Harrow the Ninth

I’m still so, so confused but I could not stop thinking about this book.

the only reason it's not getting 5 stars from me is because my brain is too feeble to understand some of it but the more often u read it the better it gets im sure

Three things: 1. Tamsyn Muir's writing style is to die for 2. This book is gonna make you question everything you knew happened in [b:Gideon the Ninth|42036538|Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546870952l/42036538._SY75_.jpg|60943229], which is really stressful, but in a good way 3. WHO WRITES MOST OF A BOOK IN SECOND PERSON AND MAKES ME LIKE IT?? Surprisingly, #3 is part of the reason for #1 (which I never thought possible). I normally can't stomach a second-person POV for more than a short story or a single chapter and as such thought that every book written in this way would be one I'd put down after the first few pages. But by being told in second-person POV, which stands in stark contrast to how [b:Gideon the Ninth|42036538|Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546870952l/42036538._SY75_.jpg|60943229] was told and to how most books are told, this book starts off directly with the feeling that something is wrong. And soon enough the narrator confirms this by deviating sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly from the way things happened in the previous book. I found myself asking who of the two narrators was the unreliable one. More and more things don't add up, characters react in ways that suggests that it might be the current narrator that's unreliable, and you start to have theories about what happened between the two books and who the narrator is. You're most likely right, but the narrator will continue to make you doubt (at least that's what happened to me). When there are the shifts to third person narration, you'll find yourself relaxing, thinking it'll add up, but it still doesn't, now in a different way. And the other characters besides Harrow start saying along with you: "This is not how it happens." This is distressing, but all adds up to the picture that something went wrong after [b:Gideon the Ninth|42036538|Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546870952l/42036538._SY75_.jpg|60943229] and you want to know what it is that went wrong. Besides portraying the wrongness and the distress of the situation Harrow finds herself in, the use of "you" makes one question if there is a complementary "me". Is this really just a narrative device to convey these feelings you're meant to feel with the protagonist, or is there more to this narration that's relevant to the plot. The reveal that there is a "me" and the later reveal of who they are, and that they're actually a first-person narrator was so well done. The delivery of it rendered it nearly more distressing than the lack of the "me" and "I" pronouns before, and I loved how we got gradually introduced to the idea, even if by then it was already clear that it was Gideon talking. I found the narration in [b:Gideon the Ninth|42036538|Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546870952l/42036538._SY75_.jpg|60943229] hilarious, and even though Harrow the Ninth leans into the distress its main character is feeling, this remains and gets more pronounced towards the end. For all intents and purposes, half the humor shouldn't work though. Both books are so riddled with meme and internet culture references that I usually would get annoyed at and roll my eyes about, they were incorporated so naturally that during [b:Gideon the Ninth|42036538|Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546870952l/42036538._SY75_.jpg|60943229] I discounted the possibility that these references were deliberate. Only in this book (when one of the characters said "none houses with left grief") did I have to face that no, these memes and internet culture things I noticed were in fact put there on purpose. As a conclusion, this may have just become my new favourite book and I can't wait for [b:Alecto the Ninth|39325106|Alecto the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3)|Tamsyn Muir|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|60943284] to be published.