Review: Harrow the Ninth, Locked Tomb Trilogy

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars because of the second person POV stuff, but bumped because frankly, I cannot fathom how a relatively new writer managed to pull this off.

Harrow the Ninth picks up where Gideon the Ninth left off. Sort of. By "sort of" I mean it picks up much later, right after, long before, and minutes before the seeming end of everything. Readers of Gideon the Ninth will recall that Harrowhark, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, has lost her only friend, her Griddle, and that, walking war crime that she is, Harrow hasn't been dealing well with the recent events that seeking Lyctorhood have brought. It's been a bloodbath, and even a whole lot of bones haven't been enough. It only gets worse. Serving the Undying King is about to get a whole lot more complicated. But Harrow herself is now a whole lot more complicated.

First things first. Readers are going to be unmoored by the fact that a good fraction of this book is narrated in second person POV. If you are anything like me, you will find the first half of the book like a combination of being caught in a maelstrom of confusion, and feeling like reading the second person POV is akin to all ten nails scraping down a chalkboard all the long day. It was tough going. I missed Gideon terribly and Harrow was going to give me second-person narration? Really?! After about the first two hundred pages, I felt like bursting out into Griddle-speak and telling Harrow, and Tamsyn Muir herself, off. WTAF, I wondered? When will this end? Please, make it end. Is the entire damn book going to be second person POV, because I am so not down for this! Please, please make it end. Of course, I knew there were reasons... (dissociation? self-flagellation?)... for this radical departure. And let me tell you Reader, the reasons will leave you both amazed at Muir's courage, audacity, and her sheer ability to pull this thing off. (Her editor is to be commended, as well.) But trying to tell you anything about this bit of wizardry would be major spoilers. What I can tell you is... just stick it out. This second installment is worth your patience and persistence. It's worth it in bones and necromancers. Just go in realizing that nothing and no one are what you think they are and be patient awaiting the who, what, where, and why.

The audiobook, narrated by Moira Quirk, who also narrated the first book, is a joy. Her voicing, even when a character is shrill, is just marvelous. I listened to the entire last third of the novel, as a reread, yesterday, and it was just mesmerizing. I missed cocktail hour because I was so enmeshed and missing cocktail hour during a pandemic is unheard of.

This novel is weird, surprising, and queer as all get out, and my gods can this woman write.

I received an advance review copy and an audio review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

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