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sophia_sol) wrote2020-11-09 06:02 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-11-09 06:02 pm
Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
As with Gideon the Ninth, it took a long time of reading before I got invested in Harrow the Ninth. But it was even longer for HtN -- I was well over halfway through before I really started caring. The thing is, I find Tamsyn Muir to be a charismatic writer with interesting ideas, but that can only take a person so far!
A lot of the book is about Harrow just sort of....drifting along and reacting to things as they happen, without any particular wants or goals or anything. And there are some very good plot-relevant reasons why this is the case, but I think it gets in the way of helping the reader find reasons to care to keep reading, when the viewpoint character you're reading about doesn't seem to care about much of anything or anyone. There's no narrative or emotional drive, no "can't want to see what happens next!"
Anyway eventually things started feeling more interesting and relevant to me, and I started caring a bunch, and I think when I compare the parts of GtN I was invested in vs the parts of HtN I was invested in, HtN works for me SO much more. It's less directly a horror novel (though there's still uhhhh plenty of gore), and there were fewer major player characters for me to keep track of so it was less confusing. And also it's a book about a) a complicated relationship between two queer women which is EXTREMELY important to both of them, and b) Let's Kill God And Destroy The Empire. Two great tastes that taste great together! Gideon and Harrow's relationship with each other is AMAZING and I love it. And God definitely needs someone to fight him. I want to fight him!
ALSO. God and his Lyctors are a small collection of extremely elderly immortals who are terrible people who are very weird about each other, and Highlander may have primed me for this one because I was into this a whole bunch.
AND I had so many feelings about how Ortus's terrible terrible poem became like, a vital part in accomplishing a thing that needed to be done, that his sheer passion for it could bend the whole world, this poor dour stubborn man who is not made to be a cavalier at all but will always do what's needed.
AND Abigail Pent!!! What a delightful nerd.
(also please tell me that somewhere on the internet someone has created at least a part of Palamedes Sextus's fanfic sequel of The Necromancer's Marriage Season because omg)
It is too bad though that I don't care about like, more than half of this book. That's a lot to slog through in order to get to the good parts. Sigh. WELL I am geared up for Alecto the Ninth and can't want to find out how it all ends!
Some misc final thoughts: Muir has successfully taught me a new word, I've never come across "tergiversation" before; this book reads in places like its author is someone for whom the Sabriel-Lirael-Abhorsen books were formative; yep the memes were indeed rather jarring, at least the ones I was able to notice/recognise.
A lot of the book is about Harrow just sort of....drifting along and reacting to things as they happen, without any particular wants or goals or anything. And there are some very good plot-relevant reasons why this is the case, but I think it gets in the way of helping the reader find reasons to care to keep reading, when the viewpoint character you're reading about doesn't seem to care about much of anything or anyone. There's no narrative or emotional drive, no "can't want to see what happens next!"
Anyway eventually things started feeling more interesting and relevant to me, and I started caring a bunch, and I think when I compare the parts of GtN I was invested in vs the parts of HtN I was invested in, HtN works for me SO much more. It's less directly a horror novel (though there's still uhhhh plenty of gore), and there were fewer major player characters for me to keep track of so it was less confusing. And also it's a book about a) a complicated relationship between two queer women which is EXTREMELY important to both of them, and b) Let's Kill God And Destroy The Empire. Two great tastes that taste great together! Gideon and Harrow's relationship with each other is AMAZING and I love it. And God definitely needs someone to fight him. I want to fight him!
ALSO. God and his Lyctors are a small collection of extremely elderly immortals who are terrible people who are very weird about each other, and Highlander may have primed me for this one because I was into this a whole bunch.
AND I had so many feelings about how Ortus's terrible terrible poem became like, a vital part in accomplishing a thing that needed to be done, that his sheer passion for it could bend the whole world, this poor dour stubborn man who is not made to be a cavalier at all but will always do what's needed.
AND Abigail Pent!!! What a delightful nerd.
(also please tell me that somewhere on the internet someone has created at least a part of Palamedes Sextus's fanfic sequel of The Necromancer's Marriage Season because omg)
It is too bad though that I don't care about like, more than half of this book. That's a lot to slog through in order to get to the good parts. Sigh. WELL I am geared up for Alecto the Ninth and can't want to find out how it all ends!
Some misc final thoughts: Muir has successfully taught me a new word, I've never come across "tergiversation" before; this book reads in places like its author is someone for whom the Sabriel-Lirael-Abhorsen books were formative; yep the memes were indeed rather jarring, at least the ones I was able to notice/recognise.