Harrow the Ninth, Otherwise Known as WTF Did I Just Read?

[lydy]

I loved, loved, loved Gideon the Ninth. It was dense, confusing, and moved at light speed, but it was so much fun, and at the end, I basically thought I understood what had happened.

I think I also love Harrow the Ninth, but... I think I can say with great and heartfelt conviction, "I have no idea what the fuck just happened."

I mean, I do have some ideas, and some stuff was laid bare, but I am so confused.  Especially by the ending.

So, in comments, if you have read this, please explain things to me.  I am not a careful reader, and I think that HtN might well have benefitted from a much more careful read.  Some stuff I've seen on Reddit suggests some really complicated and interesting stuff that I just plain missed.

Obvs, the comments will be filled with spoilers, assuming anyone is kind enough to explain things to me.

Comments

[lydy]

So, things I do understand (a short list):

- The second person narrative is Gideon when she's riding around, hidden, in Harrow's damaged brain

- God is Gideon's father

- On Reddit, I see that the reason Harrow was able to enter the Locked Tomb was because she had Gideon's blood on her from a fight just prior.

- Gideon's mother conceived Gideon as a weapon

- Abagail Pent is wonderful

And that's pretty close to it. I am confused about the identities of the Sleeper, the Body, and Wake. Are they all the same person? Also, what happened to God's Cavalier? I'm sure this was made plain, but as I said, I'm not a careful reader.

Various people on Reddit think that the nine houses are the nine planets of this solar system, and that God became God by murdering the entire human population. Which kind of makes sense, in an odd way. Do other people agree? If so, I missed it entirely.

[matt_doyle]

God became God by *resurrecting* the whole Terran Solar system. His calling the system Dominicus subsequently is a reference to scripture, I believe - I saw the Latin quote but did not look it up.

At one point I had figured out which house was on which planet, but except for Ninth being Pluto and First being Earth, I am not sure anymore.

Whether or not he first killed everyone is a little less clear, but a couple characters at least suggest it.

The Cavalier, Annabel Lee, A.L., or Alecto, was his first resurrection, somehow went wrong, and is the corpse in the Locked Tomb, but the specifics are not clear to me.

I believe the Sleeper started out in Gideon's sword, moved into Harrow's brain, was both in Harrow's brain AND in Cytherea's body after Harrow stabbed the corpse her first night on the station, and is Wake / Gideon's mother / deceased head of the BOE / the poster in Camilla's shuttle.

I am between 75 & 90% certain of each of these things, but not more certain than that.

[lydy]

Pretty sure Mars is the Second house, because martial and all that. I saw some stuff making persuasive claims about the other planets, but I don't remember.

It would be in keeping with a lot of the themes of the books if God became God by first killing everyone. I was a little concerned about GtN not grappling with some of the really profound moral implications of the world, but HtN really seems to suggest that all that stuff is gonna come home. The moment that broke me, absolutely broke me in GtN was when Harrow says, "I am a war crime."

So, Gideon's mother is Wake, and was in the sword, and was haunting Harrow. It seems really appropriate that Gideon's mother was haunting Harrow, I gotta say. But who is/was she? She's not another cavalier, I don't think, or did I miss something? She had sex with God...ok, confused again. Was she like, one of the officers in the Cohort?

I also have questions about Resurrection Beasts. They are the ghosts of planets that God killed, yes? So, where are these planets that he's killing? Also, with whom are they at war, other than the Resurrection Beasts? And why is killing more planets in anyway useful in fighting Resurrection Beasts. I think that _was_ explained, but I don't remember the explanation, and it kind of went over my head at the time.

To be clear, we don't really know what went wrong with Alecto's resurrection, but she and John did achieve the perfect Lyctorhood, which is why God has Alecto's eyes, correct? The other lictors have never met Alecto, so they didn't know that he had her eyes. Is it possible that the problem with the resurrection was that it was just...too good? That it decreased rather than increased God's power? Is the reason he didn't give the correct theorem to the other potential lyctors that achieving a non-eating fusion makes them less controllable? Or am I reading things in, here?

I'm not sure that the Sleeper actually is in Harrow's brain. I could be convinced otherwise. But I think she's in the sword, and her spirit is haunting Harrowhark, which isn't the same as actually riding around in her brain the way Gideon was. In Gideon the Ninth, where was the Sleeper? Was she already in Gideon's sword? Did Gideon love the sword in part because it contained the spirit of her mother (even though Gideon didn't know that?)

Damn, but I need to read these books again.

[jack]

I also really enjoyed it and also got really confused and also looked up some reddit comments ...

"The moment that broke me, absolutely broke me in GtN was when Harrow says, "I am a war crime.""

Yeah :(

I think some of the things with why/how they kill planets and what the emperor supposedly did were explained in the appendix to the first book which I forgot to read the first time I read it. But I don't think it was the whole story. I think Ht9 is telling us the lyctors think the emperor was hiding the real truth, but I think it specifies what.

I think I was confused by this description, I read about the emperor resurrecting the planets, but it seems he resurrected literally all people -- I hadn't realised that but makes the "God" references make even more sense.

"But who is/was she?"

I think they've not said who Wake was. Just that, she was head of BoE and died. I think the conception was, Augustine and Mercymorn seducing the empreror, saving his genetics, and giving it to to Wake to try to grow a baby to access the locked tomb. But the plan went wrong, she couldn't find a surrogate, she implanted herself, and then died falling towards Ninth and became a ghost :(

Presumably Wake knew the others somehow but I don't think we know how.

Now I also suddenly remember Wake saying, she couldn't deactivate the cargo to retain life support for herself. I couldn't tell if that was "couldn't" as in for the sake of the plan, or that she would have done but physically wasn't able to. I think. I might have muddled her up with someone else. I need to reread the hallucinated notes in Ht9 now I know more what they might be referring to.

Now I think about it, I'm not even sure if this backstory explains why Gideon survives the poison gas yet...?

"The other lyctors have never met Alecto, so they didn't know that he had her eyes."

I think they actually knew her well, but only knew either her or God after the eye-swap, so they always assumed they both had their natural eyes, and deduced otherwise only when they saw Gideon with the eyes they thought were hers but deduced were originally the emperor's

"Is the reason he didn't give the correct theorem to the other potential lyctors that achieving a non-eating fusion makes them less controllable?"

I think he had some reason to be biased. I think we're not supposed to know exactly, but I guess something like that.

"I am confused about the identities of the Sleeper, the Body, and Wake"

I thought I understood this, but now I am quite confused after all. I think Commander Wake is Gideon's mother, who possessed Cytheria and did most of the killing as the Sleeper in the bubble fiction. (But I got confused because I thought they also referred to Cavalier Pyrrha as Commander.) I think Gideon is the narrator, mostly quite distantly until she comes to the surface.

IRL Harrow visited the tomb where we assume Alecto/AL was "as dead as God can make her" but presumably not actually dead-dead, and if what she told Gideon in Gt9 was true was kind of terrified of her. She might have got out, somehow, but I'm not sure if she did, if she was in a form she could haunt someone or not. In the fiction, Harrow was haunted by the Body, who along with the Sleeper seemed reminiscent of Alecto's Tomb, but maybe also of Gideon or Wake? And she thought she was in love, either because she was haunted or because she really was in love with dead Alecto, or because it just made a good narrative. Now I'm even less sure I understand!

I need to write up my own list of what I think I know and what questions I think I still have outstanding...

[lydy]

I find that a list of things I do understand is considerably shorter than a list of things I don't understand. :-)

My take on the life support thing was that the ship couldn't provide life support for both the fetus and Wake, but I'm unclear if she cut her own life support to support the fetus, or if she implanted the fetus so that the ship was only supporting her with the fetus in her womb...yeah, I should probably read that bit again. No idea. There was a ship malfunction. That part, I'm pretty sure about.

Ok, about the eyes. When a necromancer achieves lyctorhood, as Ianthe did, they have their own eyes most of the time, but sometimes their cavalier's eyes are visible. Not just when the necromancer is in the River and the cavalier is in charge of the body, I don't think, because there was a lot of the eye stuff with Ianthe and Naberius in _Gideon the Ninth_. God's eyes never change. If he did a more perfect union with Alecto, and they swapped eyes, the other lyctors would have known if they had known God and Alecto before that union. So, they must have only known them _after_, which means that they must not have known that Alecto and God had done the more perfect lyctor theorem, right? So, they didn't understand Alecto's relationship to God, and when God locked her in a tomb, allegedly as dead as he could manage, they still didn't know for sure what the relationship was. So, is part of why they want to know because they suspect? Hmm. Confused.

I am pretty sure that The Body is Alecto, who was in the tomb, who Harrow fell in love with. I am unsure why she is haunting Harrow, or how. Is Harrow being haunted by both Wake and Alecto? That seems like a lot of haunting for one skinny teenager, you know?

So, you think Sleeper is Wake? Yeah, I think that's probably right.

When I finish my current book, I think I'll read these again.

[jack]

"I find that a list of things I do understand is considerably shorter than a list of things I don't understand. :-)"

Yeah. It filled in a lot of blanks from Gt9, but now I'm equally unsure where we are now! :)

"My take on the life support thing was that the ship couldn't provide life support for both the fetus and Wake"

I thought she was "parachuting" from orbit, in a space suit, with a space-suit-biological-box which contained the baby. But sharing power. I thought I remembered that bit fairly clearly from Gt9, because they thought she might have escaped from the prison half way down the shaft, except that wasn't missing anyone.

"When a necromancer achieves lyctorhood, as Ianthe did, they have their own eyes most of the time, but sometimes their cavalier's eyes are visible."

I thought the eye swap was all the time, although now I think about it, I can't remember them explicitly saying they never got their own eyes back. Except that I thought that was the point of the reveal about the emperor's and gideon's eyes.

"So, they didn't understand Alecto's relationship to God, and when God locked her in a tomb, allegedly as dead as he could manage, they still didn't know for sure what the relationship was."

That's about what I thought. Although I thought the lyctors thought they knew, i.e. she was a bodyguard or close confidant, or first-resurrectee, or something, and the emperor was especially fond of her. But I don't know if she had lyctor powers (I guess not?) and they didn't know she had a specific necromantic connection to the emperor. But they began to suspect something whether or not they knew exactly what, which is why they wanted to get into the tomb 20 years ago, I think.

"I am pretty sure that The Body is Alecto, who was in the tomb, who Harrow fell in love with."

I think this is right but I'm not very sure. In Gt9 I thought Harrow said she was terrified of the body. But I'm not sure if she might have been lying to herself, or to Gideon. Or if Gideon was massively misreading the situation because she never thought Harrow's interest in her, even if it became fond again, might ever be romantic. And in the fanfic arc, Harrow thought she was in love with the body.

And I'm not sure if Alecto was really there, or if the body in Harrow's visions was just her imagination, except it sounds like she probably was there in the epilogue.

I think a weird feeling that at least one of these figures I@ve actually misunderstood, or is some mashup of two different hauntings by Harrow's subconscious, or otherwise I don't quite have the whole story, but I don't know if that's the intended narrative or is me trying to pattern match too many different clues :)

[lydy]

You are probably right about the bit about parachuting in and the baby box and all that. I remember that when I hit that bit in GtN I was distracted and didn't bother to go back, because I wasn't all that interested in Gideon's heritage. I was listening to the book, so going back was more onerous than if I had been reading in text.

As for eyes, I would need to check the bit in GtN when they first come across Ianthe after she had completed the lyctor theorem, but I thought that the eyes shifted back and forth between Ianthe and Naberius. Maybe that just happens for a little bit, while the theorem is settling in? If the lyctor's eyes do shift back and forth, and God's eyes always remain the same, maybe that is also an indication of the more perfect lyctor theorem? Wow, really need to keep an eye on this in my re-read.

I am quite sure that Harrow being in love with the corpse in the locked tomb is specifically mentioned by Gideon in GtN. It is not clear to me that Harrow and Gideon love each other romantically. There's a lot of ways in which their relationship is more like very close siblings than romantic partners. I am also completely unsure that Harrowhark does sex, at all. She may well be romantic but ace...there's a term for that but I don't recall what it is. At any rate, Harrow is quite disgusted and distressed when Augustine and Mercymorn start seducing God, and it seemed to me that she actually didn't like sex at all.

I suspect Muir absolutely adores watching our pattern-matching systems overload. I think that the books are _designed_ to do that. I keep on wondering what the connect is between Teacher in GtN and God insisting that Harrow call him Teacher in HtN. Patterns, so many patterns.

[chomiji]

Re "romantic but not sexual" - demisexual, maybe? (Link to an educational website created by a demisexual person who noticed there wasn't much info online about the topic.)

Patterns ... 3 ancient lyctors serving God in current timeline, 3 undead teachers in Canaan House. I need to go read their descriptions again.

From the beginning I thought that the second person voice was Gideon, although she seems to have matured a bit and become more educated? Perhaps it's the voice of Gideon plus non-brain-damaged Harrow. Certainly a lot of the observations about Ianthe seem a little too informed about other human beings to have been purely Harrow.

[lydy]

Mmmm, I don't think demi sexual. Near as I can tell, Harrow fell in love on sight with the body in the tomb, and demisexuality is, I believe, only feeling sexual attraction towards someone that one already has an emotional bond with. Not sure how one would go about developing an emotional bond with a corpse (though if anyone could do it, it would be Harrowhark).

I had not noticed the three teachers/three lyctors. Fascinating. Although this may just be Muir playing with the Trinity, which I mean, why not? It's an established cultural resonance.

I totally did not see Gideon in the second person narrative, which means almost nothing because, as I've said, I'm not a careful reader. I do agree, however, that the second person voice is very much more mature and worldly than Harrow.

Over on LJ, I was talking about how Muir specifically said that Ianthe is modeled after a particular fanfic trope, DILP (Draco in Leather Pants) and how she wanted to play with that set of bad behaviors, which are usually male, with a female character. It is one of the reasons that Ianthe insists on calling Harrowhark "Harry".

[chomiji]

Yes, I saw Muir discussing Ianthe's fictional trope antecedents somewhere. She is really a horror.

The Trinity is not the only thing that comes in threes: Maiden, Mother, and Crone, for example, and I can't map those to the lyctors any more than I can the Trinity. Three points define a plane. And so on.

Maybe Harrow saw herself in the Body, the Princess entombed forever in ice. I figured out that the Body was the girl in the tomb fairly early on and felt smug about it. I have to say that I was gobsmacked when Camilla showed up. And I keep feeling that the bloody snow and body imagery in the bubbleverse meant something, but damned if I could tell what.

[lydy]

"She is really a horror." Muir or Ianthe? :-)

I was not so gobsmacked when Camilla showed up because there was a letter that Harrow addresses to herself "In the Event of Meeting Camilla Hect" so I was primed for Camilla.

The first note says that she needs to check to see if Ianthe has changed, and if so, kill her. What change was Harrow looking for? And what would it have meant if she found it?

Bloody snow is such an evocative image that it really ought to mean something, I agree. But, yeah, I got no idea, either.

At the end, Harrow retreats to a bubble in the River, right? And gives herself the reading material that would please Gideon. What the hell is that about? (I don't remember exactly, but it's along the lines of "Titties of the Fifth Cohort" which, Harrow notes, isn't even a real thing.)

You gotta figure that neither Gideon nor Harrow have ever had sex. I mean, who would their potential partners be? Certainly not each other. One of the aunties? Aiglemena? Crux? (Euuuuuwwww.) Ortus? Clearly not, and he's the closest thing to eligible for either or them. I guess there's also his mum, but again, no with massive sauce of hell-no. So, physically very inexperienced. But I do think that Harrow might be ace. Gideon, clearly and emphatically not. Huh. There are a bunch of ways in which they are the mirror image of each other, aren't there. Must think more on that.

[julian]

I did, but then, I was looking for it, because I had been accidentally spoiled. If you read it via text rather than via audio, it's Chapter 44 that makes it *really* clear. (ETA: Oh, nevermind, you talk about that in your second post.)

I otherwise can't explain why the narration prior to that really is calmer and more educated than the narration of _Gideon the Ninth_. Possibly a) Gideon is writing a letter to Harrow a long time from now, or b) Gideon without hormones (ie, in Harrow's brain) thinks differently than Gideon with hormones.

I thought, initially, Wake was Alecto was the Body, except that doesn't really make sense of Wake being endlessly angry at the Emperor.

Either way, Harrow is/was definitely in Hopeless Love with the body in the Tomb, but I basically perceived it as an idealized passion, rather than a real emotion. (Also, occasionally, a hallucination.) Whereas her relationship with Gideon has (or possibly had, at this point) the potential to be, absent actual death, a relationship with communication and progress. But I really don't understand the epilogue (with Camilla) at all, so _Alecto_ will be a Very Interesting Book.

(I see Harrow as having a very "ick, sex" perception of sexual activity, especially of sexual activity involving her Emperor. Sort of like a lot of people thinking about sex with their parents, only moreso. And she's got the inculcated mores of a nun, so basically, I think she doesn't *approve* of sex, but may well be *interested* in it. Gideon certainly is. But Harrow and Gideon could well eventually (if they're both alive in some way at the end of all this; "in some way" may well include one of them in the other's brain, mind you) end up as passionately *loyal* to each other, but not together romantically. If Harrow is as asexual as all that. But I don't know if she is. There's endless possibilities!)