Harrow the Ninth
⭐⭐⭐⭐
“‘Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny,’ said God.”
And now for something completely different.
Harrow the Ninth takes most of the first book and turns it upside down or inside out. We don’t follow Gideon as the primary narrator, don’t have a linear timeline, and the character we do follow knows she is insane. In short, we don’t know any more than she does, and it is not much. Had I read this immediately after Gideon the Ninth I think I would have loved it, but the multi-month gap combined with my inability to remember names meant I was once again struggling to track who was who. I was also slow on the uptake for the new book, and briefly thought I was the one losing my mind. It’s not often a writer gets me that effectively!
My only complaint was the pacing of the book. I struggled through the first third, partially because I simply could not reconcile what was happening in Harrow with what I remembered from the first. But once it picked up the payoff was more than worth it.
Without spoiling anything, Muir has written the most unexpected planned murder I think I’ve ever read. The chapters count us down so that we know exactly when it will occur, and yet still I correctly predicted basically nothing. And it’s not a Marvel/Disney “twist” - I’m willing to bet that on the second read I’ll pick up plenty of foreshadowing missed the first time through.
I have this at 4 stars for now but may upgrade it to a full 5 on my next read through, and there will be a next read through. Not only is there enough detail to be worth rereading to see the hints of what’s to come, but either I missed a very specific brand of humor in Gideon or Muir decided to have a great time writing Harrow. She worked memes into the book! And so smoothly I never would have noticed if I didn’t spend way too much time on the internet. If you aren’t a fellow internet gremlin, have no fear - the references aren’t overt and won’t ruin the book for you. If you are, go get this right now. I cackled when I finally clicked into what Muir was doing, and I’m excited to see if this was a one-off just for fun or if she’s going to keep working references into future books.
I paired it with the White Lady, a very similar cocktail to the White Widow I paired with Gideon. I think it probably could have been a great cocktail, but I wasn’t on my game while making it and it exploded out of the shaker twice during the dry shake. I ended up with a little over half of a cocktail, but I’m not convinced I lost equal portions of all the ingredients, since the first time it escaped I’d barely started shaking. But the cocktail has potential, and much like the book I spent a long portion of it trying to figure out what was happening, so it all worked out.
2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce orange liqueur or triple sec
1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 egg white
Add the gin, orange liqueur, lemon juice and egg white into a shaker and dry-shake (without ice) vigorously. Add ice and shake again until well-chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Warning - the shaker will pressurize due to friction heat during the dry shake. Proceed with care!
