I had so very heavily osmosed that this book would be Not My Thing that I ended up spoiling myself for several major plot points (although not, as it turns out, most of them). Then I started reading it a couple of days ago as part of a survey of general "hookiness" of openings - and then I looked around and it was on my Kindle and it was 6 chapters later, so, uh.

Turns out it actually is very much my thing.

Except it still kind of isn't - I still don't care about necromancers or gloomy skeleton-filled catacombs in the slightest, this book is totally not my aesthetic, and I am actively grossed out by the necromancy and general bleeding from every orifice that accompanies it.

And yet I found the book riveting, and delightful, and occasionally hilarious, and even beautiful/numinous in unexpected ways. I'm not that enthused to read the sequel (see spoiler sections below) but I really enjoyed this one as a standalone thing. I know it's kind of based on Homestuck and I can definitely see that, and it also reminded me of Amber to a surprising degree, but actually what the style really reminded me of, more than anything else, was 1990s/early 2000s independent comics: the Goth aesthetic and random asides and tonally bonkers worldbuilding. I know this is exactly what is going to make this book not some people's cup of tea, and I get that, but this book kept reminding me of the way that indy comics artists back in the '90s would stick incongruous sight gags into the background of panels - silly labels on products, that kind of thing; it doesn't have to make sense, it's there to make the reader smile. This book is gonzo, bonkers, balls-to-the-wall "because the author wanted to"; it's a book that runs on pure id, and luckily I'm just in tune enough with the author's id to really enjoy it.


I think one of the reasons why this book carried me along so well is because I really, really liked Gideon. Her narrative voice is an absolute delight, and she's also very fundamentally sweet in a way that's pleasantly at odds with her sarcastic defensiveness and her horrible upbringing. I could pretty much tell that Gideon and Harrow were going to hit the particular button that Danny and Ward do (polar opposites who grew up together with a weirdly codependent mix of love and hate) and yep, they sure do, and the eventual payoff for that was glorious.

I knew going in that Gideon died - it was the main large spoiler I had; I actually was really surprised (because I thought I was massively spoiled for the book) that in fact, I knew almost none of the actual plot! I enjoyed the murder mystery, even though it started to get kind of numbing after a while as all the sympathetic characters around the protagonists were systematically killed off. However, one of the things I liked about the entire murder mystery part of the plot was that it was, on the whole, not a crapsack-world "everyone is secretly evil" kind of thing, which is what I was anticipating early on. But rather, the people who appeared to be decent people for the most part really were (with a notable exception, but as a veteran murder mystery reader I had her pegged as "definitely too good to be true and probably evil" very early on - I just didn't anticipate how much so, or in what ways), and although the later deaths really hurt, most of the characters got to go out bravely, helping and protecting each other, rather than backstabbing their friends which is kinda what I was expecting early on.

I've come to realize that one of the key features of whether I will "click" with a canon or not is the sense that I get of its underlying philosophy on the world. Does the author think the world is an endlessly terrible place in which people do nothing except betray and hurt each other? Probably not for me, then. But if there's a sense of - whatever the opposite of grimdark is; it doesn't even have to be optimism, it doesn't need clear good guys or a victory at the end or even anyone surviving at all, it just has to give me the feeling that the author thinks there are such things as courage and decency, and that these are things worth having, even if the world pushes back. No matter how dark the canon is, I need to feel as if the author doesn't hate their own characters and actually does want them to have nice things (even if they don't get them). And I certainly do get that feeling here.

I made a bunch of notes on my Kindle while I was reading because some of the book's twists and turns of phrase were just so delightful: a many-legged monstrosity described as "not as great nor as leggy as it had been before" after a run-in with Harrow; "the wall was already feeling pretty sorry for itself, and at this last insult it gave up entirely and collapsed"; "The conversation, which was terminal to start with, convulsed to a halt."; "She pulled her sunglasses out of the pocket of her robe and eased them on, which completed the effect, if the effect you wanted was 'horrible.'" For a book about dark, awful things, it was very funny and full of glee.

I remember seeing some reactions around that were basically "I was promised space lesbians and got THAT?" which is a reaction I, on the one hand, understand if you went in wanting HEA romance, because the book is very much not that and you are going to be disappointed if that's what you wanted. (Although I suspect Gideon is not gone for good given all the many ways this universe has of bringing people back, I also am not sure if there's an HEA romance waiting even if she does come back in some form.) On the other hand, for me, the tragic loyalty and the way the central relationship exists in a sort of sexual-yet-not liminal space hit my id square on. So I completely understand how this book would be disappointing to a certain set of expectations while also having gotten exactly what I wanted out of it. I wouldn't want it to change a single thing, but there you go, no book is going to please everyone.




I read the free preview part of Harrow the Ninth on my kindle after finishing Gideon, and ... hoo boy. So between Harrow generally coming across as a joyless, driven person with an absolutely depressing life, and losing her one friend at the end of Gideon, I wasn't sure how a Harrow-POV book was going to be anything other than a joyless, depressing slog. Turns out it is not only that, but even MORE of a joyless, depressing slog than I was expecting, at least based on the preview chapters. This is severely not helped along by the book having no characters I liked or cared about other than Harrow, and Harrow being suicidally depressed to the point of constant disassociating is just ... yeah ... this book would have to be incredibly fun and compelling to make up for that, and boy howdy is it not.

Specific spoiler: It is very clear that Harrow has either edited her own memories or (signs suggest) had Ianthe do it for her. I thought at first that it was simply that she was traumatically disassociating to the point where she didn't remember what had actually happened, but it looks like there's more going on than that. So I'm curious what actually is going on, but not currently curious enough to wade through what looks like a numbingly depressing book. Gideon's life was objectively pretty depressing, but it didn't really feel like it because her narrative voice was so upbeat and the book pretty quickly introduced some catnippy-for-me character dynamics. This book really does not do that.

For people who have read Harrow, does it get - for lack of a better word - more fun? If I'm bouncing off the early chapters because they're miserably unhappy and I don't particularly like anyone in them, is that likely to improve or is it a fairly accurate preview of what the entire book is like, or at least a significant portion of it?

EDIT: I think I know enough from the comments to know I want to read it. No further information, please - I think I'll enjoy discovering it on my own! And thank you for the answers!