Harrow the Ninth
2020
- fiction, science fiction, action & adventure
- fiction, fantasy, epic
- fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy
- paranormal
- necromancy
- lgbtq science fiction & fantasy
- women authors
- witches
- fiction
- magic
The story
"She answered the Emperor's call. She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend. In victory, her world has turned to ash. After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath ― but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her. Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?"
What it’s like
Dense, claustrophobic prose that reads like a locked-room puzzle crossed with a gothic cathedral: long, ornate sentences heavy with archaic formality, sly dry wit, and sudden jolts of body horror and bone-level gore. The sensory world is decaying and candlelit, all cold stone corridors, mildewed velvet, sickly sweetness and the rot of the dead, with a sense of vast imperial machinery grinding behind every door. Its vibe is gothic and feverish, a sardonic dark-academic mystery with a cruelly funny edge. The pace is slow in its interior passages and then abruptly violent, with frequent swerves into spiralling self-doubt and hallucinatory confusion. The violence is frequent and graphic, including gore, bodily decay, and dismemberment, while sexual content is limited and the fear is largely psychological and unsettling. Two embittered, prickly women slowly come to a fraught, intensely loyal understanding, and the emotional register swings between grief, rage and grim tenderness. It suits readers who want a mind-bending, puzzle-driven gothic space opera with sharp humour, a tolerance for disorientation and a strong stomach for gore, and it is not a gentle or cosy read.
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