Our favorite lesbian necromancer is back! Gideon the Ninth was one of my favorite books that I read in 2020, so it’s only fitting that I would start off the new year by finishing the sequel. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir came out last August, and is the perfect thing to soothe the wound of having your heart ripped out at the end of the first book. Well, after it pokes that wound a few times first, for good measure.
Harrow the Ninth picks up shortly after where Gideon left off. After the traumatic ordeals at Canaan House, Harowhark has achieved Lyctorhood—she’s officially a Saint of the God Undying, with untold necromantic powers. But something has gone wrong in the process, leaving her only half a Lyctor and vulnerable to attack whenever she enters the spirit realm. Her mind is hazy, she is haunted by the ghost of a dead woman, and she has a stack of letters addressed to herself in her own handwriting that she doesn’t remember penning. But these setbacks don’t prevent her from being drafted into a war of epic proportions. Harrow must train alongside her sibling Lyctors to prepare for a fight against a Resurrection Beast—one of several massive revenants created during the Emperor’s great resurrection. As Harrow spends more time among the Emperor and his Lyctors, she begins to question her faith in them as the God and Saints she has worshipped all her life. But perhaps more than anyone else, Harrow comes to question her faith in herself.
It becomes pretty clear almost immediately that Harrow is one of those most versatile of tropes—an unreliable narrator. If you’ve read Gideon the Ninth, the first thing you’ll notice is that Harrow’s memories don’t quite match up with the version of events that you read in the first book. Harrow’s memories have been tampered with—and while the reader can make a good guess as to why, Harrow herself is completely in the dark. But it’s more than just her memories that don’t seem to match up with reality. Harrow sees things that others cannot, particularly the ghostly figure of a woman from her past. But how much is genuine madness and how much is intentional tampering? Is there something else going on, as well? Reading the story from the perspective of a character who cannot trust her own mind is deeply disorienting and sometimes even frustrating. But that only serves to give the dramatic reveals at the end that much more of an impact.
Not being able to trust your own mind is scary enough when you’re not also being beset by horrifying monsters. Unfortunately for Harrow, there’s no shortage of those, as well. The Resurrection Beasts, and the hordes of Heralds that accompany them, are particularly terrifying entities. As massive, otherworldly beings that have existed for ten thousand years, the Resurrection Beasts bring an element of cosmological horror to the story. None of the Lychtors can describe quite what they are or what they look like, and the way that they appear to each person seems to be based on deep primal fears. The Heralds aren’t much better. Though smaller and easier to defeat, they make up for this in sheer numbers, and their insect-like appearance only reaffirms the instinctual aversion humans often feel for such critters. And then there is the Sleeper. This mysterious figure stalking Canaan House in Harrow’s memories is more humanoid in appearance, but the mystery of their identity and opaqueness of their motives makes the Sleeper just as frightening as the alien monsters besieging the Lyctors.
Have you read Harrow the Ninth? If not, you can find it on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments (though let’s try to avoid giving away major spoilers for the first book)!