Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Harrow the Ninth

I spoiled myself for this book and still had no idea what was going on half the time.
Okay but on a more serious note: this book is stylistically experimental, and the fact that it pulls it off most of the time is something that I do have to give it credit for. It would probably pull it off better if every other description wasn't a metaphor and if Muir had put down the thesaurus for half a second, but here we are.
I will say that I'm an outlier in that the things that other people love are the things that I really don't. I think the memes will make the book age like milk-- dad jokes are eternal, but people in 10 years might not know about miette, or none pizza with left beef. I'm also not a fan of the Gideon/Harrow relationship. Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth-

I just don't believe that someone who has been abused and imprisoned her entire life would fall in faithful, self-sacrificial love with her jailer after seeing her improve after only a month

. And trust me, as a lesbian I am not quick to put down lesbians. There were a number of smaller things that I would like to see someone with more expertise than me talk about, mainly the portrayal of disability and race, because both of those felt weird. In the end, I'll probably read the final book in the trilogy to see how it resolves, but I'm not waiting for it with baited breath.

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fiveredhens's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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.

It was only when saw us in the mirror by the dresser—saw me, in you—still not saying anything—that it hit home what you had done. Your face was a mess. It was such a weird goddamn melange of us: your pointy-ass chin, your stubborn-featured, dark-browed face, less battered than the last time l'd seen it, but—wearier than l'd ever known it to be. Your eyes had little smudgy lines next to them, and they were there at the corners of your mouth, marks of this huge, exhausted sadness. You could always leave everything else behind, but you never got rid of being so absolutely fucking goddamn sad.

It was difficult to know what to do with this type of touch. It made her whole soul flinch, but at the same time opened some primeval infant mechanism within her, as though the embrace were a mirror: having someone hold up an image by which you could see yourself, rather than living with an assumption of your face.

When she had first sat by the tomb in shivering awe, she had fancied that the Body's ice-ridden fingers had shifted for hers, minutely. Gideon had touched her in truth; Gideon had floundered toward her in the saltwater with that set, unsheathed expression she wore before a fight, her mouth colourless from the cold.

You remember how the fuck-off great-aunts always used to say, Suffer and learn? If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?

I remember that I had you on your back—I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn't even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven? Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?

"Not even one of the Emperor's fists and gestures could give Harrowhark Nonagesimus a sexy makeover. Sometimes I think you look like a twig's funeral."

"I merely want to put you in a jail," said his Lyctor, now meditative, "and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, What would I know, I'm only God. Then at the end of a thousand years, you would say, 'Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.' And I would say, "That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire. I often think about this," she finished.

[...] like she'd [...] never imagined there'd ever be a reckoning. There would be a goddamn reckoning. Nonagesimus, I was going to reck her. "Do you want your ass kicked now, or do you want your ass kicked later, or both?"

"Please, let's address this like gentlewomen,' said lanthe, without much hope.

"Hell, no! I'm going to pull your whole ass off," I said. "You want that? You want Harrow to grow you a new bone ass where I pulled off the old one? Let's dance, Tridentarius."

"But that doesn't— Why would she—?"

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

[...] you told me that if anyone came looking for me you would get your parents to lock me in a closet and say that I had died of "brain malfunction," which I now know isn't a real disease, so I bet you feel stupid now?

this book has a schtick that i hated at first but grew to love but i could understand if someone just hated it

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