A review by ktrecs
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

adventurous challenging mysterious tense fast-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

4.5

Days later and I still have no forking idea what to say about this book. It was the most frustrating reading experience of my life and I loved every minute of it. 

It was such a choice Muir made here; explaining nothing, writing in second person, flipping between timelines, suspending reality - and it paid off. Do I I illumination had come a bit earlier? Sure; 75% of 500 pages seems like a whole lot of time to spend confused. Are all my questions sufficiently answered? Hell no; I have more questions now than when I started. But I could not put this book down. 

It lacked some of the wit and fun of Gideon, but that honestly worked in its favour for me; some of the references and jokes in Gideon rankled at me because they lacked context. How, for example, in a galaxy far far away&c, does a Mean Girls joke land without context? I should have known to have faith, but I simply could not predict that
God himself was the original meme lord.
Who could have? Muir constantly defies expectations and expands the boundary of her world, following no rules except the ones she chooses, and since among other things that means I get to laugh at the line, "None house with left grief", catch me fully on board with whatever mind games Muir wants to play.

Once in a while, if you're lucky, you come across a book or a series that is just so incredibly <i>your shit</i> that it feels like a blessing. This expansive, adventurous, mind-forking, genre-bending, meme-dropping gothic sci-fi series featuring a buff swordswoman and her goth gf, with two (2) confirmed threesomes with God himself, could not be more me if it tried.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings