Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

 

Harrow the Ninth follows Harrowhark, Ianthe, God, and his remaining Lyctors as they make a last ditch effort to save the Nine Houses from impending doom. For Harrowhark, being a Lyctor, and never having even finished the process, isn’t quite what she thought it would be. There’s rising tensions between the remaining Lyctors, who have been stuck together for over 10,000 years, and meeting someone she has worshiped for years, someone who is literally God, is not quite what she expected. On top of that, she can not stand the only other person who has any idea of what she’s going through. It’s a confusing book where the stories don't match up, there’s an unreliable narrator, and you barely understand what is happening for about 75% of the book. Despite all of that, I LOVED this book, I love it even more than Gideon the Ninth.

        Being able to read more about Harrow and her point of view, seeing how she thinks and acts compared to Gideon and the others was wonderful. It’s painful seeing everything she has gone through and all the guilt she carries for things that are absolutely outside of her control. She’s such a painful and traumatic character and I find it so easy to relate to her. She’s forced into this world that is nothing like she thought it would be and she has no other option, she has to succeed, otherwise the sacrifices her parents made were for nothing. Harrow wants nothing more than to be loved and accepted and she can’t even have that. Throughout the second book she is constantly deceived, degraded, and murdered (multiple times). Harrow is so angry. She’s angry at the world, at her parents, at God, at everything, and she has no outlet for it, she has no one. In this, we see that she and Gideon are so alike, they’re foils of each other, and they complete one another. 

        She did all of this to save Gideon because, as she says in the first book "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.” She tries so hard to keep Gideon when she knows that she can’t, and that is just absolutely heartbreaking. Especially when Gideon perceives this as Harrow trying desperately to get rid of her, “Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it.” It’s a tragic story with even more tragic characters and I can not wait to get through Nona the Ninth and for Alecto the Ninth to come out to see how these two end up. They’ve been through so much and they deserve to be happy, together.

        Overall, I’d give this book 5/5 stars. It’s confusing and heartbreaking and traumatizing, but I absolutely think it’s worth the read and highly recommend it.

Quotes

• Page 48
• Crux told her that her parents had been different, once. This must have been before they committed a little light child massacre.
• Page 49
• Then everything changed, abruptly, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.
• Page 51
• But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.
• Page 54
• She was Harrowhark alone in front of the mirror again: a nonsense, a monster, an alien geometry. A loathsome squawk of a person. She was nine, and she'd made a mistake. She was seventeen, and she'd made a mistake. Time had repeated itself. Harrow would be tripping over herself for her whole existence, a frictionless hoop of totally fucking up.
• There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.
• Page 121
• “She said, We had the choice to stop.”
• Page 141
• You loved God like a king, and you loved God like the promise of redemption, and you loved God like you weren't even sure what, you had loved so seldom.
• Page 160
• “You are afraid that your life has incurred a debt that your death will not pay.”
• Page 167
• “You have rendered yourself unlovable, Mercy,” said Augustine.
• Page 233
• “I don't come to you as Harrowhark the First,” your mouth said. “I come to you as a supplicant. I can't live like this. Lord, do I displease you, that you shield him and not me? I understand that I am a sharpened twig beside your keenest sword, but why do you suffer this twig to live? I can’t live this way. I cannot live this way. I have nowhere to go. I have nobody to turn to. I am a nonsense.”
• Page 347
• “I'd like to think that she would like you. You'd make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you'd been mine.”
• Page 355
• It meant so much that you would die with so many questions unanswered, would go to your unkind grave understanding absolutely jack shit.
• Page 391
• Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it.
• Page 401
• "I was, and am, a grown man, and you both were neglected children.”
• The problem was that she had never been a child; she and Gideon had become women before their time, and watched each other's childhood crumble away like so much dust.
• Page 458
• She had not said goodbye. Harrow so rarely got to say goodbye.
• Page 460
• "You're not waiting for her resurrection; you've made yourself her mausoleum."
• Page 498
• I was nothing but a chess move in a thousand-year game.