Harrow the Ninth

After ascending to Lyctorhood in Gideon the Ninth, Harrowhark "Harrow" Nonagesimus discovers that her process of ascension is somehow imperfect and she lacks many of a Lyctor's standard powers, in addition to secretly having hallucinations of a beautiful woman she refers to as ”the Body.” Despite this, the Emperor fulfills his promise and renews her House by waking several hundred people lying in wait since the Resurrection. He apologizes that she does not have a real choice in returning to her House because the Lyctors are perpetually being chased by Resurrection Beasts, the ‘ghosts’ of the dead planets of the Nine Houses. In addition, large portions of Harrow’s memory are missing; Ianthe Tridentarius gives her a series of letters written by Harrow herself, giving her detailed instructions for what to do or avoid doing in various scenarios. Ianthe appears to know the reason behind these letters but has been hexed by this past Harrow to prevent her from any talk of it.

The book alternates between two perspectives; second-person chapters documenting Harrow's experiences in the present as a Lyctor, and third-person chapters that take place in the past, documenting Harrow's memories of the events in Canaan House in Gideon the Ninth. However, her memories of Canaan House directly contradict the events of Gideon, including replacing Gideon herself with Ortus, who is extremely occupied with his telling of an epic poem called The Noniad, as her cavalier. In this version, Harrow reveals to Ortus that she is insane and frequently reads text that appears differently to other characters. Teacher informs that there is a beast lying in the heart of the facility called “the Sleeper,” who takes out a different cast of characters than previously died at Canaan House in Gideon.

In the present day, John, the Emperor of the Nine Houses, explains the nature of his secret war to her: ten thousand years ago, humanity was wiped out by an unknown cataclysm. John resurrected the entire population of humankind with impossibly powerful magic, but the nature of necromancy caused this action to spawn revenant Resurrection Beasts. John and his Lyctors have been fighting the Resurrection Beasts for millennia; most of the Lyctors have been lost to madness or in battle with the Beasts. The surviving Lyctors are Mercymorn, the 'Saint of Joy', a vicious and embittered woman; Augustine, the 'Saint of Patience', who is flippant and outrageous to hide what seems to be a deadened, ruthless manner; and Ortus, the stoic, relentless 'Saint of Duty'. These three, along with John, tutor Harrowhark and Ianthe in an extremely dangerous art: the ability to travel to an otherworldly afterlife called The River where they can defeat the Resurrection Beasts by destroying their astral bodies. This travel involves a Lyctor’s soul metaphysically entering the River and letting their consumed cavalier’s soul enter their body in the physical realm in order to defend them while their bodies are vulnerable. Harrow’s faulty ascension leaves her unable to do this successfully and so is of limited use in their war. Similarly, Ianthe has difficulty letting Naberius take over. John also alludes that the Empire is under attack by a terrorist organization called 'Blood of Eden', which seeks to foil the Empire's colonialist ambitions, led by the mysterious Commander Wake.

Eventually, Harrow encounters Camilla Hect, the cavalier to Palamedes Sextus, believed dead after the events at Canaan House. Camilla is working for Blood of Eden, and helps Harrow learn that Palamedes is not truly dead; his spirit is sequestered in a tiny pocket dimension inside the River. In the present, the battle with the nearest Resurrection Beast is about to begin. In the past, Harrow learns that this Canaan House is not real—instead it is a similar 'pocket' in the ether sustained by beliefs and memories; everyone in the House other than Harrow is, in truth, dead. The survivors make a last-ditch attempt to fight the Sleeper by casting a spell to summon the spirit of Matthias Nonius, the greatest swordsman in the history of the Ninth House. Matthias's ghost fights the Sleeper to a standstill, energized by Ortus's intense dedication to his legend. In the present, Gideon awakens in Harrow's body, revealing that the second person perspective was not stylistic but in fact literal, portraying Gideon's observation of Harrow's actions from her own point of view, while in the 'past', Harrow's perspective was her own.

It is revealed that Harrow's memory loss and seemingly defective Lyctorhood was caused by Harrow and Ianthe performing brain surgery on Harrow to destroy all memories of Gideon. This ensured that Gideon's soul was never truly absorbed by Harrow and she would continue to exist; Harrow loved her too much to allow her to permanently die. In the present, the corpse of Cytherea the First is possessed by the ghost of Commander Wake. The surviving Lyctors' attempt to murder John, who they blame for the deaths of their cavaliers and comrades in ages past. They learn that Gideon was born as a result of Wake artificially inseminating herself with semen stolen from John, making them, in effect, Gideon's parents. Gideon was created to breach the Locked Tomb on the Ninth House and release the prisoner inside. This prisoner is explained to be Alecto, John's cavalier, whose life was used to give John his limitless necromancy powers while preserving her life. They have sworn revenge on John for never sharing this technique and letting their cavaliers die needlessly. Mercymorn destroys John's body, but he survives and kills her. He then sheds his affable persona and demands the remaining Lyctors' fealty. Augustine declines, vowing to fight and die, and throws John into the River in an attempt to kill him permanently. In Harrow's constructed version of the past, they kill the Sleeper—unmasked as a projection of the ghost of Commander Wake—with the help of Matthias Nonius. Harrow starts to regain her memories as everyone but her comes to accept that they are all ghosts. They tell Harrow to return to her life and resolve to follow Matthias into the River and face the Resurrection Beast. As the two perspectives converge in the present, Ianthe chooses to side with the Emperor and helps him kill Augustine.

The Resurrection Beast is repelled by Matthias and the ghosts, but Harrow's consciousness is either unwilling or unable to return to life. Still in a vision of the Locked Tomb where she first met the Body, she climbs into the Body's empty coffin and falls unconscious again.

Six months in the future, an unknown person awakens in an apartment in an unnamed city with Camilla Hect.

Constance Grady of Vox writes that Harrow the Ninth is "delightfully, beautifully weird, a book even odder than its predecessor but just as bewitching."[1] Calling the book "gorgeously Baroque," Jason Sheehan of NPR writes that it was "so beautifully, wildly and precariously weird that I couldn't help sliding through page after page, rolling around blood-drunk in the mess of it all."[2] The Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist also gave the book positive reviews,[3] as did authors Alix Harrow, Django Wexler, Kiersten White, and Rebecca Roanhorse.[3]

Several reviewers commented on the book's unusual narrative complexity. Liz Bourke of Locus wrote that its "constant shifts of time and perspective, and the unreliability of its narrator, mean that it never quite attains a coherent narrative through-line or a thematic argument that a reader can get their teeth into."[4] Others were more positive, taking this as a conscious stylistic choice on Muir's part: Sheehan called it "wickedly challenging to read, deliberately impossible to comprehend in full". Grady's review concludes "as bewildered as I am at times by Harrow the Ninth, I always enjoy being bewildered by Muir."