After many long weeks of putting it off, mostly to savor the anticipation but also because I started a book series, a TV series, and working my way through Dimension20, all on top of my usual pile of video games, podcasts, and YouTube series, I finally started reading Harrow the Ninth. I’ve had a lot of stuff to read or watch and I didn’t want to start on another book until I’d cleared some of that stuff off my to-do list, but I wound up getting into it because the past two weeks have been rough enough that I needed a NEW escape. Plus, I really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth and hoped that I’d be able to boost my incredibly low mood from the past three weeks by giving myself a bit of a treat. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple, since the second-person narration [which ultimately served a very specific purpose] was a bit too much for me to handle going into the book. I think I made it through about five chapters on my first attempt before I felt just too worn out by the book addressing me to continue reading. I can tell the writer, Tamsyn Muir, is trying for some kind of effect, but I’m not sure what it is yet and I’m not sure that it’s working since all I’m getting from it is confusion. I can only hope that it will resolve soon or that I’ll get past how weird it feels to me. Generally speaking, it’s one of those things that, as a reader and a writer, I can see the author is going for something but I can’t tell whether its just not landing for me or if they’re not doing a great job of it.

I’ll admit to a little bit of bias here since, personally, I’m not a fan of second-person writing except in very specific circumstances. I will also admit that I’ve been having a rough time lately and that, when my depression is this bad and I’m also so tired I can barely push myself to make dinner after a long day at work, reading second-person stuff really tips me towards disassociation in a way I don’t particularly enjoy. There’s days when it’s a real struggle to stay embodied when I’m this depressed and this worn out and reading through the second-hand narration of this book just tipped the scales into me losing touch with myself a bit. It was only mild disassociation, since I was able to pull back into myself with minimal effort, but it was still a pretty rough experience for a work night. I haven’t read anything since then [which isn’t saying much as only a day has passed], partly out of a desire to avoid losing myself to further disassociation, but also because the second-person narration makes an already confusing book even more confusing.

It was genuinely painful, at first, to sort through what was going on because the changing narration style (between second-person and third-person) also involved changes to what time period the story was happening in. There were also changes in what counted as “present day” that happened without changes to narration, many of which happened out of order and didn’t always happen with chapter breaks (though these tended to constitute shorter in-chapter time skips that had the misfortune of moving back and forth around other time skips from a chapter or two ago). All of this narration and time period changing would be difficult enough to follow on its own, but the story involves a significant change to the character of Harrow, the titular character that we met in the previous book, AND a massive change to the events of the previous book based on what I’ve read so far. Taken all together, the first seventy pages of this book felt nothing like the previous one. None of the characters felt the same, the world felt incredibly different (partly because of the change in environs and basic world rules for the protagonist that resulted from the conclusion of Gideon the Ninth), and I had a difficult time following it at all.

I intend to go finish the book, still. I’m curious enough that I want to carry on, but I’ll admit that I’m a little leery of my ability to follow along with and actually enjoy this book, thanks to my own precarious mental position right now. The writing, on a sentence-to-sentence level is similar to the last book, but it definitely feels like a bit of a sophomore slump overall. I really can’t tell if I’m the problem here (which I’d definitely own up to given the place I’m at, mentally-speaking) or if Muir was going for something that just didn’t work out but that, somehow, all editors and reviewers said was fine. I’d generally lean toward the former being the truth, but I also have a hard time giving the publishing industry a pass given how many poorly written fantasy books I’ve encountered. I’m more inclined to be hard on myself in this specific case since most of the books weighed down by too much description, too many florid details, or meandering, circuitous plots that are ultimately irrelevant are written by fairly well-established white men, which is a thing Tamsyn Muir is not, but I just don’t know. Maybe it’s one of those things that, when the twist gets revealed, it will secretly have been really cool or all of the weirdness of this second-person narration will make sense in a way that makes these painful early pages worth it.

I don’t know when I’m going to keep reading, so there’s no telling how long it will take me to circle back to all of this, but I’m really hoping this confusion and weirdness winds up having been worth it. Mostly just because I’m already frustrated with stories over the past year that everyone loves and that just seem poorly done to me in ways that feel obvious and glaring but apparently aren’t (I’m looking at you, Indie Game of the Year Sea of Stars). I really hope this one turns out to be a cool twist being hidden behind this format stuff and that the book will be worth the mild disassociation I’m going through to read it.