#thinking about Harrow trying to tell that but she's saying it like 'the fourth cavalier says hello'

[cutetanuki-chan]

I really need Gideon to know that Jeannemary said hi, please, the whole scene with teens death is so devastating, Gideon needs to know

[mundanemoongirl]

I just finished Gideon the Ninth and I have THOUGHTS

I’ve seen people talk about this book for a while but never about the plot, so I pretty much went in blind. I wish I knew before reading it that there is a glossary at the end. I was so confused for most of the book and would have gotten invested a lot faster if I understood the terms. That one was on me. My bad.

Okay so obviously there are some issues—every book has their own. It took me over a hundred pages to really get into the book because I didn’t understand the world or plot. I think more can be explained at the beginning. It’s such a fascinating world; Muir should give us much more of it. My other main issue is that sometimes there are paragraphs after paragraphs of dialogue and each line has a dialogue tag. There’s only two people talking. You don’t have to keep telling me who they are.

For a book I thought I wouldn’t like for the longest time, I was pleasantly surprised. Like I love it so much that I got on here to share my thoughts, which isn’t something I usually do. It’s not my favorite, but it sure is unique and entertaining.

I love the different houses and how they interact with each other. I actually wish we learned more about them. We understand the Ninth House, but what is life like on the different houses. I at least liked the little bits I learned about the fourth with the child soldiers. I also like that each necromancer has a different title because each house serves a different function. But seriously, how are you gonna casually write about princesses and give no details about what they do on their planets?

This book has some of the best character development I have ever seen. Especially with Harrow. She and Camilla were my favorites so I’m glad they made it to the end. I also think it’s really funny how there’s all these fantasy names and then there’s Camilla.

I like when Gideon gets more depth too. She went from seeing the fourth as bad teens to trying to protect them. That was one of my favorite parts.

I can’t believe Gideon forgave Harrow. I’m glad she did because I love them, but I have held grudges over much less offenses. I like that Gideon comes off as abrasive at first but the more you learn about her you realize she’s really compassionate. It’s amazing considering the environment she grew up in. Such a great character.

I LOVE the trials. I just love when people slowly figure things out, and this is also when I started understanding necromancy so I was really into the learning. I also appreciated that even though Harrow and Gideon hated each other, they made such a good team and that without trying, Gideon made such a good cavalier.

I often say I like the idea of enemies to lovers and not the common execution of it, but this book embodies that idea perfectly. Gideon and Harrow never become lovers, but the emotional growth they go through and the passion they have for each other kinda represents that feeling. They don’t need to be lovers for this trope to work. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for instead of just an asshole male lead who was never actually going to kill the female lead and they’re both attracted to each other from the start. Nah, these two despised each other and still worked through it. Other authors need to take notes.

The ending was so good. I loved Cytherea flirting with Gideon while fighting her. There’s something about evil characters having a soft spot for a character that is so appealing to me. I’m also an absolute sucker for characters from the far off past existing in the present. Give me this and I will love you forever.

Cytherea is actually a lot like the villain in my wip for the exact reasons I like her. The more I thought about it, the more surprised I was about how much my wip ressembled parts of Gideon the Ninth considering I wrote this stuff before reading the book. The houses are like my clans, the necromancy is similar to the spirits, and both sets of characters are shuttled off to a new location that is full of death. That’s probably like I like this book so much.

Also—the quote “And God said, ‘And I am not enough.’” is one of the best quotes I have ever read. It solely makes up for all the book’s flaws.

So that’s it. I hope Harrow the Ninth is just as good. I get scared to read sequels now because certain sequels are genuinely the worst things I’ve read. I also hope the next book goes more in depth with the worldbuilding. I’m excited to continue this series.

[paradoxcase]

Gideon the Ninth audiobook, through to the end of Chapter 31

Cytherea is described as having "biscuit-colored curls" which I kind passed over the first time I was reading. She's described elsewhere as having light brown hair; American biscuits aren't any kind of brown, if they're made right, but Muir isn't American, either. In Britain, it's my understanding that "biscuit" refers to any hard flat cookie with a stamped design, but those come in all sorts of colors. Does "biscuit" mean a secret third thing in New Zealand?

Gideon says "it's stupid for a cavalier to watch their necromancer die" which I think sort of foreshadows Gideon rejecting Harrow's instruction to survive her

Gideon asks Cytherea why she came to Canaan House in the first place, and I feel like Cytherea's answer is about when she came the first time, nearly 10,000 years ago? She talks about how the Seventh wanted her to die beautifully and she though the Emperor had her best interests more at heart than they did

She says: "If they could figure out how to stop you when you're mostly cancer and just a little bit woman, they would" about the Seventh, but that's exactly what John did to her, isn't it?

And then: "I'll probably live forever, worse luck, whatever happened to One Flesh, One End?"

Palamedes pronounces "golem" exactly like "Gollum" and that amuses me

Harrow thought the secret to Lyctorhood was a secret power source in Canaan House they were supposed to discover - I guess to the extent that the consumed cavalier's soul is a power source, she wasn't exactly wrong

Camilla: "The last thing the Warden needs is an introduction to Lady Septimus" - pretty funny in retrospect

Palamedes after Harrow removes the plug Cytherea put on the Seventh lab's keyhole: "Did you hide the last key, too?" He was right about that

Colum is described as having a "perpetually scratchy voice" which I missed the first time, but it does match up with his voice here

Mayonnaise Uncle thinks Gideon's red hair might have come from the Third, which is I guess some extra information about the distribution of phenotypes in the Empire, but the only other redheaded House character we know of is G1deon (I almost wrote "Pyrrha") (who, ironically, is not biologically related to Gideon Nav unless he was like John's cousin or something). Mercy had "pink" hair, but I don't know if that means like, strawberry blond, or like, literally dyed pink. I guess it's been 10,000 years, so things might be a bit different now

Colum: "The next time we meet, I think it's likely one of us will die." Well, it wasn't the next time they met, since they both showed up to hear Cytherea tell a very fake story about why Protesilaus was already dead just after this, but I think it's the next time they are both in the same room together than Colum dies, so, yeah

Teacher says something about a "poor child" and Gideon doesn't know who he's referring to and I don't either even on the second readthrough. I guess it's possible that he's just talking nonsense, because he's a weird construct, but he's been saying things that consistently make sense in the current context throughout the whole book, so I don't really buy that

The scene where Corona is practicing with a sword and challenging Gideon to a duel feels kind of like she's anticipating being left behind by Ianthe and is trying to lean into the idea of becoming a cavalier after this, since she can't pretend to be a necromancer without Ianthe. We know from the Fourth teens that Ianthe has been sneaking into all the locked doors and reading the theorems at this point

When Naberius comes to collect her, he says "I won't tell her". I guess he means Ianthe?

Is that really how "beatified" is pronounced? I don't think I've ever heard it spoken before. Wiktionary seems to agree that it is

If I had listened to the audiobook first, I definitely would have misheard Gideon talking about "narking" on Harrow as "knocking" and been confused

Palamedes: "All I ask is that you put some pen and flimsy in my cell so I can start my memoirs." Yeah, that's not what you wrote when you were actually confined to the River bubble for months, haha

Narration: Suddenly [Cytherea] seemed impossibly old.

Cytherea claims that John was against soul siphoning. So, the thalergy siphoning that was a fundamental part of Mercy's challenge, and which the Second House uses regularly on enemies, is totally fine and cool, but Mayonnaise Uncle send Colum's soul away temporarily to generate power is wrong. You know, Mayonnaise Uncle is actually a lot more sympathetic on the second readthrough

Mayonnaise Uncle also really had Cytherea's number in this scene and no one listened to him, he was the only one saying that Cytherea was suspicious and everyone else was disgusted by this, including Judith. No wonder he was so sour in Harrow's River bubble

Harrow wants to use Protesilaus' head for necromancy and everyone else is unhappy about this. But this isn't strange for the Nine Houses - the Canaan House skeletons were made from the dead just like the Ninth skeletons were, and just like the Sixth skeletons were in Dr. Sex, not to mention Ianthe's use of Babs' body. Like, if we are going to start complaining about the desecration of dead bodies now, I think that starts to call into question the entire way that the Nine Houses uses necromancy and has been using it for the past 10,000 years. I'm not sure any of the other necromancers really have that high ground

Palamedes says Cytherea only has days left to live, she definitely giggles at that

In the pool scene, Harrow says that the calculations for the deaths of the 200 children were very precise, and that the babies contributed the most thanergy. Now I'm wondering if Gideon failing to die might have messed up those careful calculations in some way? Obviously Harrow was still born a powerful necromancer, and it still worked overall, but now I'm curious

Harrow about John's blood ward: "I knew it had to open for me" because she was the descendant of Anastasia. She never questioned that there might have been some other reason it opened

[adolin]

“what the fuck did Anastasia do?” some wild speculations for funsies

What we know: Anastasia was trying to achieve Lyctorhood, and believed there was “another way” other than the standard ‘kill your cav, eat their soul’ way. Anastasia’s process still included the Eightfold Word, was performed in “laboratory conditions” and Samael, her cavalier, died. She later went on to fund the Ninth House. Everything else is speculation, or comes from biased accounts.

What we don’t know: A bunch of things!

One is when it happened: We don’t know when Anastasia attempted to ascend, compared to the other Lyctors; we only know that she did it in relatively safe conditions. We DO know that she worked “closely with Cassiopeia” (HtN, 51) and researched it “too much”, trying to do the process a different way “slower and more methodically”. Cassiopeia was the fourth Lyctor to ascend - my guess is that Anastasia made her attempt at any time between shortly before Cassiopeia’s and shortly after Cytherea.

The other is what exactly happened: all we know for sure is that John claims Anastasia failed, and he killed Samael to stop the botched process. Of course John’s account is wildly unreliable but IMO, he’s not the kind of person to say a straightforward lie when a half-truth will do — not because of moral qualms against lying (LOL), but because he likes to have plausible deniability with himself that he did a hard thing for the right reasons. I’m assuming John’s account is like, 60% true here. And it’s very juicy

Wild guess time!

Wild ass guess but my idea is that Anastasia tapped into Alecto’s enormous well of power, but dragged Samael into it via the Eightfold word. Then either the feeling of Alecto’s soul was too much for them and it made Anastasia panic, screwing the process. John killed Samael to stop it.

Why would you even think that? Good question!

I think John claiming that killing Samael was to Anastasia’s benefit is partly the truth; again John’s very good at twisting facts so that he comes out squeaky clean, but he’s less likely to lie outright. We also know that Anastasia remained on decent enough terms with John & Lyctors afterwards — I bet their relationship was very fraught, but doesn’t seem to have been on the level of “I never want to see you again.”

Alecto feels guilt over Samael’s death. The first thing she tells Harrow, Anastasia’s however-many-times-removed grandchild, is “I’m sorry about Samael” (NtN, epilogue). Alecto had the chance to apologise in person to Anastasia for Samael’s death, but she still feels the urge to apologise again to a direct descendant, immediately. This, plus the fact that she swore herself to Anastasia’s line (a big fucking deal!) makes me think that SHE was personally involved in Samael’s death, not just a witness, and she feels the urge to make up for it.

Anastasia “panicking” is a very likely reaction when confronted with Alecto’s sheer power — John completely lost it when he ascended, and while Anastasia made her attempt in less fraught circumstances it was probably still A Lot to handle. My guess that she “dragged Samael into it” is based on the speculation that the Eightfold word is what ties the cavalier to the necromancer and includes the cavalier’s name (because Harrow removed all memories of Gideon’s name, not just her existence, to stop herself from consuming Gideon’s soul) and when her panic caused her to lose control over the process to some extent (probably painful and/or gruesome) John’s resort was to kill Samael and stop the process that way.

Another (IMO less likely) possibility is that Alecto threw a Nona-style tantrum that Samael couldn’t withstand, or even killed Samael herself. These would both work with her guilt + the fact that whatever happened needed a pretty thorough “cleanup” after, but I don’t think Alecto was physically present. (However, I do think that Alecto’s involvement would be pretty much the only thing to get John to admit to something he didn’t do, and would explain why he agreed to lock up Alecto after + why Anastasia would agree to assist with it)

Ok but why would Anastasia even be able to tap into Alecto’s power?

I just think Anastasia is extremely scary. She was the one to work on Teacher (cramming 500 souls into 50) and she later went on to fund the Ninth, the House that supposedly does strictly bone necromancy, wouldn’t even touch flesh magic, but also, somehow, managed Harrow’s conception — something John, God himself, calls “a walking miracle”. 

Yes, Harrow’s parents were skilled, but not that skilled. My guess is that they based their work on Anastasia’s research — a “work” that John compares to a smaller-scale Resurrection.

If that’s the level Anastasia was working with... I just think she was very good at soul fuckery. I also think that the fact that planets have souls in TLT (even planets that don’t contain any life forms... except potentially they all do) points to the existence of an “oversoul” — universal life existence within all beings; sort of the greater matter of which human souls are the molecules. I think Anastasia was sufficiently skilledto have reached to whatever spillover of Alecto’s soul was left, maybe through John’s presence, or maybe because she was still partly tied to the planet that became the First House, and Anastasia pulled on that string not knowing what it was.

This last section is 90% a wild guess, but I THINK it fits with Harrow telling John in NtN (John 5:4) that he “watched them misunderstand the process” so here’s my shred of canon evidence.

Anyway, here’s my current Anastasia Theory — to be debunked in 2023

[notedchampagne]

PLEASE tell us about your homestuck tlt au. (<- completely insane longtime hs enjoyer and more recent tlt fan)

reference to gideon/harrow the ninth spoilers under the cut! this is a very long post

okay so i havent actually fleshed anything out well enough because i LOVE just throwing shit at the wall until it sticks but there are a few pointers:

i DO think vrisrezi would be the most interesting in this because their dynamic is also very similar to griddlehark, and both of them would more or less die for each other/kill each other. considering their in-canon forever space chase trying to interpret that to tlt parameters makes me craaaazy. i think in this case terezi fits the cavalier ideal much better, with both of them being either second or fourth house since those are The soldier-machine houses. however i am thinking about it too literally.

third house would be sexyyyy with vrisrezi too

also i know everyone says griddlehark is davekat adjacent but holy shit the vrisrezi tones im getting from them. the chasing the reaching the insufferable agony of never being able to get to your best friend and worst enemy ever again. are you hearing this??

i think karkats a fail necromancer hes fucking PATHETIC he is either ninth or fourth house and wishes he was second soooo bad. this bitch is either the silly little bone priest outcast and fucking HATES it or he is raised in- again, baby soldier human cannon fodder-making planet- and STILL wishes he was better. he wants to be a lyctor so bad and while blinded by his wet dream of wanting to serve the emperor, never once considered the consequences of being immortal.

it would be interesting if he achieves whatever harrow mentioned when she half-digested "ortus", and becoming half a lyctor. i need his consequences to kick him miserably in the ass. whoever his cavalier is is yet to be determined it would be SO fucked up if it was dave though wouldnt it be (giggling) it would be so fucked up and insane that they, the pairing known for being similar and codependent enough to be one person daveandkarkat, karkatanddave, would end up being consumed into one person only for karkat to end up with the torment of having to face himself alone for the rest of his life? wouldnt that be awesome

ive also thought about what would happen if someone had consumed a cavalier, but not theirs. ideally it should be their cav so that their soul would go willingly but ianthe and babs showed that isnt necessarily the case

thus i present: feferi would be like if corona was a necromancer and i know eridan would be her naberius but! but! it would be interesting if sollux and eridan got into a duel paralleling murderstuck and in solluxs casualty feferi consumes Him

aradia, sollux, and equius 8th house, rose and dirk 6th house, glasspits 5th house, kanaya either 7th or a 9th house nun maybe, i also wanna keep the strilondes together but i think roxy would just be really really funny if she was in the 9th house with dave. if i were thinking about them singularly shed be in 7th

aradia and rose are both harranthe. at the same time. both of them. i believe in it

[ghostmartyr]

Every time I try to start this post I get lost in all of the many angles there are to look at the scene where Harrow and Gideon have their huge fight. With how much fun I have with the characters, I think sometimes I overlook that the writing for this series is really quite good. Examining a single thread yanks a bunch more around with it, and before you know it, the best way to tell the story is just shoving the book in front of someone.

Gideon and Harrow’s fallout pre-corpse discovery and pool scene zooms from poor love triangle coping skills to dead teenagers to self-loathing to the omnipresent question of what they are to each other to the refusal to acknowledge that it’s a question at all.

It also generally hurts.

This train wreck kicks off with Harrow attempting to protect Gideon by keeping her away from someone who is piloting a dead body around -- aka being sus af. It could almost be called civil.

“That reminds me! I now officially ban you from seeing Lady Septimus.” “Are we having this conversation? Are we really having this conversation?”

Okay, so it could be called the climactic third-act drama of a YA novel.

Where Gideon out and out calls Harrow a jealous creep because she doesn’t like how ‘Dulcinea’ takes up Gideon’s attention.

(If you turn the page at this point, you will find Gideon saying they both hate each other and always will.

Sure Jan.)

They legitimately are so very fucking weird, and insist on this despite being otherwise intelligent human beings. Emotional health and sense was not covered in the Ninth, and by golly it shows.

There is no disconnect between the concepts of Harrow jealously guarding how Gideon spends her time and Harrow despising Gideon. Both occupy the same space of the dynamic. They are the same coin, spinning around like a top until something happens to make it slam down on a side.

Then they pick it up and start over again.

The framework of this whole conversation is Gideon’s simple complaint that Harrow is willing to let a dying woman be murdered. Coupled with Harrow’s simple complaint that Gideon finds this problematic.

It’s also about Gideon having found what it means to be a cavalier, and rejecting being Harrow’s as strongly as she possibly can.

Because of the aforementioned problematic behavior, in part.

“You agreed to act as my cavalier primary. You agreed to devote yourself to the duties of a cavalier. Your misunderstanding of what that entailed does not make you any less beholden to what your duty actually is—” “I promised to fight for you. You promised me my freedom. There’s a hell of a good chance that I’m not going to get it, and I know it. We’re all dying here! Something’s after us! The only thing I can do is try to keep as many of us as I can alive for as long as I can, and hope that we work something out! You’re the ignorant sack of eyeballs who doesn’t understand what a cavalier is, Harrow, you just take whatever I give you—”

Gideon’s watched Palamedes and Camilla. She’s watched Jeannemary and Isaac. She’s seen partnership and loyalty and affection. A cavalier fights for their necromancer, and the necromancer is -- what? We don’t have that part yet, but we have Gideon knowing in every fiber of her being what a cavalier-necromancer pair should be. Knowing that they aren’t it.

“We don’t deserve to still be around—have you realised that yet? Have you realised that this whole thing has been about the union of necromancer and cavalier from start to finish? We should be toast. If they’re measuring this on the strength of that—we’re the walking dead. Magnus the Fifth was a better cavalier than I am. Jeannemary the Fourth was ten times the cavalier I am. They should be alive and we should be bacteria food.”

Harrow keeps her secrets and only works with Gideon with the greatest resentment.

Before Canaan House, Gideon’s ambition is to be part of the Cohort. She wants to be a soldier, do battle, get hot chicks, be magnificent; all that hot girl stuff.

But when she finds herself as Harrow’s cavalier primary, she finds a place for her natural chivalry and martial talent. She finds something that works for her as a person. She starts looking at being a cavalier as what she should become, and starts to view her life through the lens of succeeding or failing at that.

If Harrow refuses to be her necromancer, Gideon can’t be a cavalier.

“If you don’t need me, release me to the Seventh House,” she said, very slow and very calm, like she was reading at a service. “I’d rather serve—Dulcinea dying—than the living Reverend Daughter.”

Yeah there’s the part where one of them is actively a dick, but going back to Gideon’s life as a whole, she is universally sick of being denied the chance to be useful. No one ever wants to let her go out and do what she’s best at. They want her to stay put and wilt away, then complain when she takes issue with that.

‘Dulcinea’ doesn’t have a cavalier, and has always been kind to Gideon, and is in need of protection. Of course that’s Gideon’s preference. She wants to be a fucking cavalier, and Harrow continually rejects her, even when coerced into accepting Gideon’s points of usefulness.

Rejects her, but never frees her.

“When I release you from my service, Nav,” her necromancer said, “you will know about it.”

Gideon’s whole life is tied to someone who won’t let her go, but doesn’t want her. It’s enough to drive anyone a bit nuts. It’s been this way their entire lives, even back on the Ninth.

But they’re not there anymore.

Gideon and Harrow at Canaan House are a constant study of “what’s changed?” answered with “absolutely nothing but also everything all at once.”

There are several moments in the middle of all of this where Harrow actually keeps her focus: she wants Gideon away from the Seventh. She stumbles through all sorts of other bad conversational points on her way, but while Gideon descends fairly quickly into justified hysterics, Harrow is still trying to talk about why corpse puppeteers are not good friends.

Until she stops.

“Stop worshipping the sound of your own voice, Nav, and listen to me—” “Harrow, I hate you,” said Gideon. “I have never stopped hating you. I will always hate you, and you will always hate me. Don’t forget that. It’s not like I ever can.” Harrow’s mouth twisted so much that it should have been a reef knot. Her eyes closed briefly, and she sheathed her hands inside her gloves.

Harrow does a crap job of reaching Gideon throughout the whole mess, but that’s because no one ever taught communication to the master of an entire planet who regularly conducts sermons. She just sucks at it.

But she stops trying when Gideon makes the declaration of hatred. That’s when she chooses to walk away instead.

Gideon is shouting from the terraces that there is nothing but hate here and there is a lot of it just a whole abyss of hate while blotting out every shred of evidence of how easy it is for them to just. not.

We’ve had shots of them getting along, and we know it doesn’t have to be like this. They can work together. They can matter to each other in a way that doesn’t end in mutual strangulation. There is evidence that something positive can grow from the ashes of all their burned bridges. They can work as a team. They come together for the trials, and Harrow follows Gideon’s lead on the dueling debacle without being asked. Gideon swoops her up in a hug. Gideon references the hug during their fight.

Leading to the excruciating gut punch of Gideon denying all of it.

The hate is still there, it’s never changed, it never will change, this is how it is. They’re stuck. Leaving the Ninth didn’t help, it just got more people dead in between their bouts of being at each other’s throats.

...Yay.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 25 of Harrow the Ninth

So, the Nook app has decided that now it's going to open on my bigger monitor, which is a bit annoying, since I can't browse the book and write the tumblr post at the same time, but since it doesn't have a windowed mode I'm not sure how to switch it back to my laptop

Ok, never mind, while I was writing that, the Nook app crashed again, and when I re-opened it it opened on my laptop

Aroace rep, but from the character whose main role in the story so far is that he's trying to kill the protagonist for no reason?

Although, speaking of Pyrrha, who we so far don't know anything about except that she was Gideon's cavalier, since Gideon the First is a regular Lyctor he must also be Pyrrha on some level, so possibly some of his odd actions are actually Pyrrha's actions, or are because of Pyrrha in some way, and that's why John thinks they are out of character for Gideon

I guess it could be technically possible that Harrow hallucinated that whole thing, but honestly, it would be boring if all of the weird stuff in this book turns out to be a baseless hallucination. I guess the mystery part of this book is figuring out how much of this Cytherea-related stuff is hallucinations and how much is real

So I guess this means that on the fourth or maybe last day of this ultimatum, Harrow will make Ianthe a bone arm and this problem will be solved?

I can't decide if Ianthe has some sort of Plan to get Harrow to make her a bone arm, or if pretending like she doesn't care is just her way of coping

So Ianthe burns the onions (or at least she says she does) and Harrow just doesn't cook them at all. Also, I get that Harrow wouldn't be familiar with brightly colored vegetables, but wouldn't she also not be familiar with brightly colored candy? Even if they had candy on the Ninth, candy is made in bright colors because people expect good food to be bright colors and that makes the candy look more appetizing. If denizens of the Ninth are not used to brightly-colored food, it doesn't make sense that they'd have brightly colored candy, either

So, I mean, everyone disliked or hated this soup, and we've heard previously that Lyctors don't actually need to eat. I can see the others eating the soup to be polite, but Gideon the First has kind of crossed the line where politeness is going to have any effect by repeatedly trying to kill her. So why did he eat the soup?

Beautiful. If I've understood what John has said about Lyctor mortality well enough, I think he shouldn't have been able to survive this if John hadn't magicked him better, even if I'm wrong and he has no trouble with the necromancy part of Lyctorhood

Please, John, tell us about the last time you ate human being

Unless he's just talking about when Cassiopeia cut off her finger while cooking?

This is a really odd reaction to finding out that Harrow can't sleep for fear of Gideon the First so she is trying to kill him so she can live a normal life? Like, she is his Lyctor, she is blindly devoted to him, he should be pleased that she is this capable in the face of this impossible situation, especially if he really doesn't want Gideon to kill her, because her being capable means she would be better able to protect herself. I wonder if he also is afraid of her hurting him for some reason, for the same reason Gideon the First is? And Mercy's job was not so much to teach her as to do surveillance? Only, if he considered her a legitimate threat, I'm sure he could have just killed her himself at any point, right? Maybe that would wreck the persona of a kindly god that he's projecting, but I almost feel like he could get away with justifying anything at this point. And he asked Mercy if they could put her in the room with him when they fought Number Seven, and Mercy pointed out that that would kill her, there's no way he could have not known that, right?

Also, I'm amused that every time Mercy talks about how young Harrow is, the age gets younger and younger. But her horror that Harrow is so young has definitely made her underestimate her

So I guess this incident reminded Augustine of one of the dead Lyctors? Or Anastasia

Or: "Yeah, that's fair"

Now I'm interested to see if he gets some more characterization in the future

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 23 of Harrow the Ninth

Sorry for the break - I meant to start again with this on Monday, but then I discovered my car had been broken into and I wasn't in the mood anymore

Beginning of Act 3. You know, I feel like the end-of-act events of this book lack a lot of the excitement of the end-of-act events of Gideon the Ninth. In Gideon, we had Magnus and Abigail's deaths, the Fourth Teens' deaths, the Cytherea reveal. In Harrow the Ninth, so far we have Harrow sleepstabbing Cytherea and then zombie Cytherea, but these turns of events just lack a certain something compared to the last book

Can we even trust these anymore? If we can, this should be five months after the start of the book and four months before the prologue

Says the swordswoman who is narrating this story?

So, insect that make your eyes bleed and spread "insanity" and also I remember them saying that they're always afraid of them when they're facing them directly (as opposed to just letting their cavaliers control their bodies), so they have some kind of fear aura or something, too

Does he mean to say that Ianthe would be the only one who would bother to protect Harrow, or is he just dodging the question?

She does sort of realize that her memories are impaired, but actually, I don't think she would have have had any memories of Naberius anyway, from the real sequence of events? I don't think they ever really interacted except I guess when Naberius challenged Camilla and Harrow came to her aid, and I can't imagine that she talked to him at all when Gideon wasn't around

Come on, Harrow, you are in love with a corpse

But it is kind of funny and I guess not unexpected that necrophilia is kind of like a classic sin that everyone commits anyway. Actually, I guess in this context necrophilia might not even necessarily have a consent issue with it, since it's actually totally possible that you asked the ghost if it was all right and they said yes

Although, this kind of makes me wonder if Gideon the First and Cytherea had some kind of thing going on before she died? When Harrow asked John about whether someone was moving Cytherea he said this:

You could interpret this as just being because Gideon the First keeps trying to kill Harrow, or he finds it weird talking about him with her because of the name confusion or whatever, but maybe Gideon the First also had some kind of anomalous relationship with Cytherea as well

I guess this also means that technically, zombie Cytherea could have been a hallucination, because someone has been moving her body

Harrow, he asked you to come to Canaan House and sacrifice someone you loved so that you could come with him and get chased across all of space by undead monsters that he almost certainly is responsible for creating and isn't doing anything to ensure that you will survive said monsters and when you went to him and said "please sir, can you make the Saint of Duty stop trying to kill me" he said "no sorry you're going to have to deal with it", he is a dickhead and doesn't deserve any of your fealty

You know, I never stopped to wonder where Harrow thinks the two-hander came from now, since Ortus isn't wielding it in her false memories or anything like that. So in this version of events John gave it to her, and that's why it's special/important? So I guess pre-Work Harrow is relying on her blind devotion to him to guarantee her protection of the sword. I wonder how Harrow is reconciling the idea that John gave her the two-hander with the fact that John keeps telling her to use a rapier instead

Also, it seems I understood what the Sewn Tongue thing was about correctly