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mburnamfink 's review for:
Harrow the Ninth
by Tamsyn Muir
At the end of the first book, Gideon is dead, having sacrificed herself to stop Cytherea, a Lyctor turned traitor, and Harrowhawk meets Emperor, the Necrolord Prime, you can call him God. She's made it to the elite and dwindling ranks of Lyctors, the revenant saints who carry out the Emperor's will.
Except *freeze frame* *record scratch* the Emperor is being murdered, and Harrow has gone mad.
In the gap between the end of the last book and the beginning of this one, someone, likely her prior self, wrote 24 notes 'to be opened in the event of...' and then erased her memory. Half this book is written in the second person, a "You" of Harrow's present, in the months before the Emperor's murder that starts off the action. While Harrow is an incredibly gifted necromancer, the process to make her a proper Lyctor didn't take. And this is a serious problem, because she's now on a remote space station with Ianthe, the three surviving original Lyctors, the Emperor. The problem with the Empire, aside from the whole necromancy thing, is that the original act that created the Houses also created Resurrection Beasts, gas-giant sized masses of half-living half-dead flesh that drive all whole behold them mad, and send forth horrific Heralds. The Emperor and his Lyctors have been running from the Resurrection Beasts for 10000 years, and now Number Seven has them pinned. Worse, everyone has their own agendas, most of which involve a little murder, including Harrow's before the Resurrection Beast arrives to finish the score.
That half the book. The other half is flashbacks to the House of Canaan, and the events of the first book, except that Gideon has been replaced by the ponderous poet Ortus, and everything is subtly wrong. There's a new thing stalking the necromancers and their cavaliers through the house, a Sleeper in a hazmat suit with the power of Lots of Guns, and its murdering them one by one.
I can't help but be more critical to Harrow than Gideon. So much of the joy of the first book was in Gideon's sarcastic voice, her irony and lust drenched approach to life. When it turns out that *SPOILERS* the reason half the story is in second person is that it's still Gideon narrating, just as some kind of undead spirit watching from Harrow's body, the story gets much better. But it's a long while to get there. The 'something important is happening... now we start much earlier" is a cheap narrative trick, one the Battlestar Galactica remake loved doing when they ran out of good stories, and it never rises above cheap trick.
The Locked Tomb series runs at two levels, one of high concept space necromantic intrigue, and other as a metaphor for coming of age as a queer and slightly mad girl (and props to Muir for thanking all the people who made sure she took her antipsychotics. This is the kind of de-stigmatization of mental health we need). The second book is good, but it's slight of hand rather that genuine great storytelling.
*** 2024 **
On reread, everything in my review still holds. I miss the snarky badass purity of Gideon's narrative voice. Harrow's self-induced damage frame, in pursuit of some Mysterious Plan, is a thin replacement. The small bottle of characters and setting, and the vagueness of the spiritual River that souls cross, is nothing like the gothic monstrosity of Canaan House. The best parts of this book are the hints at how much the rest of humanity fucking hates fucking necromancers(FUCK!!!), which I think we'll get more of in Nona and Alecto.
Except *freeze frame* *record scratch* the Emperor is being murdered, and Harrow has gone mad.
In the gap between the end of the last book and the beginning of this one, someone, likely her prior self, wrote 24 notes 'to be opened in the event of...' and then erased her memory. Half this book is written in the second person, a "You" of Harrow's present, in the months before the Emperor's murder that starts off the action. While Harrow is an incredibly gifted necromancer, the process to make her a proper Lyctor didn't take. And this is a serious problem, because she's now on a remote space station with Ianthe, the three surviving original Lyctors, the Emperor. The problem with the Empire, aside from the whole necromancy thing, is that the original act that created the Houses also created Resurrection Beasts, gas-giant sized masses of half-living half-dead flesh that drive all whole behold them mad, and send forth horrific Heralds. The Emperor and his Lyctors have been running from the Resurrection Beasts for 10000 years, and now Number Seven has them pinned. Worse, everyone has their own agendas, most of which involve a little murder, including Harrow's before the Resurrection Beast arrives to finish the score.
That half the book. The other half is flashbacks to the House of Canaan, and the events of the first book, except that Gideon has been replaced by the ponderous poet Ortus, and everything is subtly wrong. There's a new thing stalking the necromancers and their cavaliers through the house, a Sleeper in a hazmat suit with the power of Lots of Guns, and its murdering them one by one.
I can't help but be more critical to Harrow than Gideon. So much of the joy of the first book was in Gideon's sarcastic voice, her irony and lust drenched approach to life. When it turns out that *SPOILERS* the reason half the story is in second person is that it's still Gideon narrating, just as some kind of undead spirit watching from Harrow's body, the story gets much better. But it's a long while to get there. The 'something important is happening... now we start much earlier" is a cheap narrative trick, one the Battlestar Galactica remake loved doing when they ran out of good stories, and it never rises above cheap trick.
The Locked Tomb series runs at two levels, one of high concept space necromantic intrigue, and other as a metaphor for coming of age as a queer and slightly mad girl (and props to Muir for thanking all the people who made sure she took her antipsychotics. This is the kind of de-stigmatization of mental health we need). The second book is good, but it's slight of hand rather that genuine great storytelling.
*** 2024 **
On reread, everything in my review still holds. I miss the snarky badass purity of Gideon's narrative voice. Harrow's self-induced damage frame, in pursuit of some Mysterious Plan, is a thin replacement. The small bottle of characters and setting, and the vagueness of the spiritual River that souls cross, is nothing like the gothic monstrosity of Canaan House. The best parts of this book are the hints at how much the rest of humanity fucking hates fucking necromancers(FUCK!!!), which I think we'll get more of in Nona and Alecto.