#also i have already read 'as yet unsent' immediately after finishing htn because i am impatient lol

[lemon-natalia]

Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Review

my copy announces at the end ‘Gideon will return in Nona the Ninth’ she’d fucking better! i do not think my heart can take thinking Gideon is permanently dead again

wow, you all really survived two years waiting for Nona. question: how? Also more importantly to me, how am i gonna survive waiting for Alecto once I’ve finished Nona

fun statistics nobody asked for: i wrote just over 15,500 words about HtN! so about 3000 words more than GtN, but in general per chapter i just had less to say on this one because i wasn’t trying to figure out the world building or a single central murder mystery like last time

all in all that was certainly … a sequel. if the experience of reading Gideon the Ninth was like being on a rollercoaster, with lots of steady twists and turns, Harrow the Ninth was like being on a steadily faster river boat ride where three quarters of the way you simultaneously fell off a waterfall while a caneering train came out of nowhere and smashed the boat to pieces

it was certainly very intriguing to read, if very hard to tell what exactly was happening at certain points. it also had very different vibes in general? while GtN could probably be summed up plot-wise as ‘murder mystery’ this had much more interpersonal drama. i wasn't quite as shocked every other chapter like i was with GtN, and i did miss that, but i still had a fun time trying to figure out what was going on with the Lyctors & Harrow's mindscape stuff

tldr: i'm just rotating all of the lore of this series inside my mind like a rotisserie chicken. 9/10 i am once again emotionally destroyed but that's kind of tempered this time around with just, absolute confusion

i will say i do think i preferred GtN slightly, solely because of Gideon’s narration style being delightful, but i still very much enjoyed the experience, and i'm more hooked on this series than ever now. i didn’t mention this really before, but there was a point immediately after finishing GtN where i didn’t think i was gonna read HtN because i was genuinely that upset over Gideon’s death at the end, but i’m very glad i did!

i will for sure be doing liveblog posts for Nona if people want me to?