Mini-Review

The sequel to Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth is not as straightforward and requires a lot of readerly patience. For four-fifths of the book, you can see that something mysterious is going on, but you don’t know what is causing it. Then the book explodes in the final fifth.

The usual snappy Muir dialogue and witty observations help to keep you reading. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the first book, although the mysteries being (mostly) revealed at the end was reasonably satisfying and it was good to see the return of some old favourites. This is not for novice fantasy readers!! It requires advanced level tolerance for ambiguity.

I listened to the audiobook, which was AMAZING yet again. I have to agree with the Locked Tomb podcast that Moira Quirk (the audio narrator) is a QUEEN.

Fyi: death, grief, uncertain mental states, body horror (not that scary though), general maiming, sexual innuendo, frequent swearing.

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