Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: A Spoilers Book Review

HELLO FUTURE!
We're here to talk at you for 30 minutes to make sense of the puzzle box novel that is Harrow the Ninth. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a bowl of soup and lets talk this out.
Gideon the Ninth Playlist: open.spotify.c...
A really interesting article on Tor about Harrow the Ninth and fanfiction: www.tor.com/20...
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[@TomVeeTV]

I totally missed the whole blood under the nails detail as to why Harrow was able to open the tomb! Great review. Thank you.

[@travisminger9529]

Missed this as well!

[@gideonsleftwetbiceb]

"Marrow" is definitely my favourite line in the book lmao

[@rosiearnold1047]

Anyone else come here immediately after finishing the book and not knowing what on earth they’d just read?? I listened to the whole goshdarn 20 hour audiobook and y’all made the whole thing make sense in 30 minutes 🙃 thanks so much for this!!

[@sidhawker]

I think something about the audiobook format made this unusually difficult to absorb.

[@rosiearnold1047]

@@sidhawker ahhhh that makes a lot of sense!!! I think I need to commit to a re-read, I got the sense as I was listening that it was the kind of book that needed a few passes over 😆

[@JoshuaVogel79]

Yup. The plot points were clever, but the narrative structure was an absolute train wreck. The author tried something interesting, and it simply didn't work for a lot of us. I'm glad these two super fans were here to decode it for us.

[@No1fan15]

Took me a while to realize Wake's revenant stuck around after she died on the 9th and haunted the 2 hander since the first book. Like holy shit, is what why Gideon liked the sword so much? It held her mom's spirit? Bc once the sword stabs Cytherea Wake haunts her body so she had to already be in the sword.

[@osofine23]

The leader/founder of Blood of Eden, who is Gideon’s biological mother (unplanned… the Lyctors, Augustine and Merrymorn gave her God’s sperm and Mercymorn’s eggs to grow in one the now commonly used artificial wombs but the “EGGS ALL DIED” so she inseminated herself instead) is generally just known as “Wake” or “Commander Wake”. Which makes her name in Harrow’s River-bubble version of Canaan House, “The Sleeper” make a lot more sense. “The Sleeper” is “Wake”. Also, the poster that Harrow has trouble looking at in the Blood of Eden shuttle that contains Camilla, Coronabeth, and Judith is a poster of Wake (they all revere her… she’s the founder, a legendary warrior for the cause, and a martyr) who looks a lot like Gideon (as she is her mother) which is why it makes Harrow (who had deleted Gideon from her mind) uncomfortable. But yes, Wake’s full name is *Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity*. Lol!!

[@karenlikespie]

Thank you so much for this! I understood what was going on for the most part by the end of the book, but I was still pretty confused about wtf was going on with the old lyctors lol. I just about died at the part where Harrow makes soup!

[@DeathOfTheAuthorReviews]

Honestly the soup scene was one of my favourite parts of the book. One of our friends pointed out that it's even foreshadowed in Gideon the Ninth in a convo between Harrow and Gideon. - A

[@BlazingWookie]

100% agreed thank you both for making this review. Felt like I knew 95% of what was happening and the ending but you both just connected 2 plots points in the end that I should have seen straight away but I just didn’t close the loop on them both - so great! And love the theory about the sword, bet that’s going to be shown as true in the final book! Thanks!

[@fuelai831]

This is the best review of anybook on KZbin. I can't get enough of you two girls. Thank you for sharing.

[@Wapoose]

Hope to see a review of Nona the Ninth from y'all once it's out! Your Locked Tomb videos are so fun.

[@jamiemoffa2919]

I thought 'Wake Me Up Inside' was a John joke and not actually part of Wake's name.

[@melissa.tmordi7767]

When he said her part of her name was Snap Back to Reality I physically threw the book 🤣

[@expansivegymnast1020]

@@melissa.tmordi7767 it was COMPLETELY unexpected

[@TomerArmarnik]

Thank you for the great review, very illuminating and managed to clear many of the weirder quirky points of the book for me.

[@ad45376]

Fun review, but a few corrections as a heads up, the revenant planets were created during the resurrection, the emperor used their energy to bring everyone back after the original apocalypse. The reason gideon's sword makes herro sick is because it was also the physical anchor for awake's soul before she jumped ship into kithera's body.

[@3IruAW]

I'm halfway through this review and you guys are hilarious, enjoying it very much. Also I keep having to pause and look up names' spellings because I've only listened to the audiobook and I have never heard of half the characters you mention! Now I'm contemplating all the different ways people all around the world must be pronouncing these weird ass names, lol

[@cardsmcgee]

i damn near shit myself when gideon resurfaced. what a moment!

[@SometimesMagii]

English is not my mother tongue but the local library only has the english version + i dont think a german translation existed yet? Anyway ive finished the book and i was just confused. Im glad that you guys are also confused at the end and that not everything has been explained because i truly thought i must have not understood a single thing because of the language barrier 😂 though i really didnt understand how harrow opened the tomb and how gideon was conceived, and why she put marrow into the soup (but it was truly funny to Think, its because she was so sleep deprived that she thought that was a good idea). Thanks so much for clearing that up!

[@nc2239]

I've never loved a review more in my life 🖤💀

[@gianmmcallavendano9137]

Finally! I had been looking for someone for a long time to explain the mental chaos in which Tamsyn transformed my brain with this book. Because I think I understood, but it feels like "I didn't understand what I understood...", well, something like that. Hahahahha.

[@tylerclark9822]

Thank you so much for the recap. I just finished the book and was very confused about several things. This helped lol.

[@No1fan15]

I know it's been 2 years but I'd love to see your thoughts on Nona the Ninth

[@gilesclone]

Something important you left out. Towards the end of the book, Harrow becomes powerful enough to destroy planets (which they do because it provides powerful magic energy and to keep the Revenant Beasts from getting that energy). Harrow then meets Camilla, which is confusing, because she is certain Camilla is dead. She helps Camilla with Sextus who is dead, but stuck in his skull. But then she meets Caronabeth and Deuteros, whom she also was certain were dead. (And humorously they have a poster of Gideon on the wall that Harrow doesn’t recognize). I would wager these 3 women are the caretakers of the unnamed narrator of the epilogue. (We know Camilla is one of them). Since these 3 are working for the resistance, it’s likely the narrator (Alecto?) will be involved with the resistance as well.

[@laurabrendel9584]

I think the poster is not of Gideo but of Commander Wake

[@gilesclone]

@@laurabrendel9584 The story was in second person except when Gideon was awake, then it switched to first person. That would only make sense if Gideon was the narrator

[@osofine23]

(Palamedes) Sextus is not stuck in his skull, his soul is stuck in a bubble in The River (which for some reason only has one really bad romance novel, which Palamedes in his boredom is starting to write a fanfic sequel to on the walls) and he needs a working, movable part of his body to inhabit but all that’s left of him are skull fragments. So Camilla gives Harrow the bone fragments and Harrow (who can now basically sculpt bone as if it were clay) turns it into Palamedes arm and hand (which he will presumably be able to write with and communicate with Cam) for Pal to inhabit. Harrow offers to remake his entire skeleton (because she can also take a piece of bone from someone’s skeleton and read it (or it reads itself?) like a blueprint that the growing bone can follow (this was how she made Ianthe’s arm). Can says no to a whole skeleton, because she still needs to keep him hidden, which would be hard to do if he was full size (instead, he’s fun size!). Ack! I hope that explains that! It’s also important because just as Palamedes created a bubble in The River (which he did on purpose… that’s why his last words in Gideon were, “Cam knows what to do,” because they had discussed various ways to evade death and in this case, Cam knew to gather as many of his bones as possible and find a necromancer or Lyctor who could do what Harrow did), everything that was happening in Harrow’s “version” of what happened at Canaan House is also happening in a bubble, in which she has drawn all of the dead souls from the real version (what we read in Gideon) and which starts falling apart, especially at the end (when she has to *let* all of the souls leave, many to join the fight against Number 7). All of that gross rain in Harrow’s version of Canaan House is the River leaking in. What I’m really curious about (and Nona didn’t touch on) is what (I think… now I can’t find it, of course) Abigail said sometime before she left Harrow’s bubble, “There’s something wrong with the River.” If anyone picked up on that and has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

[@CyberdarkHellKaiser]

Revenant planets are made from the souls of killed planets, the emperor killed nine planets to make the houses.

[@SamA-sr1bp]

You guys did a great job explaining this crazy book!

[@haileygrace1924]

Are you guys coming back to KZbin I miss your vids

[@DeathOfTheAuthorReviews]

We are going to try to come back for Nona.

[@matthewhillman9659]

You made me want to keep reading the book

[@anawieder5003]

Just finished Gideon and loved it but found it a bit hard to follow. Now I don’t know if I’m up for the sequel because I don’t think I’ve ever said “the fuck” so many times in a video

[@elinatural2058]

"she can't lyctor" ... i'm sure gideon would have a very crass joke to make about this lmao

[@noraodonnell2999]

WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS SHIRT

[@DeathOfTheAuthorReviews]

I bought it at Fan Expo a few years ago. But the seller also has an online store! Here you go! nat21workshop.com/products/reduce-reuse-reanimate-t-shirt - A

[@kyraschwartz6284]

Oh my God thank you for this breakdown

[@agardner4264]

Omg this is all so insane!!!

[@DeathOfTheAuthorReviews]

It really is! I'm going to have to reread it soon because I feel like there's so much that I missed! - A