Book Review - Tamsyn Muir's Harrow the Ninth
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Published by: Tor.com
Publication Date: August 4th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 512 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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Something isn't quite right. Harrow the Ninth journeyed to Canaan House to become a Lyctor. She completed the trials. She ascended to Lyctorhood at great personal cost and is now serving the Emperor alongside Ianthe Tridentarius. It was traumatic. Harrow's cavalier Gideon Nav died. Ianthe's cavalier Naberius Tern died. Naberius's death doesn't bother Ianthe. She has access to all her powers. Harrow does not. This is a problem. Something is wrong with Harrow. Something that happened after she left Canaan House. God, the Emperor, otherwise known as John, needed new Lyctors in his battle against the Resurrection Beasts. They were spawned when he saved mankind, and he has been waging a war against them ever since. A war lasting millennia. He has lost most of his Lyctors to this battle. Only Mercymorn, Augustine, and "Ortus" remain. And they aren't exactly happy campers. In order to fight the Resurrection Beasts they have to enter the River, a realm where the Beasts can be astrally destroyed. Only because of her "failed" ascension Harrow is unable to enter the River. Therefore she is next to useless when the Resurrection Beasts attack the Mithraeum. Not only can she not help, she needs to be protected, because is she fighting an enemy outside the walls but she fears there is an enemy within the walls of the Mithraeum as well. Someone is trying to kill her but she doesn't know who or why. Something isn't quite right with her. She keeps dwelling on her time at Canaan House. When Ortus died so that she could become a Lyctor. But that isn't right is it? She's reliving her time at Canaan House but it doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel true. Is this how things happened? Who died? Who survived? Did she even survive? How can she even be sure that John is telling her the truth? There are secrets in the Mithraeum, there are secrets amongst the Lyctors, secrets that are worth dying for. What if the man viewed as God is actually fallible? What if his enemies aren't just the Resurrection Beasts? What if his enemies, like Harrow's, are inside the Mithraeum? When the battle starts, who will survive and who will die? But most importantly, at who's hand?
If there's one thing that will make me quickly hate a book it's writing it in second person narration. I just can't. I literally can't. Why would anyone write that way let alone expect people to read it? It doesn't make me connect with the narrative in a new and unique way it makes the book connect with my wall in a new and unique way. I literally didn't think that I would be able to read Harrow the Ninth. But I remembered my experience with Gideon the Ninth and was willing to give Tamsyn Muir the benefit of the doubt, or, you know, enough rope to hang herself like Harrow's parents. So I girded my loins and set forth to see if other reviewers were right and that I would actually get accustomed to the writing style. Well, they were right, I adjusted. Not to the point of enjoyment, but to the point of toleration. I don't even know if I'd allow this book an exemption from my hate, that is reserved for the little reveries in The Night Circus alone. But here's the thing that still irks me. This is one of those times in which the second person narration is actually someone talking to someone else that they refer to as "you." It's "The Joe Goldberg Second Person Narration Variation," TM pending. Which means it technically isn't a second person narrative but more importantly that it didn't need to be written this way. There was another way to write this book and that would have been to have Gideon's voice coming through loud and clear. Because it's obvious that the narrator is Gideon from the very first "you." But instead Tamsyn Muir holds back this "reveal" for over four hundred pages. We could have had a book with the same wonderful voice as the first volume and instead we have this. This is fine. This is acceptable. This isn't much else. I mean, there are probable "reasons" as to why the reveal was held back, maybe Tamsyn Muir wanted to lean into the mental instability of Harrow. To make us, the readers, think that our assumptions were wrong. That Gideon really was gone and that Harrow was insane. I mean, Harrow was rewriting her time at Canaan House in her mind with Ortus as her cavalier so we know she's unbalanced. Her broken mind was literally writing an epic poem, The Noniad, and attributing it to Ortus. But think, instead of playing with her readers Tamsyn Muir could have instead written a better book. Instead there's this. Which will forever be a stumbling block to rereading this series.
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