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starberry-cupcake · 24 days

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Me reading this book is like trying to pin things to a cork board with red thread but the things I'm trying to pin down are fog and they vanish before I can grasp them.

Here's a visual representation of me finishing a chapter:

previously, in harrowbeenie the ninth:

this happened

currently, after chapter 5 (you're gonna have to be patient with this one):

we're moving back and forth between the second and third person

knowing now the content of the letters that yandere twin had talked about in the prologue, it makes some sense

but we aren't there yet

I need to point out something I don't think I specified enough last time

ice cube barbie changed eyes

people be changin' eyes here

she used to have eyes like harrow and now she has, and I quote: "ever since you had writhed in Lyctoral agony, her eyes had turned a yellow that made you dizzy to behold: a bronzed, hot, animal yellow, as amber as the inside of an egg"

this is from gideon's last ch.: "Gideon's eyes, as they always did, startled her: their deep, chromatic amber, the startling hot gold of freshly-brewed tea"

just gonna leave that there

but now, moving forward...or backwards to ch. 3 flashback of sorts

we got a recap of most of the events we knew, but in a gideon-less ver.

I'm gonna also point out that harrowbean mentions her mother holding her wrist the same way she said ice cube barbie did when they were in the coffin hangar

another addition to the clown emperor's story is that the Resurrection is described in harrow's memories as "ten thousand years ago had given them all release from death that none of them had deserved"

I don't know about any of this

we've got a disturbance in the force when harrow describes her parents finding out about the tomb thing

it says "her parents had...found out...about what she had done"

interesting edit of the story there

there's a gideon-sized hole in this story

there's also an interesting new count of nooses??

she says they tied five, two for mortus (???) but in gideon's book she said they tied their own nooses and then helped her tie hers, what's up with mortus having two??? is this nothing and I'm just obsessing about every detail???

I'm gonna start seeing palmolive's force ghost roaming around my house

at the end of ch. 3 it says "there had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born"

this is a VERY INTERESTING wording

if someone dies before you are born, they can't grow up with you

UNLESS

I'm not gonna dwell on that yet

let's put a pin on that

ch. 4 has the re-apparition of yandere twin

*live studio audience cheers, maybe*

she gives her a letter addressed to her from her

the letter has a lot of instructions of things she doesn't remember at all and also are supposed to be opened at specific times/events

one of them says "in the event of the emperor's death"

another says it's in case she sees regina george twin, which makes a whole argument happen and knives are used to settle it

yandere twin will not hear someone imply her sister might be no longer with us

she probably isn't dead, this I know for certain, people wouldn't be confusing my names for them if that was all we got from her

the most important letter, though, is the one in case she sees camilla, who harrow claims not having interacted with ever

this is a very important thing to note, but most importantly, CAMILLA MENTION

very important to be noting who harrow remembers interacting with and who she doesn't

very important as well that she remembers yandere twin losing an arm in battle but does not remember gideon or camilla

I haven't mentioned it yet but, in the letter, past!harrow tells present!harrow that she needs to check yandere twin's tongue and lower mandibule

to which I think to myself "I bet she's gonna kiss her"

and that she did

which makes me want an edition of this book but with gideon commentary

like a dvd commentary but it's gideon commenting on all this stuff

and cracking jokes

because I bet she'd be cracking jokes about this

remember when she joked that yandere twin would marry mayonnaise uncle?

and then both harrow and mayonnaise uncle were like "ew the third's magic is weird"

imagine if she saw this display

another CRUCIAL thing is that harrow is doing like an oath to yandere twin as requested by past!harrow

and she says "by the ripped and remade soul of ortus nigenad"

and yandere twin goes "who? oh, yes—the cavalier"

I mean, mood at not remembering the names, but also SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR

she also tells present!harrow "I gave you something you cared about very deeply at the time"

side note, there is yet another moment in which chad is read for filth

get obliterated even in undeath, chad

last detail from this chapter is that harrowbean almost gets assassinated

maybe I should have started with that

at this point there's so much going on, death seems like a normal one

so yeah, she's gonna get killed with a pillow to the face and then she defends herself and discovers at the end of the chapter that she didn't hallucinate the whole thing and it was hidden from her on purpose that somebody tried to end her

so what's the point in being in this clown death star and surviving big brother canaan house if you can't even sleep peacefully???

moving on to chapter 5

remember the timeline I was making?

yeah, about that

chapter 5, in the third person continuity, establishes that what I saw previously was not necessarily a memory but an au memory

if we can call it something at this point

so my calculations were made as if the timeline was one

but this is not one timeline, it's a sort of parallel gideon-less one

of course my heart is making me believe the gideon-less one is the one that isn't real

and that past!harrow might know what's going on with that

maybe gideon's existence needs to be protected

maybe the emperor doesn't have to know about her

(I'm still holding on to the gideon hope, leave me alone)

but, in any case, present!harrow doesn't know

let's remember the prologue begun with harrow doing something she shouldn't and yandere twin saying something like "was there something in those letters I don't know about?"

I'm just gonna have to throw my timeline in the trash and start over with multiple timelines for now

ALSO, I didn't say anything about it yet, but it's mentioned that harrow is "in love" with ice cube barbie

take that as you will

which is another joke gideon has made in the past and would be stellar in a commentary of this

and, talking about things gideon would be awesome at commenting

in the new ortus-inclusive (?) narrative, ortus is talking about the epic of Matthias Nonius, who we know because harrow has compared gideon to him in the past

and also there's is a comment made about how ortus looks down on people who read "prurient magazines or pamphlets"

I really need gideon confessionals commentary over here

she also says that "the ninth house character, she was forced to admit, had always been low on wild and confident fucks"

yeah, well, how about that

and we end with THE FLIMSY

lots of important flimsies in this

she finds a note that reads "THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME"

ortus says he can't read it

but, in any case,

that made me stop in my tracks because I was reminded I forgot about the writing on the walls of canaan house?????

I filed it under canaan house weirdness but then, it was never talked about?????? again????

also the paper gideon found with her name

which I assumed was addressing the other gideon that not!dulcinea mentioned knowing

but who tf knows at this point

who knows what time and space are anymore

time to leave it for today...this is getting wild, you guys

#luly reacts to tlt #tlt spoilers #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb #long post #gif cw #me looking for that scene of Kim just to make that gif #I need to start making these shorter istg

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liesmyth · 4 months

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There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.

#FEELING THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF DEATH AND MOURING AND THE HORRORS OF LOVE IN THIS CHILI'S TONIGHT #GNAWING AT MY PILLOW. SCRATCHING AT THE WALLS #tlt #htn #tlt quotes

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lemon-natalia · 28 days

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Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 3

Harrow’s being referred to as a ‘Nona’ here - given the title of the next book, that’s very intriguing.

i … honestly don’t know whether it would have been better or worse to keep the secret of Harrow’s birth from her and have her find out such an awful secret later. but still so very fucked up that they told her about it in so much detail at such a young age

aww baby Harrow reading necromancy books for fun by the lantern-light

interesting to get a slightly softer view of Crux here, who seems to have been a pretty big presence in young!Harrow’s life

the image of Harrow’s dad reading to their family is a little wholesome i guess?

having her first and lifelong crush being a corpse is very on-brand for Harrow. this book rivals Dracula for how much it likes talking about how hot a dead body is

i'm very intrigued by the fact that everyone seems to think opening the Locked Tomb is a death sentence, but then … it wasn’t. nothing seemed to happen at all, which begs the question of why everyone thought it would in the first place

just noting now that the girl was holding a sword, which has so far been associated with cavaliers. is she the mysterious ‘A.L.’, the emperor’s ‘guardian’. hmm. ooh or is ‘A.L’ something to do with Alecto?

and Harrow apparently personally raised all the skeletons that were working in the fields of the Ninth, i just find that an interesting little detail

‘she had gathered up the matter of Ortus Nigenad’s soul’ HARROW THINKS ORTUS WAS HER CAVALIER!?? she doesn’t remember Gideon’s sacrifice?? does she remember anything that happened between her and Gideon? whaaaat

‘There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow - but she had died before Harrow was born’ is this meant to be saying Harrow thinks Gideon died before she was born, or is it about the Locked Tomb body?

#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb #the locked tomb liveblog #harrow the ninth

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 months

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“she had gathered up the matter of Ortus Nigenad’s soul and not been able to choke him all the way down” “there had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born”

#htn #tlt #I love being confused and not knowing shit this is so fun #<- that’s genuine btw #predictable stories can get tedious #and while book one #at least on a first read #wasn’t horribly predictable it wasn’t all that out there #but again. that one was also clearly set up #so very excited to be out through the ringer it’s my favorite kind of book #I was to be horribly confused and edged and desperate #please

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lilyliveredlittlerichboy · 8 months

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She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her House; she was the first Harrowhark.

Namedrop!! This gives me a small, tenuous hope, that Harrow might actually survive this book. I'm not hoping too much. But a little.

None of this had been kept from her. It had been explained to Harrow, year after year, right from the time she knew both when to speak and when to not. This skill came early to Ninth House infants.

I'm going to beat Harrow's parents with a stick for putting her through that. How fucking dare they.

Then everything changed, abruptly, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.

...oh, no, of course, not Gideon. The girl in the tomb, of course, of course.

None of this would have broken Harrow’s spirit except that the mouth alone was perfectly imperfect: a little crooked, with a divot in the lower lip as though someone had softly pressed a dent into the bow with the tip of their finger. Harrow, who had been born for the sole privilege of worshipping this corpse, loved it wildly from sight.

Much like love in the living. Perfection does not hold attention well; it is the little imperfections which capture the heart.

How very Harrow, to fall in love with a dead girl.

She prayed often. Her brain took refuge in rituals. Sometimes she fasted, or ate the same thing for every meal, arranged in a specific pattern on her plate, consumed in the same order, for months on end.

Autistic Harrow. Perhaps schizophrenic. Probably both.

The only viable source of healthy XY had been located in her House’s cavalier primary, a boy seventeen years her elder.

So Ortus was only seventeen years older than Harrow. I have my theories as to why he was spared when all the kids were killed - it may have been as boring as "well, the House needed a boy to keep alive any chance of ever repopulating". Though, it was never meant to be:

Thankfully, their marriage would have mingled the Drearburh cavalier and scion lines beyond any hope of repair: Ortus Nigenad was an only child. Harrowhark had her parents quash the idea so enthusiastically that she cracked her father’s molar. The only virgin who could possibly be more relieved was Ortus himself.

No one at the Ninth likes sex very much, it seems, (aside from Gideon and her filthy magazines).

and with incontrovertible suggestions that Harrowhark really ought to marry this son of the Second, or this daughter of the Fifth-

Oh interesting! There seems to be some Gender Stuff going on here. (Eyes the necromancer-cavalier gender essay which I've been sent and have bookmarked for later reading) Unless it's not about reproduction in this case, but being gay is perfectly normal? Probably being trans is perfectly normal also? We just don't know.

Harrow seems to be under the impression that Ortus remained her Cavalier until the very end, until -

There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.

Yeah, there's definitely something fucky and weird going on with Harrow's memories. Unless all of Gideon the Ninth was fake, a dream - this isn't that type of story, though, I don't think.

Didn't Harrow say, right at the beginning, almost pityingly;

"Oh Griddle, I don't even remember about you half the time."

Didn't she say that? What if it wasn't just scorn; what if it wasn't just said to hurt and dismiss Gideon; what if it was actually true?

Damn, Harrow might be even more messed up than I thought.

I love her and want to protect her forever.

#i need a tag for my own rambles #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth liveblog #htn liveblog #tlt liveblog #htn spoilers #tlt spoilers #the locked tomb

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eerna · 1 year

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"there had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow---but she had died before Harrow was born" oh my god theres time travel in the space grim reaper books???

Not at all :333 Wow I wonder what other explanation there is for that insane line :3333333 I wonder so much :3333333333333

#eernask #eernanon #eernask talk tlt #listen anon i get u for a while i thought there was time travel too #(feared actually because i hate time travel stories)

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emotionsandphenomena · 7 months

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i love that harrowhark, in both the end of gtn and in epiparodos, is fundamentally opposed to lyctorhood. I think this is because of Gideon and her love and respect for her, yes, but I think it's also because she has a unique righteousness about the horrifying reality of using the souls of others as a furnace of power. she has lived that reality her entire life, and moreover, she has understood that reality as a "war crime, a wrong thing." however, interestingly, this inherent understanding of the wrongness of lyctorhood is not present in the harrow on the mithraeum. she is disturbed for sure by the casualness everyone else accepts it with, for sure, but there is no fight in her about it. this feeds into my theory that harrow, remembering Gideon, has more personality - their intelligence and humor were honed on the whetstone of constantly fighting each other. the harrow who had only "another girl who grew up alongside her, but she'd died before harrow was born", only that fractured hole in the space where Gideon should've been... she got a lifetime of self-hatred and perseverance and distant worship of the body. there was no one else to hate, nothing to motivate her fight back beyond the pure desire to live. it makes htn!harrow such a fascinatingly pitiful creature, crawling along just to crawl along and maybe kiss the body one day... really peels her down to her bare essentials. and the synthesis of these two harrows... god I cannot fucking wait to meet her

#when she has her magical girl transformation into sailor bones

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wyndlerunner · 1 year

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There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow, but she had died before Harrow was born.

Wtf wtf wtf

I know Harrow is a little nutty, between seeing the ghost behind her and having other hallucinations. But wtf is up with her thinking Ortus was the one who died to make her a lyctor? This sentence is so absolutely non sensical, contradicting itself within the same clause

If Harrow has deluded herself into thinking Gideon never really existed, why is she so haunted by Gideon’s sword??

Four chapters in and this book is already a wild ride

#harrow the ninth #harrowhark the first #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon nav #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #Gideon the ninth spoilers

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a-big-apple · 1 year

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For the TLT ask Game

💀 Fav Ht9 quote? ✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow? 🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canan House, who would it be?

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

shit this is difficult i think it's a very close race between "There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow--but she had died before Harrow was born" and "You'd touched that letter, and I--you know it was killing me twice that you weren't there, right?" but fuck i'm also so partial to "gall on gall"

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

listen i love Harrow all the ways, but buzzed head Harrow is very close to my heart.

🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canaan House, who would it be?

THIS IS SO HARD. i want to say Jeannemary, but make her survive all that without Isaac and Abigail and Magnus? or i want to say Abigail, but then who else would be able to exorcise Wake from Harrow's river bubbles later?? and of course i'd say Pal but he did kind of survive and now we get to have Paul... and to say Gideon would make the rest of the books not even happen jlkdfsjkldfskjdf so maybe my answer is Dulcie! maybe she would survive long enough for the many very powerful necromancers in the books to find a way to help her.

<3 <3 <3

#ask meme #tlt ask meme

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drastrochris · 2 years

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There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow -- but she had died before Harrow was born.

I’ll just be over here, quietly crying.

Harrow, chapter 4:

“I do like your eyes, Harrowhark -- like flower petals in a darkened room. And even I can admit that your eyelashes are delicious.”

Nona, chapter 24:

[...] whereas Nona thought all eyelashes should be long and straight (her own eyelashes were long and straight).

#harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #full reread #the locked tomb #nona the ninth spoilers #spoilers #nona the ninth

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dude1818 · 2 years

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Just finished a speed reread of Harrow the Ninth. Almost got it done before Nona got here. Physical copy this time, so no easy cut-and-paste of the passages I'm referring to.

Overall thoughts: I read Gideon pretty much back to back when I got it, and it was 11/10 both time. I wasn’t super into Harrow the first time, because it was intentionally hard to follow. It was a lot more interesting this time, because understanding what’s going on helps you engage with it, who woulda thought. But actually, it was very cool understanding what the hints other characters were dropping meant that Harrow was unaware of. I’d say it went from a 6/10 to an 8/10 the second time.

I forgot that Harrow was killed in the very first chapter. I definitely didn't expect it to stick on my first read. Jumping back and forth in time to build the suspense makes the reread particularly weird, since it's hard to keep track of what you're supposed to know at each point.

First "flashback": it's interesting that Ortus tries to suggest that Gideon should be Harrow's cavalier, even though Harrow doesn't remember Gideon. Also interesting that the Body immediately attempts to alert Harrow that the flashback has been corrupted, although of course Harrow disregards that. Her response makes it seem like she's used to the hallucinations, going back well before the events of the first book. Ortus is only let in on the secret at the summons to Canaan House, which means he never found out in the real timeline. Crux knew from the start though, right after Harrow's parents killed themselves.

So what actually was the deal with the sword? I assumed the first time that it was interacting with her amnesia, i.e. the same thing that made her pass out when she heard Gideon's name made her throw up when she wielded Gideon's sword. Except, it says "[Harrow] knew [the sword's hate] to be real, even then." Was she actually reacting to Wake's revenant inside the sword?

Upon seeing the mostly empty coffins of the Sixth: "something flickered in your nervous system that was a bit like an emotion." Friendship isn't an emotion, numbnuts.

"The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus ought to have been the 311th Reverend Mother of her line. She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her house; she was the first Harrowhark." Oh what the fuck. I've read theories that Nona got her name from Cam cutting off her name when they recovered her body, but this is so explicit.

I want to eat a snow-leek.

"There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow-but she had died before Harrow was born." That line fucks so hard.

Ah yes, the House dirt on the shuttle to Canaan House that she was too proud to use in front of Griddle.

Also on the shuttle. Ortus says he's glad he'll finally have the time to finish the Noniad. That's him speaking as a ghost with eternity in from of him, not that he can slack off during the trials. 🤦

Oh, that's why the Body told Harrow to lie about her age! She didn't want Mercymorn to connect her in any way to Gideon's birth. Mercy's relief at hearing her age was realizing that John's child had not returned from the Ninth House to damn them.

Gideon's asides in the narration are so funny.

I remember thinking that the fifth soul on the shuttle to the Mithraeum was dormant in Cytherea's corpse. The narration had already mentioned that Harrow had seen the frozen thanergy in the coffin, and it made sense given that we later see Cytherea's zombie walking around. However, the description during the River passage clearly states that one of the specks of light was below Harrow, i.e. coming from the sword Wake was possessing.

In Canaan House redux, Teacher explains the history of Lyctorhood and the context of what the hidden laboratories are about. I still don't understand why he didn't do that the first time. Obviously he didn't know there was a monster lurking the first time.

Ha, foreshadowing! When Ortus chickens out after Teacher's introduction and says Harrow should've picked a different cavalier: "The choice is beyond me now, Nigenad-unless you can conjure me the spirit of Matthias Nonius."

I know we love to joke about Abigail interrupting the crack AUs when Harrow is near to remembering what happened, but I've never seen it mentioned that even the constructs in Canaan House call her out as soon as they get there.

"Is this really how it happens?" count 3: Magnus during their first conversation in the library.

"A cavalier's life is conflict. She is a warrior." Harrow's mental image of a cavalier is still Gideon, even though she doesn't know why.

Harrow's sleepwalking and sleepstabbing of Cytherea's corpse is how Wake transferred her possession, right? The sleepwalking is definitely a sign of possession. I need to keep an eye out if the hateful energy coming from the sword goes away.

The next scene is her 13th planet-slaying following a time skip, and she uses the two-hander just fine for it (although Gideon is annoyed that the sword will never hold an edge again), so it seems like the sword isn't haunted anymore.

When Harrow is trying to remember what her eyes had looked like, the Body says "She asked me not to tell you," which triggers one of Harrow's meltdowns. I guess both the Body and Gideon live inside Harrow's brain, but I don't think they ever actually interact.

"How it happens" count 4: Marta after the Sleeper kills Judith. Unlike the previous times though, Marta breaks character for this one. She's begging Harrow why they were brought back to go through these motions, and Abigail has to keep getting her back in character. I hate the Second House, but it's a little sad.

I despise the way the fandom discusses John and G1deon. During the early assassination attempts, John's clear that he doesn't want G1deon to actually kill Harrow. He's trying to shock her into finishing the Lyctor process, which is also why he pushes her to carry a rapier. We know all the Lyctors are compromised, and G1deon is probably already under the influence of Wake's revenant. It's not until later that John gives up and actually tells G1deon to finish her off if he can't "fix" her (not that G1deon ever actually tried to fix her).

We're all pretty confident that the Tomb contains the missing RB, right? Did John somehow bind it to AL, his cavalier, and that's why she mustn't be woken?

"How it happens" count 5: Dulcie after the discovery of Pal and Cam's bodies. Also, she says she's feeling much better at Canaan House this time, poor thing. The cancer is all in her head now.

I love how when Harrow makes her murder soup, she still goes out of her way to only include vegetables that G1deon doesn't like. It's the petty things. (It also makes him eat more of the broth, which is practical.)

"How it happens" count 6: Silas during his murder-suicide of the Third House.

One thing I universally see missing from fanart of Ianthe is the rest of her arm. People always draw it as just a skeleton construct, but it still has the physically necessary bit of meat. Tendons at the joints, gross fleshy palm to hold the sword.

We all kid about Abigail's response to the coffee shop AU, but Abigail was the one who introduced Harrow to coffee in the first place! She only used the mug as a hand warmer, but still.

Cool misdirect when Abigail proposes that Harrow might be haunted. We still have no idea what's going on with Canaan House redux, but it's easy to assume that Abigail is referring to the Body, rather than the Sleeper. (Or perhaps that they're related.)

"When I want Ortus to go, he'll be giddy-gone." I think it took this blatant joke for me to figure out what was going on with "Ortus the First" the first time.

I'm not sure how much more info we'll get about what actually happened at Canaan House the first time. Augustine describes Cristabel as a fanatic who was a bad influence on Alfred, and Mercymorn says that Augustine still hates Cristabel for what she did. Was Augustine not fully committed to Lyctorhood (it was his brother, after all), and Cristabel convinced Alfred to force his hand? To pull a Gideon, so to speak?

This book is a lot longer than I thought. Dios apate minor is only halfway in.

"The total absence of appropriate shame made you suspect that this [dios apate] had happened between them before, a thought that made you want to give yourself a lobotomy." 🤣

Harrow's right about BOE's presence out there, though. The Empire and BOE are fighting over planetary systems in the Milky Way, right, some hundred thousand light years across? The Empire can use steles for FTL travel, and we don't know what FTL capabilities the rest of humanity has, but it's still presumably trapped within the galaxy. The Mithraeum is 40 billion light years away. That's the edge of the observable universe. Only Lyctors can instantaneously travel anywhere in the universe, via the River, so it's physically not possible for BOE to be here. My biggest pet peeve in science fiction written by nonscientists is that they fundamentally can't comprehend how big space is. Muir fucked this up very badly in the first book too, with the shuttles to Canaan House. She also has no idea how black holes work.

Back in the flashbacks, the constructs are still fishing, but Teacher won't even let people see what they're catching. I wonder if it's human body parts from the River itself. Or babies, if Wake's revenant is forming a womb around the House for her dead daughter.

Teacher is still my favorite character. Shame he only has a few little cameos this time.

Huh. I hadn't realized before that in the Harrow Nova AU, Harrow was still the daughter of the Reverend Parents and Reverend Daughter Gideon was still a foundling. That makes it supremely more fucked up.

She finally remembered Gideon when the physical block was removed. The timing checks out. Her body was killed on the Mithraeum, and her soul no longer needed to reflect the aneurysm. (Sidenote: her body still has it until a few scenes later, when Mercy calls the Saint of Duty by name and Gideon feels it pop and heal properly.)

Muir is very good at tone switching. Harrow's parts, Gideon's hidden and explicit parts, even Ianthe's one page: they all have such a distinct feel.

Everyone is so mad about John ordering G1deon to kill Harrow to finish her Lyctorhood, except we see that he was actually right about that! They were just missing the final piece, which was that Harrow needed to be in the River so there'd be somewhere for Gideon's soul to go, but G1deon kept trying to kill her while she was awake instead.

Of course Gideon loves the Third House nudes.

After the Nonius fight (which is super cool), Harrow checks the Sleeper's dogtag and it says AWAKE. I first thought that was one final message inserted into the narrative like all the other hallucinations, but no, Harrow finally gets to read actual text for once and it just doesn't make any sense.

Gray-eyed Cam: I knew that was supposed to indicate something about the status of her and Pal's Lyctorhood, but I barely process physical descriptions in books, and definitely not something as usually inconsequential as eye color. Unfortunate how important that turns out to be in this series. I made sure to pay attention when Cam and Pal's eyes were described in excruciating detail in the jungle planet scene, so I can affirm that Cam's eyes were supposed to be dark brown and gray, and Pam's eyes were white charcoal gray. Cam's final untinted gray, plus the "twice removed voice" Gideon heard as she died in the River, makes it seem like Cam and Pal unlocked something new: a soul fusion. It's possible Gideon and Harrow did the same thing, but more traumatically (since they were both in death throes), and that's why Nona is amnesiac.

In the end, Gideon joins team Total Genocide because God was rude to Harrowhark. In revenge for the murder of the 10 billion, we're going to kill another billion.

I wasn't sure the first time what Dulcie said that made Harrow change plans and jump into the River, but now it seems like she revealed that an actual soul is inhabiting Harrow's body. It's gotta be Gideon, so now it's Harrow's turn to die so that Gideon can actually live.

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #tlt

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misojohnist · 2 years

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the absolute gut punch of “there had been another girl who grew up alongside harrow - but she had died before harrow was born.”

#i was like omg when are we gonna mention her i miss her where is she why isnt harrow mentioning her.#and naturally tamsyn muir took this chance to smack me directly across the face #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb

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songder-bot · 1 year

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There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow--but she had died before Harrow was born.

#quote #quote - harrow the ninth #quote - tamsyn muir

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iviarellereads · 1 year

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Harrow the Ninth, Chapter 3

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one!)

(Ninth House icon) In which we recap a chapter from the previous book from a slightly different perspective.

In third-person, but not in the same setting as the parodos chapter,

The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus ought to have been the 311th Reverend Mother of her line. She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her House;(1) she was the first Harrowhark. She was named for her father, who was named for his mother, who was named for some unsmiling extramural penitent sworn into the silent marriage bed of the Locked Tomb. This had been common.

She is also the last necromancer, the last of the ruling line. Some time is spent discussing Harrow's conception and upbringing, how lonely and miserable it was, how she was left almost entirely to her own devices except for evening prayers. That is, until she fell in love, or more accurately, wrote a suicide note and went to open the Locked Tomb, found that it did not immediately kill her, and got curious.

She'd been taught to love the Emperor, who ten thousand years ago had given them all release from a death that none of them had deserved, and to view the Tomb as symbol of his victory and his demise.

Still, despite her parents' fear of the contents of the Tomb, despite knowing intellectually that to open it would signal the end of everything, Harrowhark persisted. She opened the locks, solved the puzzles, and found the Body, who is perfectly beautiful. Her parents found out and killed themselves, but Harrow couldn't join them, couldn't bear the two hundred deaths that made her going to waste.

Harrow started hallucinating after her parents' death, often staying near Crux because he would answer her questions of "is that real" with yes or no and not ask questions of his own. The Body appeared to her often, though, and she lost time and focus when it did. At puberty, the Body stopped appearing during the day, but haunted her dreams.

Eventually the madness seemed to have left her, and she gained control over her mind through ritual, such as periods of fasting or eating the same thing for each meal, and wearing her face painted every hour of the day.

She found the sight of her own unpainted face in the mirror impossibly wearisome, monstrous, and nonsensical, somehow faraway and yet heinously attached to herself.

Harrow spends the years puppeting her parents, repeating phrases about death and duty to the penitent so much that she began to believe them.(2) She even lends her magic to keeping the dying penitent alive long enough for their last rites, that they may die knowing peace in their last moments. And occasionally, she uses it to help Crux's failing, aging body, as the last person she can trust is invested in her sanity.

Eventually, talk began among the still-living leadership of the Ninth as to whom Harrow should marry to carry on her line. She was saved by the invitation to Lyctorhood. Only, just like falling in love, she failed at becoming a Lyctor, too. She failed Ortus Nigenad, unable to eat him and leaving herself only half-changed. Almost as an afterthought, a line is added to the end of the chapter.

There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow - but she had died before Harrow was born.(3)

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(1) Recall how the names section in the Gideon paperback described the naming conventions: name particles are recycled all the way down. (2) The real danger of doing anything ironically is that you can come to convince yourself that it's unironic after all. (3) What a contradiction.

#the locked tomb #tlt #harrow the ninth #htn #harrow the ninth spoilers #htn spoilers #harrowhark nonagesimus

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