Reviews - Harrow the Ninth

15.2k reviews for:

Harrow the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

4.38 AVERAGE

vanellus's review against another edition

5.0

None stars out of left beef

emptyreadings's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

“But when she was scared, she was a child again and she was more afraid of being a child again than anything else in her life- almost.”

“You don’t fear dying. You can tolerate pain. You are afraid that your life has incurred a debt that your death will not pay. You see death as a mistake.”

“Beloved, what were my eyes like?”

I love that she just makes soup???????? And that god is literally just a dude named John. The vibes of these characters together in the Mithraeum is giving Umbrella Academy and it fucking awesome. Also this is like a bio major’s wet dream. So much bone name dropping. The fact that we live in a fabricated history of Harrow’s hallucinatory existence is so frustrating and absolutely absurd but I kind of love it. It reminds me distantly of part 1 of manacled. The use of “you,” is daring and creative- a risk I genuinely appreciate. I frequently forget that there’s this sci-fi element of planets and electricity and traveling in space ships since so much of the modern is put to the wayside in this world of tradition, swords, and monarchy. The language is absolutely more of a horror narration than that of fantasy I compared to the first book and I think it lends well to Harrow’s dismal and grave attitudes. Also I’m so glad we see so much of Ianthe since book one really looks away from her and toward Coronabeth. All this regicide is frankly very exciting and the fact that John is gideons dad? But also Gideon the first thought HE was the father? Things are so MESSY I love it. Much like the beginning and the middle and the everything, the ending is confusing as fuck, however, not in a way that I didn’t understand what the author was doing, just in a way that I now have to trust the process even longer and hope that they’re cooking for this third book.

This novel was creative and interesting, throwing everything at the wall and it somehow worked.

carostthomas's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous funny tense medium-paced

Strong character development: Yes

I couldn’t put this book down, so good, and now I’m stoked to start Nona.

Content Warnings

crofteereader's review against another edition

3.0

Update upon a THIRD read:

Honestly, Muir is a lazy writer. She gives us a character who has no idea what’s going on and rewrites what we thought we already knew so that the other characters can spend the whole book patronizing them instead of doing any real worldbuilding. I was tricked by her clever wit and the fun nods to 2014 Tumblr culture, but the book itself is a confusing mess. Sure there are moments where we get a flicker of foreshadowing, but so much of the book is just obfuscation that we didn’t even need…

I still enjoyed the humor and Ianthe is still my favorite, but… honestly I’m less impressed than I was before.
—
Update upon listening to the audiobook (thank you Librofm and Recorded Books for making all my dreams come true - again)... You should definitely still read my original review (after the "--" below) because it very readily sums up the experience of someone reading the text of the book. But the audiobook... Man, that's an entirely different revenant. This is the first book I've ever read where a re-read has me UPPING the star rating. Moira Quirk is a genius and the subtlety with which she crafts the different sections of this audiobook in order to give the listener the barest hint of grounding (that, having already read the book, I copped on to and appreciated right away).

After reading Gideon the Ninth, I never would have expected Ianthe Tridentarius to be my favorite character but she so is. She took on the mantle of the comedic character and she does it so archly and the tone with which Quirk plays her dialogue (reminiscent of the way she played Babs in the previous audiobook, since Ianthe didn't have a whole lot of dialogue in that one) is absolute perfection.

And Mercymorn. Oh the personification of her beyond just the text really sold everything for me. Honestly, listen to the audiobook. That's all I can really tell you coherently.

--

Okay, okay - okay. First of all, my thanks to Tor.com and Edelweiss for the advanced copy (aka for making all my dreams for 2020 come true). Second: I can summarize my thoughts on this book as a whole and complete entity in the totally in-character phrase: what the actual fuck. Not even a question, but a statement just like that. Here we go.

So Gideon the Ninth, my favorite book of 2019, left us in an interesting spot. We've got Gideon dead and Harrow more than a little bit overwhelmed. Curtains close; end of act one. Harrow the Ninth picks up in a jumbled mess that can generally be described as "after the events of the first installment" with some third person narration and some second person (which I love) narration and some time jumps and lots of "now wait just a minute, you're completely changing the narrative." This leads to, I'll admit, a very confusing first 3/4 of the book.

For a book about necromancers, I really wasn't expecting so many characters to come back from the dead. We'll leave that there as a minor spoiler and fuel for at least 1/3 of my total WTFs.

Apart from the same glorious, gruesome, and above all detailed writing that I loved from Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth is much more subdued. There's still a lot of sharp wit but there's a lot more resignation, too. This book suffers from the fact that it's too long for its own good. I didn't feel entirely engaged until about 75%. Now, my confusion and general WTFishness was enough to propel me forward (I had my theories and really wanted an explanation) with the help of writing at the sentence level that I absolutely adore and a lot of interesting worldbuilding that we kind of missed the first time around.

But man, once 75% rolled around, I was in it up to my eyeballs! That was the rollicking good time I expected after Gideon the Ninth (and I really hope Moira Quirk is going to narrate the audiobook for this one as well because I need to see how she handles it).

To summarize: this one has a very different tone and pace from the first book, with a lot more confusing moving parts. I am, however, anticipating that the payout in book three will be absolutely epic.

pineeaapple's review against another edition

4.5

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

what the hell did i just read

nicole_shamy's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 19%

Gideon the Ninth was super good, this could not stand up to it or hold my attention. I found myself just not wanting to read at all, and that's not worth finishing it for me