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The Language of the Night: Harrow the Ninth and mysteries wrapped in enigmas [1]

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Date: 2022-07-25

Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for then thousand years — Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die. Harrow the Ninth, p. 51

Good evening and welcome to our discussion of Tamsyn Muir’s unique, avant-garde, and (almost) terminally confusing Harrow the Ninth and its (almost) terminally confused protagonist. This disclaimer is brought to you by my conscience and Brecht’s aversion to spoilers. Because, unless I throw out a handful of generalized platitudes about the novel that will inspire absolutely no one to read it, I’m going to have to spoil the snot out of the previous book, Gideon the Ninth, which we discussed week before last. Therefore, if you haven’t read Gideon yet and want to approach the book without expectations at all, go no further. Everyone else: after a certain point (which I will note) you read at your peril. Okay? Got your refreshing evening beverage at hand? No distractions? Are the cats fed? Great, let’s go.

Literary discussion

It’s a convention — and a near-universal convention — that one character in a novel stands in for the reader. That person, usually the protagonist, is the referent. The referent filters the action, grows to understand the situation, and puts all the pieces together. Whether we’re talking about Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, or Hercule Poirot, or Huck Finn, the protagonist understands what happens, so the reader can also understand.

Yes, this is so basic that we don’t think about it. It’s just part of our common tool-kit; like prepositional phrases, we know them so well we don’t have to talk about them.

Until they’re missing.

A book that lacks a referent is a high-wire act, because it forces the reader to actively interpret, rather than watching passively to see how it all turns out. If the book ends and no one understands what happened, it’s not that the answer isn’t there; it’s that the author turns to you, the reader, and says, well, get on with it.

Many readers will throw their hands up and stomp off. Those who stick with the assignment, however, find themselves uniquely rewarded.

Harrow the Ninth is that kind of book. High risk, high reward. For various reasons, Harrow lacks resolution, but it’s still a satisfying read.

And what a pleasure it is that an incandescently popular book is also a challenge with an extremely emotional payoff and a literary novel on a par with Danielewski, Calvino, and Eco in the Experiments in Form department. And it’s a fantasy! (which I contend is a far more experimental form than genre “literary fiction,” which tends to be small puzzles or mousetraps with low stakes. I’ll fight about this one.)

The novel’s timeline is fractured, skipping back and forth between and among not only chronological time but also planes of existence. It’s disorienting, as the reader experiences the novel the way Harrow experiences the events — in short, it’s a hot mess. And carefully crafted art.

Spoilers Hereafter. You are warned. If you skip to the end, I’ll signal where it’s safe to pick up.

Gideon was a character explosion casually wrapped around a murder mystery, Harrow is a mystery wrapped around a mystery. Gideon boasted so many characters, almost all of them introduced at once, that you need the dramatis personae listing at the beginning just to keep the players and their teams straight until familiarity takes over.

Harrow draws from mostly the same cast, which is confusing since most of the prominent characters are already dead (and no, Muir does not resort to the flashback scenario). How the characters who were horrifically murdered in Gideon show up whole in Harrow while the ones who survived the Lyctor’s wrath in Gideon are bumped off in the fractured version of Canaan House in Harrow is one of those mysteries that is going to puzzle and frustrate until you figure it out.

The point is that we already know most of the characters. The few who are introduced are manageable and memorable. Among them, God, who we first meet at the end of Gideon. God, aka John Gaius, Necrolord Prime, is not at all what you envision a deity to be — tired, forbearing, and very very very creepy. In his own manipulative, gentle way, he tries to be a father to Harrow, even as he fundamentally and profoundly misunderstands what’s wrong with her, what she needs from him, and what she’s telling him about himself.

And what is wrong with Harrow? Her ascent to lyctorhood has gone wrong, leaving her vulnerable. At least that’s what he and the other lyctors think. Massive Gideon Spoiler (avert your eyes, ye unwary): if you’ve already read Gideon you probably discerned that, 10,000 years ago, sixteen individuals — eight necromancers and their cavaliers) entered Canaan House to attempt lyctorhood (a lyctor is an immortal, unbelievably powerful necromancer who directly serves God in his eternal war). Only eight lyctors emerged, and they were all necromancers. So what happened to the cavaliers? Short answer: they died and their souls were absorbed into their respective necromancers, where they serve as batteries for the lyctors’ inexhaustible power. Also, when the lyctor leaves her body to fight God’s enemies in a plane of existence called the River, where the dead go, she leaves her body behind, vulnerable to attack and fully susceptible to being murdered, were it not for the cavalier’s soul which, absorbed and stripped of all humanity, retained its fighting skills and automatically fights to protect the lyctor from physical attack. That’s how it’s supposed to happen, anyway.

Harrow’s absorption of Gideon’s soul has gone wrong; she has power but it’s not inexhaustible, and when she leaves her body, she’s vulnerable. And that’s a problem. She’s also grieving, deeply profoundly grieving and guilt-ridden, partly over her failures, partly over the crime of her birth and partly for reasons she doesn’t really understand. But we know: it’s because she’s erased Gideon from her memory, and the grief is killing her.

Hey, it’s safe to read from here on out.

Grief both drives the novel and flavors all its aspects. Harrow’s impossible loves are so impossible that she’s more than earned her goth credentials, both for futility and pathos. It’s hard to remember, though, that she turns 18 during the novel, and angsty star-crossed love is a feature, not a bug.

Even so, Harrow is grieving — it’s not depression, or the self-pitying indulgence that adolescence is prey to (in fact, “self-pity” and “Harrow” ought not be conjoined; in fact, ought not appear in the same time zone, she’s so ascetic and hard on herself) — her grief is a widow’s grief: the crushing variety, the kind that descends when your heart’s twin has been ripped away from you and you face living without. Muir understands grief; she shows it instead of telling us about it. And it’s an exhausting, terrible grief.

All she knows is that she’s not a real lyctor. She messed up the process and is left with a two-handed sword (yes!) and a deep sense of failure:

The first time the man you called God had delivered you the sword — in what seemed to you his aspect of the Kindly Prince, intending only gentleness — you’d fallen into a deep stupor from which you had never really risen. Maybe the sword had reified your grief into six feet of steel. You had loathed that thrice-damned blade from sight, which might have been unfair before you knew it loathed you in return. (page 28)

Yeah, about that narrative voice…

As we discussed in comments last time, using the second person address in a novel is powerfully annoying, absent a damned good reason. There is a damned good reason for it here, and the novel is not exclusively presented in second person. Someone is talking to Harrow, explaining her actions, her motivations, and her thoughts — to her. And if that voice is somewhat more reflective and reserved than we’ve become accustomed to, don’t worry — there are enough traces of the speaker’s personality that a somewhat careful reader will figure it out fast enough (the description of Harrow dressed in white and looking like a “sacrificial parsnip” still has me chuckling).

The central mystery of Harrow the Ninth, as in Gideon the Ninth, is murder: who plans it, who executes it, and what the hell is really going on? It took me two reads to put it all together, with plenty of “a-ha!” moments to pepper the experience. Although the narrative is somewhat less no-holds-barred snark than Gideon, the two narrative perspectives — Harrow’s and well, you probably know who — are both sly and funny. Harrow, for instance, thinks of the relationship between Ortus Nigenad, her cavalier, and herself thus:

Back then she had considered him a walk-around man suit surrounding some quite good calcium carbonate, and she knew he considered her with an awful respect, the same type one might have for a hereditary cancer that one knew was on its way. (page 53)

Here’s the thing that is most challenging about Harrow the Ninth: not only is the chronology fractured, not only is Harrow an unreliable narrator, the book lacks a referent. The characters have not yet learned everything (one could say that, at the end, they don’t know anything). It’s up to the reader to put it all together. All the pieces are there — the puzzle is yours to solve, because resolution is currently impossible, and there is no way that Harrow’s other narrator has the chance to tell Harrow the story — yet. And although Muir does not end with a cliff-hanger, everything is poised for the next volume.

Finally, do not neglect the appendices. In both volumes. Not only are they inherently interesting, they fill in essential gaps. And the Cohort intel report at the end of Gideon the Ninth is a typical product of military intelligence. The one at the end of Harrow is required reading if you want to understand how it all goes down.

And, damn!, I haven’t even talked about the Easter eggs and pop culture shout outs. I’ll leave you with one: the Emperor’s historic antagonist, the deceased commander of the Blood of Eden, is named “Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity.” Nope, that’s not it. Maybe the disorienting moment when the Emperor recites Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” Or maybe the scene … no, better not. It’ll give away too much. But trust me — the whole thing is meme-a-licious.

At its heart, Harrow the Ninth is a love story, a tale of love in all its outrageous shimmering combined hope and hopelessness. As Harrow’s cavalier proclaims that she is:

Always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life or death that they want to throw at thee and me. I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. (page 436)

In retrospect, despite everything, there is transcendence, there is a coming-to-terms, and there is proof that everything changes, but nothing is ever really lost. If you thought Gideon the Ninth ended with a wallop, brace yourself for Harrow. And Nona the Ninth is coming soon, so we’ll get another infusion of Muir’s space necromancy. Suit up — the story continues. We have at least two more books to look forward to.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/25/2112342/-The-Language-of-the-Night-Harrow-the-Ninth-and-mysteries-wrapped-in-enigmas

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