#analytic posts

Every character in Harrow the Ninth gets to be a full human being. The best example to my mind is Crux: a gruesome cadaver 2 parts loyalty, 3 parts shouting, and 5 parts sheer bloody-minded cussedness; who blew up a long-grieving, broken family(and their completely innocent pilot) for the “crime” of leaving the place that murdered their husband and father and broke them; who insulted, beat, and tortured Gideon her WHOLE DAMN LIFE. And, also, the major, if not only, source of kindness and sympathy in Harrow’s own.

CRUX!!! Kind uncle Crux sneaking her sweets once a year and whenever she gets sick? Reliable retainer Crux always honest with her about her hallucinations and never judging or dismissing her for them; doing EVERY BIT of what little he can to help and protect her? Soft-voiced and kind Crux being the only member of the household who DOESNT abandon her in the Nova AU? THIS IS HOW HARROW SEES CRUX! The guy who casually kicked and spit on Gideon, who treated her as less than trash and never showed her even the shadow of an ounce of kindness is, in Harrow’s mind, the kindest person in her life. That is Fucking Wild.

Everyone is allowed to be 3D in this book, even when Harrow and Gideon disdain them. Ortus -a too-big blubbering joke in Gideon the Ninth, and Gideon and Harrow’s minds both- doesn’t JUST get to be brave, to be selfless, to confront and face up to and SURMOUNT his mistakes and flaws and then ride off glorious and stupid into Valhalla, he gets something so much more important; to speak for himself. To be Known. Understood. Through Harrow’s petty sniping we get to see the love and care he has for his shitty poetry; through her defensively projected self-loathing his regret, his sympathy, the breadth of his Heart, the loyalty to Harrow which lets him be insulted and also the stubborn pride which insists those insults not go unanswered. I’m tearing up just writing this! We get to see, in his meeting Protesilaus, him struggle with the very image of EVERYTHING he wants to be but isn’t, AND we get to see him resolve that displaced self-hatred to BOTH men -who he is, and who he isn’t- and befriend them both, and realize that the physical distance between them is superficial before the siblinghood of souls, and even more: that the conceptual distance between his ideal and his reality doesn’t have to prevent him from being good. He’s still a side character but he gets an arc, development, a story, and resolution, and HE gets to give its summation. And he’s allowed to be Heroic in his own way! HIS words summon his Hero from The River to speak HIS meter while fighting to save them all powered by THEIR shared belief in HIS Art, and then a heaven of his own defining. What other book does that for a JOKE character?!

And again: this is everybody. Yes of course the souls Harrow unknowingly called up, all those too-soon dead from Gideon the Ninth; We get to see Abigail and Magnus’s love for one another -and the dreadful teens, and their universal big-heartedness- up close, and the refutation of(or perhaps counterpoint to) Ianthe’s selfish conception of love gets to come from Magnus’s lips(oh: and Abigail SAVES THE FLIPPIN DAY! Harrow gets to know her and, through this, we get to know the true tragic waste of her death at the same time that we get to watch her MAKE her own meaning from beyond the grave); we get to see Protesilaus’s bravery and grace and kindness; Dulcinea’s indefatigability and cleverness and morbidity; Marta’s selflessness and unshakeable faith in Judith; we get to see ALL OF THEM run literally soul-risking cosmic dangers to shepherd one grieving, suffering, traumatized young woman -their jailer!- not only THROUGH that grief, but also through spiritual invasion by the product of their society’s sins: Of COURSE that was Noble as Fuck and I was Sobbing.

but EVERYBODY! John, for all his exTREMELY fucked up morality and inability to understand her, GENUINELY cares for Harrow, GENUINELY tries to see the best in everyone(even if, I suspect, that’s for mostly selfish reasons), and we get to see the sincerity of that; his care, and the self-recrimination his missteps bring despite that unyielding, bullheaded, self-warping insistence to continue on one Faustian course after another. The Lyctors in all their twisted, ancient cruelty: we get to see their surviving virtues beside their ENORMOUS, demented, murderous flaws -Augustine’s cleverness, wit and charm; Mercymorn’s outrage at endangering the young; Gideon’s faithful dutifulness; the endless love and sorrow all of them have for their Cavaliers- in the context of the fear and strain and loneliness the Emperor has forced them to endure for ten thousand years. We get to see the true grief and betrayal, fresh and bloody even now, they feel at John’s lies and manipulations, the relief they feel at thinking it all finally over, and even some small glimpses of the love they’ve managed to carve out for themselves in all of that: Gideon’s necrophilic makeout with Cytherea’s corpse takes on a whole different meaning when you learn that the first soul he’s truly loved since Pyrra is driving it around. And this too is significant; for all the discomfort it brings Harrow, and the general gross-out factor, and despite their villainy, the Kindly Prince and his Lyctors, the “Adults in the Room”, are allowed to have desires; allowed to be full and sexual people.

And the same sentiment extends to how Ianthe is written. As much as she is Harrow’s tormentor(and she is); as much as she is a ghastly, gaslighting manipulator(and she absolutely is); we also clearly see that she is Harrow’s fellow prisoner and victim on that station. Her terror is real; her suffering is allowed to be real. As much as they would Harrow, the Lyctors would as soon kill Ianthe as help her, and the Emperor not only allows that mindset but orders it thinking it helpful; just so long as his deniability remains plausible throughout. She gets to be Harrow’s safest harbor in a sea of troubles while ALSO being the person fucking with her perceptions to build in her feelings of helplessness and dependency for the SOLE PURPOSE of getting in her pants. Yet Gideon herself names her joy at seeing Harrow alive Genuine; her love for Harrow, Genuine; as twisted and awful-made by the cruel ideals instilled by her life of entitlement and emotional abuse they are, those feelings are still allowed to be real and heart-felt. Her attraction to Harrow, expressed cruelly and selfishly as it is, isn’t dismissed; Muir treats it always seriously, as she does Harrow’s own desires, and repressed confusion over them, for Ianthe. Everybody in this book gets to be REAL.

Fuck even Alecto. Over and over again we get to hear the Lyctors call her a Freak, a Monster, Subhuman(and given her eyes, those white-on-black oddities, it’s very likely she ISNT human; either a Planet-Soul herself or something even stranger); we get to hear from John’s own lips -the person SHE guarded; HER Necromancer in a pairing we have seen presented as the epitome of intimacy through two books- how he betrayed and “killed” her to calm their fears of her; and yet all the while there she is with Harrow, comforting, advising, never shaming or judging, being the only real friend Harrow’s allowed herself to be aware of.

So we’ve got two bits: we’ve got three people taking care of an invulnerable amnesiac in a conflict-ridden city on a world with a carbon economy, and then we’ve got Harrow in the River.

First Bit

I think this one’s rather clear. Camilla(the one who looks after me), Corona(the one who works for me), and Judith(the one who teaches me[only one who can do necromancy]), are taking care of Harrow’s body and whatever/whichever soul(s) are currently inside it. I’m pretty sure it’s Gideon, but with amnesia from the trauma of being deep within, and somehow exiting, The River. I feel like the last bits of Chapter 52 are clear that Gideon didn’t die even if she THINKS she did, if you read between the lines. The last section starts with

“...if you die by drowning your whole life flashes before your eyes?”

and that doesn’t happen for Gideon. Instead, she sees a fading visitation by Alecto(did Alecto perhaps come back to her in those final moments and push her out of The River?), and then Camilla trying to save her life(and apparently succeeding). Also as I’ve written before(and wrote after reading Gideon the Ninth but cant seem to find X| X| X| probably did it on Twitter their search function is CRAP >:( >:() I really don’t see Muir killing Gideon off.

It could also be a merger of Gideon and Harrow’s souls, but I don’t think that’s the case. To begin with the treatment here isn’t nearly commiserate to that particular development, and I trust that if Muir went in that direction, she’d do it justice(I mean: Look at Harrow the Ninth; it’s all ABOUT doing justice to characters and premises). More practically tho Chapter 52 brings up the concept in discussing “life flashing before your eyes” and dismisses it. There IS the implication that the person can do Necromancy, which points in that direction, but the above, combined with my reading of Harrow’s situation, makes me doubt this outcome.

The last possibility is that it could be Alecto in Harrow’s body; there is that vision, and the necromancy(and given Alecto’s ease navigating The River, I’m assuming she’s Necromantic[as are all Planet-Souls hinthinthint]). I doubt this mainly cuz as above I don’t think Muir would kill off Gideon like this and if it were Alecto then where’s Gideon? I suppose it COULD be a triple-soul bodysharing and/or merging situation though.

Second Bit

Harrow chose not to go to her body because she KNEW Gideon was in her body currently and this would displace her, leading to Gideon’s consumption and making all she’s done to keep Gideon alive for naught. She chose NOT to stay in her Dream-Bubble because this is Harrow: OF COURSE she wouldn’t take security, surety, and comfort over the Hard, Chancy, Self-Risking, “Right” course. So:

Harrow destroys her Dream-Bubble(don’t try to argue with me that’s absolutely what it is >:|)

She goes into The River

Then a flash of her hallway, the same one from Ch. 33 when traveling back to her body

Then she’s back in her memory of Gideon dunking her. To be clear: this is a baptism analog.

Then she breaks the surface of the water and she’s back in Drearbruh, back at it’s heart, back in The Locked Tomb; finally “Home”

Alecto’s tomb is Bare(She is Risen!), a two-hander lies within the hollow of the bier, and so does Gideon’s fantasy of a Cohort titty-mag.

I think there are three possibilities here.

One: The Tomb represents her mind/soul and she’s in a modified version of the position Gideon was in throughout Harrow the Ninth. I don’t think this is likely because Harrow explicitly rejected returning to her body, and going into The River was presented as a separate choice from returning. HOWEVER the Hallway(returning to her body) and the dunking(Gideon was underwater, “surfacing”; now she’s pushing Harrow underwater) can be read as evidence of it. As to the Alecto set-dressing, I don’t really think these signs of escape really subtract from this idea as we know Alecto has a spiritual connection to Harrow, and they could be read as symbolizing that.

Two: Harrow has traveled through The River back to Alecto(so to Drearbruh since that’s where Alecto is), through an act of spirit-projection similar to what Alecto was doing with her throughout the book. I think this is a more plausible read given the setting and the possible explosion(the sounds of Alecto escaping), but there are a couple facts which push me in another direction; some quotes I’ll bring up later, the sword(why would Alecto leave her sword?), and Frontline Titties of the Fifth. As has been repeatedly belabored; that’s not even a real publication, Griddle!(though I will say, if she’s spirit-projecting she’s probably in some extra-liminal space btw The Shore and the world of The Living, and maybe thoughts&desires can manifest as spiritual objects within that place. Given all the similarities The River has to The Immaterium in the Warhammer universe and how that plane is directly shaped by thoughts, it’s not entirely out of the question)

The reading I hold to most strongly is this though:

“floundered not to the shore but to the island in the center...”

The Shore has been mentioned throughout HtN as a sort of transitional part of The River which the living arrive at when they either die or project to The River, and here the book is explicitly saying she’s refusing to return to The Shore. She swims across the water to a place on the other side of it; an “island in the center”. And, while the place she arrives is familiar and sentimental to her, it is also, explicitly and textually,

“faraway in a land she had never traveled”

Drearbruh is her home; she opened The Locked Tomb when she was 10; the scene Harrow is in is as familiar as it can be for her and yet the book calls it “a faraway land she [has] never traveled”. She’s home yet she’s faraway. She’s laying in a tomb of ice, glass, and iron and yet it’s warm and soft as cotton bedding to her(someone who has refused such comforts her whole life). It is COMFORTING and COZY to her! A two-hander lays within

“that final resting place of Harrowhark’s one true love”.

Which is HILARIOUS and sneaky ambiguity if you ask me. I mean: obvsl the surface read is Alecto’s “final resting place” cuz that’s literally what it is in the story, but it is the sword that is “finally resting” there now; the sword that can represent both Alecto and GIDEON(and, if we want to go even further beyond getting super-symbolic with it, the hard path of conflict, justice, and suffering Harrow has ALWAYS chosen throughout her life[1]). Anyway the more immediate point is: this is the grave/home/bed of her Love. She finds a magazine that doesn’t exist there; one made up by Gideon which warmly recalls Gideon to her mind as she drifts to her rest.

This book is HEAVY with Christian, specifically Catholic, reference and symbolism. In Christianity God is Love and God’s Home(Heaven) is a “Home of Love”. In Christianity Heaven is(among other things) a place of rest; when one goes there one’s burdens stay behind. This is the first place we’ve ever seen(aside from her “warm” attraction upon meeting BARIstar Gideon) where Harrow’s emotional and physical state is described as “warm” and “comfortable” and the Christian Heaven is a place of comfort. Drearbruh is Harrow’s Home; “Home” is a common Christian synonym for Heaven and “coming Home” is a common Christian synonym for going to Heaven. 

Harrow has Crossed the River, and come Home, to Rest, in a Heaven of her own making.