description and a complex language structure. The novel had a lot of unnecessary words and it seemed as if the author had a word-count target to achieve.
The novel had some moments of awesome and there were some moments when i didn't understand what the fuck was going on.
Book 3 has to be better. Book 3 must be better.

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Jul 19, 2019 sofia (sam willows) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: couples-i-like, 2020-releases, arc, lgbtq, in-english, favorites, dont-own, 2019, sci-fi, e-books

i think my mind and soul are broken in the best way possible after this
rtc

thank you macmillan for an advanced copy of this book
---
i've been obsessed with gideon the ninth for MONTHS, and i'm also obsessively making theories and holding on to this world so to say that i'm looking forward to this book would be a HUGE understatement

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Nov 30, 2019 Bria rated it it was amazing

PLEASE LIST “HARROW THE NINTH” AS MY CAUSE OF DEATH THANK YOU FOR MY LIFE AND MY DEATH

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Jul 20, 2020 M. (Inside My Library Mind) rated it it was amazing

More reviews up on my blog Inside My Library Mind

What the Fuck Did I Just Read?
One thing I really appreciate in my literature is authors who do not spoon-feed the story to their readers. That was one of my favorite things about Muir’s debut – she is a writer who doesn’t dumb down her readership and she just throws you into the deep end of the pool and then watches in glee as you thrash around trying to comprehend what is going on. But the water is so good, and thrashing around is so much f ...more

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Nov 03, 2020 April rated it really liked it

Good, but very confusing at times.

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Aug 18, 2020 Kate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2020

4.5/5stars

This is the first sequel in YEARS to impress me as much as the first book. I loved this - it was weird, difficult to follow, bold, ambitious, and so so interesting. Muir really knows how to SHOCK me with plot twists, and the ending of this was just as fantastic as the first. Can’t wait for book 3!!

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About Tamsyn Muir

Tamsyn Muir

3,147 followers

TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth, and concludes with Alecto the Ninth. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living i ...more

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The Locked Tomb (3 books)

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Quotes from Harrow the Ninth

“you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.” — 21 likes

“But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.” — 17 likes

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