Reviews with content warning for Schizophrenia/Psychosis - Harrow the Ninth

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Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

122 reviews

moondragon8's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

On to book 2!! Yippee!
This was a tricky one. It was one of those books where the main character was basically having a prolonged breakdown throughout the whole thing. I don't always like those books that much. This one was sort of enjoyable, though!
The first 2/3rds of the book were mostly Harrow having a really terrible time while weird stuff happened everywhere. I found this book a lot darker than the previous one--not as much death, but much more morbidity, body horror, and all a lot more graphically described (probably because Harrow's a necromancer and Gideon's just a sword guy). Plus, last book's necromancy was like 90% bones. There was a lot more....meat necromancy in this one.
The final third of the book was really fun. A lot of stuff got revealed, and not all of it made a ton of sense while I was reading it, but some of it did, and it was very satisfactory when pieces began to click into place.

I loved all the dreambubbly (sorry for the Homestuck, but that's what they are!) parts. I wanted more of Harrow's weird alternate universes! They were so fun!!

On the "it's complicated" up above: None of the major characters in this were exactly lovable, but they were really, really fun to read about.

Harrow's brain ghosts were very lovable, though. Abigail my beloved!

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possibilityleft's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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belladonnashrike's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense 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? Yes

3.0

so I think reading this sequel has summed up my feelings on how muir writes. she comes off as an amateur writer - whether that’s true or not, I have no idea, but that’s the root of all my critiques. I’m not a fan of the humor in this series, but even more so, all the characters (except for Harrow) have the same sense of humor, even when you would expect them not to, which sort of cheapens the dialogue and their individual characterization. the one (main) character that I feel does not share this quality is Harrowhark, who is written as the inverse of Gideon, so of course she won’t have the Gideon-like humor. I think Harrow is the best written character in the series and she is certainly my favorite which is why I think I enjoyed this book way more than the first. despite that, the fact that she is basically a Gideon foil feels a little lazy especially when you look at the dialogue. I love Harrow but I wish her traits and personality was independent of Gideon. I enjoyed Harrow’s perspective

but once it shifted back to Gideon’s (which I KNEW was going to happen… I hated the second person format but then realized very early on that Gideon was most likely not actually dead and she was speaking for Harrow) perspective, I felt mildly annoyed. I don’t dislike Gideon at all, but I’d simply rather not read things from her perspective, especially in first person. she’s fine as a side character! I just really do not like her sense of humor and again, it cheapens the story for me. especially when God - her father - said that very ridiculous, unnecessary dad joke upon meeting her. I legitimately rolled my eyes and sighed. I just can’t escape this sense of humor even when Harrow is leading the book!

much more. she is a very interesting character and I do have a lot of love for her. the worldbuilding got SO much better in this book, but it’s not perfect. some things are still left unsaid or as loose threads (which I feel is not a part of the mystery and definitely attributed to what I imagine is inexperienced writing). I am still invested in the story despite my critiques (I just find the concept so fascinating - I desperately wish that the execution was better) so I’ll be continuing on with the series. I hope Harrow is in these next couple books because I do adore her and would certainly miss her if she was absent from the storyline.

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guessgreenleaf's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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arobear's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Wow, what a trip! Started out slow, but I loved how the narrative was crafted and everything was revealed bit by bit. There's still a TON of questions I have, but I'm hoping they're answered in the next two books.

I love Harrow - she needs to be protected at all costs even though she is a badass! I have so many feelings (confused? yes; but good confused??) and I've been so torn up over comparing Harrow/Gideon to Orpheus/Eurydice because Harrow can't acknowledge her at all and Gideon thinks that means she doesn't like her.... but she literally CAN'T without killing her soul1! sdflskjdflsjfdls
I thought my heart would be healed, but it is sadly still in disarray.

What I was NOT expecting: BONE SOUP, liking Ortus by the end, or liking Ianthe, let alone thinking she's sexy... And God's dad jokes. So many dad jokes.

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leanne_miron's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious sad 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? Yes

5.0

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

3.5

It’s been three months since I read Gideon the Ninth, so I was prepared for it to take a little bit to get back into the story. I was also expecting it to be a little less enjoyable at the beginning because I wasn’t a huge fan of Harrow last book and I knew she would be the main character this time. So I was prepared to have a rough start.

What I was not prepared for was absolute incomprehensibility.

Some books feel like giant puzzles where the story keeps handing you pieces and it isn’t until the end where you figure out how they all fit together. This book does not feel like that. This book feels like it handed you a large box full of pulpy sludge, then at 74% of the way through the book it casts the spell to turn the sludge into puzzle pieces at which point they come together fairly easily.

If 74% feels like an oddly specific number, that’s because I checked. I looked at the time stamp for when the book started to make sense, because it took a very long time. The first three-quarters of the book are almost entirely incomprehensible. They go hard into the unreality and “unreliable narrator is unreliable because she can’t remember and isn’t sure what she’s seeing is real.” It goes back and forth between Harrow’s new life as a Lyctor and a retelling of book one where Gideon doesn’t exist. The timelines are all mixed up. It’s hard to tell when events are actually supposed to be taking place, and I’m pretty sure both timelines are told out of order anyway (but there’s no temporal markers so it’s hard to tell). It’s a crapshoot if you can figure out who’s speaking or even in the scene at the start. And the bulk of it is told in second person, which really threw me for the first few hours and never stopped feeling weird and jarring.

And after all that, can you guess the moment that made me pause the book and stare into space asking myself if I really just heard what I thought I just heard? It wasn’t the unexpected betrayal, or the murder attempts, or the body under the bed or the weird blood river or the fact that God’s name is John. It was the moment where God was explaining a potential galaxy-ending apocalypse to Harrow and, right in the middle of a serious conversation, made an absolutely serious none pizza left beef reference. Out of all the incomprehensible nonsense that came before, that was the moment where I stopped the book, reconsidered my reading choices, and started wondering what kind of person Tamsyn Muir is to put a fucking meme reference in her elaborate and serious book.

Once I was paying attention, there was a surprising amount of memes and internet culture referenced in a gory and intense drama about necromancers in space. These included a “She wants the D” joke, a pun on the word “barista”, an honest-to-goodness “Hi, _, I’m dad” joke, and references to bone hurting juice and Miette. Am I supposed to be taking this seriously? Every single other thing in the book is very serious – and yet there are no less than five meme/joke references. What am I supposed to think?

I very nearly DNF’d this early on. Gideon was my favorite character and she wasn’t there. I didn’t really like Harrow that much in book one when she was badass, and I liked her even less when she was spending much of her time unconscious and not doing anything when she was awake. The other Lyctors were mean, standoffish, and incredibly unlikeable, and the Emperor was stiff and bland whenever he was on page. And even though I was spending a lot of brainpower trying to figure out what the hell was going on, there was zero plot whatsoever. Harrow wasn’t even doing anything – other people around her did stuff, but she did nothing except walk around, be confused about her own memories, and see things that weren’t there, interspersed with retold scenes from book one, except they were the scenes where very little happened and had no Gideon. There wasn’t even any interesting settings to explore, since instead of cool and creepy planets, this book takes place almost exclusively on a largely nondescript spaceship. Up until about halfway through, I really didn’t like this book.

But I stuck it out, mainly because I wanted to see if I was right in my suspicions (and hopes) that the end of book one would get undone in some way. And around the halfway point, I warmed up a bit to Harrow and the barest hint of a plot kicked in. So I felt mildly validated in pushing through the first half (which was about 10 hours, it’s an almost 20-hour audiobook) and kept reading.

Then the book hit the 74% mark and went from zero to sixty over the course of a few minutes. The book cast the spell that turned my box of fibrous sludge into puzzle pieces, I started slamming those pieces together as fast as my brain could whir, Harrow started to actually do things, a plot (of a sort) finally kicked into gear, and the last 26% of the book was absolutely fantastic. I loved it. I got some of the answers I wanted from book one, I got some answers to questions I didn’t even know I had that just added more twists, there was action, there was drama, there were surprises, some of my suspicions about book one’s ending were validated and some of them were not. It was great.

Was it worth the first half being unenjoyable and another quarter being mediocre? I don’t know. I really don’t know what to make of this book. The last 26% was amazing. The first half was terrible. The book seemed to skip engaging characters or intriguing plot and go straight for “if they don’t understand what’s happening, they’ll want to read on and find out,” but then overdid it so hard that it tipped over into obnoxious and frustrating. But also that ending answered a lot of my questions from book one, which is a large part of what I wanted out of this book, and came with some really stellar action sequences towards the end.

This review is very long because this is a very long book and I do not know what to make of it in the least. I think the first three-quarters could have been cut down to half its length, easily, without harming the story and probably making it better. I pushed through reading the whole thing and I don’t know if it was worth it. The confusing thing is that I definitely didn’t dislike this book. I don’t think I liked it, either. And I’m not even ambivalent about it. I’m having some kind of feeling about Harrow the Ninth, but I have no idea what. My opinions are about as incomprehensible as the majority of this book. I don’t know if I’ll read the next book. Maybe? I’m gonna need some time to untangle the disaster of whatever I feel about this one first.

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crashjaycintha's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

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barrybj's review against another edition

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medium-paced

5.0

what. the fuck.

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sofipitch's review against another edition

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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? It's complicated

5.0

Idk how much to say other than I loved it. Muir manages to somehow make being confused about what's going on fun, normally that would be a major turn off yet it somehow works, I'm going to be so sad once I finish Nona and have to wait months to potentially a year for Alecto to come out

Reread review:
Okay so I have even more of an appreciation for this book now that I have reread it. It is so insanely well crafted. Now knowing what was coming all the foreshadowing hit me like a brick. I don't want to give too much away but this book holds so many secrets and tries to get you to think it's doing a specific trope when nope! I just have so much fun with this book being a puzzle you have to unlock ❤️
This is also probably one of the darker if not darkest TLT book, I love them all for different reasons (they are all basically very different) but this one definitely played into my interests the most. So if I had to pick a favorite it is HTN. I am amazed by how much Harrow's book mirrors Harrow herself. The book keeps you in the dark and confused for most of it, which is what Harrow is experiencing throughout. But also it matches Harrow's character that we met in GTN, also trying so hard to disguise herself, the truth not coming out until near the end

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