There will be spoilers for Gideon The Ninth and Harrow The Ninth in this review, starting in the third full-sized paragraph. There will also be some minor hints at spoilers in the second full-size paragraph, so tread with caution.

Well, I finished Harrow The Ninth. You’re probably reading this a day after I wrote about my initial impressions of the second book in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, but it has been two days since I wrote that. I was too busy on Friday to write a blog post during my breaks at work and then far too tired to write anything once I finished. So, since I was burned out, exhausted, mentally drained, depressed, and incapable of determining if anything would actually be fun, I decided to toss aside my reservations (and cautions) about reading Harrow the Ninth in my current mental state and dove in. Eight hours later, it was half past three in the morning and I’d finished the book. I didn’t exactly disassociate my way through the book, but I basically did. Time left no impression on me and not in the way that happens when I get sucked into a book most of the time. This was a new one for me. It wasn’t a negative experience or anything like that–I actually wound up liking Harrow the Ninth more than I thought I would–but I definitely wasn’t really in control of myself. I didn’t really feel like I could pull myself out of this weird mental state. Normally, I forget that I’m reading at all and don’t even think to stop. This time, I just couldn’t stop. It was like I lacked the agency to stop, which kinda fits with the whole “mild disassociation” thing I had going on.

Overall, it’s a decent sequel. It’s not the strong contender that Gideon the Ninth was, but it also avoided the major flaw I mentioned in my review of that book. Instead of an odd moment or a bit of character development that took me out of the book, Harrow the Ninth kept up a confusing mixture of timelines and narrative positions, jumping between various “present” moments as we danced around a moment teased at the beginning of the story and between these present moments and the protagonist’s recollections of the story that took place in the previous novel. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the protagonist seems incredibly different from the character we met in the first novel and who we left behind in its final pages, all to the degree that I felt like something had happened to drastically change her. Turns out something had happened, but we only find out what happened at the end of the novel, in the last few chapters, as the “neutral” second person narration finally resolves into a familiar character voice. Which is also when the story reveals to the readers why, for over four hundred pages, there have been chapters addressed to “you.”

As it turns out, all the second-person narration has been coming from the point of view of Gideon, who has been stuck somewhere within the titular Harrow, a position created by Harrow who wanted to preserve Gideon’s soul which had become attached to her (by Gideon’s choice) to complete a personal transformation that would allow Harrow to defeat the person responsible for all of the murders that had been happening in what was supposed to be a safe (for half the group, anyway) retreat to study said personal transformation. I get it. I understand why this second person narration was an important aspect of this book, meant to hint at something being relayed to someone rather than the limited third person narration we’d had before. It makes even more sense when you consider that, for the most part, Gideon was our perspective character from the first book and, since she wasn’t gone, we continued to see the world through her eyes. I don’t think it worked because, when this fact is supposed to come to light, the style of narration drastically shifts from the fairly neutral tone it had held up to that point to the one we were familiar with from the first book. There’s some comments from Gideon that she had a hard time being aware of what was going on, but it doesn’t really feel like an actual explanation for the sudden and drastic change in narratorial voice since we were supposedly seeing things from the perspective of this character during every single one of these second-person chapters.

I know the author wanted to keep this as a secret to unveil as a twist in the end, but the confusion stemming from how weird the protagonist and narration are, on top of the strange revisionist history we’re subjected to in the flashbacks we get (which was a side effect of what Harrow did to preserve Gideon), was really off-putting. I don’t think I’d have read it as quickly if I hadn’t gotten stuck in reading mode when I took leave of myself the night I read it. I’d probably have read it in smaller chunks and maybe even given up because I wouldn’t have had enough inertia to push through the parts I wasn’t really enjoying, but I might have also had an easier time of understanding and staying engaged with what was going on if I’d been in a better place, mentally speaking, even if I wouldn’t have enjoyed it more. It was a risky gamble that just did not pay off in my opinion. I’m sure there are people out there who enjoyed this strange twisting of the world (since all of this is a matter of opinion), but it really did not work for me and has put me off diving into the third one. I probably will, eventually, but I’m a lot less excited at the idea than I was previously. Plus, it just felt a little bit weaker overall. I didn’t really care for most of the new characters the way I did in the first novel and felt nothing as they lived or died. I will give the book credit for making me care a huge amount about Harrow, though, who I extremely did not like until almost the end of the first book and that took no small amount of skill.

Some of the disappointment I feel about the story overall might be a result of the weird mental cloud that separated the me that is my experience of the world from the me that is my physical body carrying out the orders of that other me, but even thinking back through it since then, when I’ve had more sleep and feel more mentally clear, has me feeling somewhat dismayed at what felt like an incredibly interesting story stuck behind a layer of narration I just could not deal with. A lot of second books are a bit of a struggle. It’s difficult to write a book and even more difficult to write a second book, especially if they’re supposed to be sequential. I really hope Muir continues to write since I’ve enjoyed her books overall. I’d still give this book a B- if I had to grade it and a B+ if it was somehow less confusing, so its not like the book is bad (no grade inflation here. Books with a grade of A- or higher are a very rare thing in my estimation). It was just a lot to deal with as a reader who was exhausted and a little bit out of their mind while they read it. However, if you haven’t read it and you aren’t exhausted or a little bit out of your mind, I’d recommend picking up the series. Definitely start with the first one, though, and then move on to the second, because I can’t imagine how much more confusing the second one would be without the foundation of the first book to fall back on.

With a little more time to think through this (and some edits made to better reflect my more settled feelings), I think it was an interesting stab at something incredibly difficult to do well. I think I might have picked up on what Muir was trying to do more quickly if I hadn’t been so mentally burned to a crisp when I read the book, but I still don’t think it landed for me. I’m excited at the idea of Muir continuing to play with perspective, point of view, and a narratorial voice confined to a character’s perspective (since unreliable narrators contradicting things we know are true from past stories seems like a really fun thing to do), but I really hope none of it involves so much second-person narration. Its just not for me and I would really like it if this series was something I could whole-heartedly embrace. If you disagree with my assessment, that’s fine. I’m sure plenty of people love this and I think Muir absolutely should keep trying things that aren’t conventional or that feel strange. I just, personally, did not enjoy the storytelling mechanics of a bit more than half of this story and I’m fine if this is just one of those things that worked for everyone else but me.