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Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Aug. 15th, 2020 10:46 amHarrow the Ninth
4/5. Goodgod grief. Um. The much gonzo-er sequel to the already gonzo Gideon the Ninth. Decadently horny for dead people and for skeletons in particular is the most accurate way I can describe this book. Which is not what I like about it – I put up with all the florid necromancy stuff and dead things horniness with sufferance at best. Insert leaves me cold joke here.
No, what I like is how this book uses fannish modes of storytelling so playfully and comfortably. I am not the first to have LOLed outright at the coffee shop AU interlude. But beyond the shuffle of quick AU scenarios we tour, part of what's gonzo about this sequel is that it – for reasons – begins telling the story at a point after an AU version of the first book, but only ducks back to fill in parts of that remix for you and otherwise leaves you to sink or swim, with only a thick scattering of tumblr references to cling to. Okay then. Challenge accepted. This book leans on a skill that I think is directly taught by time in fandom and not in traditional literary spaces: holding many versions of a narrative in your head simultaneously and dealing out a new hand at will.
Also, this book is having its cake and eating it too in the fannish sense when it comes to Gideon and Harrow's relationship. That relationship gets weirder in this book, since it sort of has to where one of the participants is literally in love with a dead person. Awkward. But this book takes that impediment into the text and, by way of various fannish iterative techniques, also indulges in their romance. It manages to contain 'they can't' and 'they totally are' simultaneously, sometimes on the same page. It's so fundamentally fannish a way of doing things, of iterating layers of a relationship, and I think it's great.
Content notes: Jesus. Um. Do not read this book while eating. Amputation, many kinds of violence, body horror upon body horror, oh and also the cannibalism incident.
4/5. Good
No, what I like is how this book uses fannish modes of storytelling so playfully and comfortably. I am not the first to have LOLed outright at the coffee shop AU interlude. But beyond the shuffle of quick AU scenarios we tour, part of what's gonzo about this sequel is that it – for reasons – begins telling the story at a point after an AU version of the first book, but only ducks back to fill in parts of that remix for you and otherwise leaves you to sink or swim, with only a thick scattering of tumblr references to cling to. Okay then. Challenge accepted. This book leans on a skill that I think is directly taught by time in fandom and not in traditional literary spaces: holding many versions of a narrative in your head simultaneously and dealing out a new hand at will.
Also, this book is having its cake and eating it too in the fannish sense when it comes to Gideon and Harrow's relationship. That relationship gets weirder in this book, since it sort of has to where one of the participants is literally in love with a dead person. Awkward. But this book takes that impediment into the text and, by way of various fannish iterative techniques, also indulges in their romance. It manages to contain 'they can't' and 'they totally are' simultaneously, sometimes on the same page. It's so fundamentally fannish a way of doing things, of iterating layers of a relationship, and I think it's great.
Content notes: Jesus. Um. Do not read this book while eating. Amputation, many kinds of violence, body horror upon body horror, oh and also the cannibalism incident.