Whatever You're Expecting, 'Harrow The Ninth' Is Not That Kind Of Book

Whatever You're Expecting, 'Harrow The Ninth' Is Not That Kind Of Book You know how sometimes people say, Oh, it's okay. Seriously awesome, because the coolest thing about it was that we got to see it all and experience it all through the aviator-shaded eyes of Gideon Nav, unwilling cavalier of the Ninth House, who kicked ass, took names, always had a dirty joke handy and so loved her icy, genius Ninth House necromancer, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, that she ultimately gave her life to turn Harrow into a Lyctor — a kind of superhero bodyguard and magical ghost assassin working at the right hand of the undying God-emperor of Muir's expansive, creaking world. Where 'Gideon' was the story of a deadly, dashing cavalier gallivanting around a spooky space mansion fighting monsters, 'Harrow' is about the survivor's guilt and homicidal coping mechanisms of a moody, paranoid, hallucinating and immensely powerful teenaged necromancer. Because where Gideon was the story of a deadly, dashing cavalier gallivanting around a spooky space mansion fighting monsters, Harrow is about the survivor's guilt and homicidal coping mechanisms of a moody, paranoid, hallucinating and immensely powerful teenaged necromancer so profoundly damaged by her Lyctoral transformation that her fundamental understanding of what happened in the first book is completely shattered. Muir uses a hundred tricks to lay down the tone and temper of Harrow's damage: messed-up timeframes, character swaps, revisionist history, secret letters, talking with ghosts, hallucination both auditory and visual, split narration that switches from a tight third-person narration in the past — during Harrow's version of the events of the first book — to an absolutely claustrophobic second person for her time post-transformation, while ostensibly training to defend God and the universe from some super-nasty space ghosts and, finally, a revelatory first person once Harrow's madness begins to resolve.