#htn analysis

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.

Ok so: Harrow is obvsl going through some Things. To begin with she seems to be having some manner of psychological break exacerbated by(possible caused by) the Lyctor transformation? A huge part of it is obvsl grief over Gideon -she seems to be avoiding any memory or thought of her and this mental block seems to be impacting her ability to access Gideon’s soul and thus her full Lyctor capabilities- but she’s also overwhelmed by her new senses and her inability to feel physical pain, and a bit unstuck in time? Some of that just might be her grief-driven illness, but so far there’s been some jumping around in the timeline/her memories so it’s possible this is also a side-effect of the Lyctor transformation and existing on both sides of life and death.

Anyway, there’s some nifty wordplay associated with all of this :>

the first one is in an edited memory, and it’s right at the start of it, in the chapter-title for said memory: “Parodos”.

Now most obvsl, that looks&sounds allot like “parody” and, while they aren’t directly related, the connection btwn the two is STILL intriguing: “parody” comes from para(side/beside/parallel) and oide(song), in the sense of a comical/mocking “parallel” to another song; parodos literally means entrance, though specifically it’s the name of a SIDE-entrance in greek theater-design which gave actors access to the stage, or the chorus access to the orchestra, BUT ALSO it was the name of the song(oide) the chorus sung upon first entering the play, coming after the prologue. The connection to an actual side-entrance makes me suspect the “par-” phoneme is from “para”, but I can’t find a constituent breakdown of “parodos” so it’ll have to remain a suspicion :T

Regardless: it is, in the manner of a proper parodos(even IF Harrow, here, is her own Chorus; this is a 3rd person perspective section), seeming to introduce us to the central conflict of the tale; Harrow is censoring Gideon from her mind, altering her perceptions and capacities in response to her grief, struggling with feelings that she is LOSING her mind(associated with, possibly embodied by, her “hallucinations” of The Body[1]), and clinging to this expression of control as a life-raft among all this trauma. At one point The Body even appears in this memory just to tell her it didn’t happen like this which “gave Harrow a curious strength”.

IntriguinglyER(and this is more of a stretch and idk if Muir really intended this implication) parodos is often popularly confused with/assumed to be related to “parados” which is a fortification embankment built to protect the rear of a military position(it’s basically the backside equivalent of parapet. Parapet=forward, parados=behind). What makes this intriguinger to me(aside from the fun of a FALSE pun for a FALSE memory :p), is that the false memory is part of Harrow’s mental DEFENSES, and in it she asks Ortus Nigenad to PROTECT her by keeping the secret that she is “insane” because, since opening the Locked Tomb and seeing the girl trapped there, she’s been experiencing full-spectrum sensory hallucinations of said girl(ie: seeing her, speaking with her, feeling The Body[the girl] touch her, the whole hog, etc etc). I feel like this is MOSTLY symbolic though, and the REAL secret she’s asking him to protect her from is Gideon’s death(and her “consumption” there of; since becoming a Lyctor The Body has had Gideon’s amber-colored eyes). Of course there’s another aspect to this and one of two OTHER potential secrets; Gideon’s body wasn’t recovered from Canaan House, Harrow does not seem to be in “possession” of her soul(though she does have SOME aspects of Lyctor abilities, so perhaps it’s partial or a connection?); so

it’s possible the SECRET Harrow is actl using Ortus to protect is that Gideon isn’t dead, that they healed her after defeating Cytherea and somehow undid the Lyctor process. OR

They’re keeping Gideon’s existence a secret for some reason

Now I think these are a bit out there theorywise because, while I’m not far into the book, I’m fairly certain that it’s only Harrow who is thinking Nigenad was her cavalier at this point. I mean: the Emperor would have spoken to Ianthe, and there’s no reason why she’d keep Gideon’s existence secret(also everytime the Emperor says Ortus Nigenad it’s attached to a description of his mouth moving oddly, so I’m fairly certain he’s actl saying Gideon Nav and her brain’s editing it to Ortus Nigenad to spare her facing Gideon’s death). Also and SUPER tellingly there’s this passage:

The Resurrecting King took on the expression of a man working out a very difficult and emotionally taxing anagram. He said, “Ortus,” again, but the bile was sputtering up into your throat...”

Now that just seems like an INVITATION to see what Ortus Nigenad can be an anagram of, doesn’t it? And, INCREDIBLY OBVIOUSLY it’s a partial anagram:

Ortus Nigenad

Gideon

Of Gideon’s name. Partial, because it doesn’t include “Nav”, and also there are these left-over letters

rtusna

Hmmm... What can THAT be an anagram of?

rtusna

Saturn

Well flog me with a spoon! I have NO IDEA what this, GIDEON SATURN, could POSSIBLY mean in the context of this convo or of the larger story(also: maybe this anagrams to other words? I honestly didn’t try too hard after this very obvs one. AtRSun??? Taurns?? OF COURSE Harrow would play Horde if she played WoW, but I’d imagine she’d’ve been a Forsaken Warlock, or Orc one at the very least :p), but that we have a character’s name being called an anagram by the narration and then that character’s name turns out to BE AN ANAGRAM of the first book’s, now(mysteriously[2]?) absent, protagonist plus the planet Saturn[3], seems an awful coincidence. Of course that doesn’t mean it ISN’T a Coincidence, nor that it means anything in relation to the story even if it IS intentional; it could be meant to throw off theorycrafters, or just as something Muir thought would be fun to do(making Gideon Nav, “the greatest cav the Ninth ever produced”, a near-anagram with Ortus Nigenad, one of it’s worst). Of course, it could also be a hint to Gideon’s origins, or where she/her body is now. For what it’s worth, I seem to recall the big contenders for her origins were Third through Fifth House, and those seem to be the most likely to be the Gas Giants&GG Moons(Third’s the wealth-house, and there’s probably more concentrated resources in Jupiter and Saturn than on any other planet in the solar system. And, for whateverMORE it’s worth, Saturn WAS the Roman god of wealth&the harvest. If Mars’s ...Martial[X| X|]... associations are a firm enough basis for its guess in the order, then why not Planet Fucking Saturn? Of course the trident theme suggests Neptune, but why in the cosmos would THAT be the third colonized planet in the system? Makes no damn sense |:T |:T).

The last thing(two things?) that I wanted to bring up, though it’s not really related to any of the above, is Alecto, the name for the next book. Presumably, this is The Body/The Girl. Alecto means “Implacable/Unceasing Anger”, and it is the name of one of the Erinyes; the Furies; the goddesses and purveyors of Vengeance. The Furies, according to Hesiod, were born from the blood of Ouranos spilled when Kronos castrated him. Interestingly, the way Necromancy works in this universe(as explained in these early pages) is that the Cohort “breaches” a planet, after which point its “thalergy”(life energy; presumably metabolism-produced energy since necros aren’t snacking on ambient heat&light) begins converting to “thanergy”(death energy, tho it’d be more precise to call it the energy generated by the detachment of a soul from a body), which Necros can use to do Necromancy. The microbiology within a planet’s soil can similarly be drained, as can the animals and plants, and the process of “breaching” allows Necros to draw on the thalery/thanergy of all of these. So Necromancy is a metaphor for environmental/planetary destruction&exploitation. Kronos is a harvest-god(his name is obscure, but probably means something like “the cutter” or “the striker”); Ouranos is the sky(probably a raingod with a name related, hilariously, to the verb for “to piss” :p :p), but at the same time still a planetary deity. Coincidentally, the primary antagonists so far in the book are “Resurrection Beasts” which seem to have been created by The Emperor Necrotising the Nine planets of Dominicus, and who have been pursuing him and his Lyctors to destroy them for this/for becoming Lyctors(Lyctordom is legit called “the indelible sin” by the Emperor himself) ever since. Sounds allot like the Furies, doesn’t it?

In this context, the Kronos Ouranos myth can be read as a story of planetary exploitation/injury(caution: I am NOT saying that’s the intended meaning of the myth originally, just that it is a possible application of it as a lens of analysis[it being referenced by the series through Alecto] to this story), and THAT suggests that Alecto, the Fury, may have been associated with this initial Necrotization(The Resurrection/Nine Resurrections, which SEEMS given what little I’ve read so far to be what they call the initial Necrotization of the Nine planets of the Sol System? Though maybe they were already Necrotized&all used up, and the Emperor revitalized them somehow?? I’m not sure yet), may be something instanced to stop it, or may be a “Resurrection Beast” herself; perhaps the initial form they took before 10k years of thwarted rage pushed them to become more monstrous. Alternately, I wonder if Alecto might be a manifestation or servant of Death? There’s a repeated focus on the Emperor having “defeated” Death, and The Body in the Locked Tomb is repeatedly referred to as a foe he defeated once but could not defeat again, so there are good reasons to disregard all the mythological trappings and focus on the clearer, less metatextual possibility.

Of course: it’s probably none of this and I’m just spinning Fantasy wholecloth from between my entirely metaphorical ears :p :p :p

[1]The Body is The Girl in the Locked Tomb which Harrow fell in love with. I’ll get to why this is relevant very soon after this footnote

[2]I mean we watched her force Harrow into Lyctorship by killing herself, so I’m still more convinced this is all trauma response. Her corpse IS MISSING, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t super-dead. Though: Camilla and Palamedes DID have a contingency, and Gideon DID wink at Harrow post-Lyctoring, and it was ambiguous if this was her impaled body or her spirit/hallucination doing the winking, so I can see ppl running with this theorywise...

While writing My Other Three Reaction Posts while reading this book, one thing I kept WANTING to do but kept stopping myself from doing was praise Muir’s treatment&presentation of psychosis. I THOUGHT that was what she was aiming for, but It’s a touchy subject and I worried about imparting motive to an author on it or misrepresenting my own experience or knowledge of it in doing so, so I kept deciding to Not. But then, In the Acknowledgements at the back, Muir touches, very briefly, on her own experiences in this regard so I now feel comfortable giving her treatment of the topic all the kudos I can. Her portrayal is affectingly Honest. The terror and shame of Harrow’s condition -the vulnerability which makes trust both an inescapable necessary and horrifying to offer; Her desperate NEED for people to trust, and how easy that is to exploit and abuse- is fully conveyed. It’s rare enough to see a sympathetic portrayal of any mental illness in our society let alone psychosis, a condition which has been enthusiastically vilified and sensationalized in our popular culture for at least a century. But to see a psychotic PROTAGONIST, and to see her condition in all the sorrow, fear, and wretchedness it can bring, through the eyes of a sympathetic narrator, while said protagonist is trapped among callous self-serving ppl who see in it not suffering to be soothed but an excuse to discount, ignore, abuse, and exploit; and then to see her declared INNOCENT and VICTIM and RIGHT in clear, masterful prose; when the fuck does this happen?

It of course plays structural roles too; both by confusing what exactly is going on with Harrow and, through that confusion, allowing the reader to share a small piece of Harrow’s experience. Her visions, her memories, her FALSE memories, and her experiences all intertwine to muddle what exactly is going on. Is this “madness” a long-term shame hidden, or an intense response to trauma? Is she physically injured, or emotionally wrecked by Gideon’s death? Has she changed herself in some way, and if she has is it a result of that; or is this something longstanding we’ve merely never seen before? Is she sleepwalking, or is Gideon sleepwalking her, or is The Body, or is something/one else? Is Cytherea a hallucination, or a cruel prank, or a revenant, or is she Haunted? Does physical evidence truly contradict her memories or is this a hallucination too? Harrow can’t be sure of any of this and neither can the reader, and this taste of her experience helps the reader to sympathize with her plight. 

And, by confusing the nature of The Body, Cytherea, and what happened to Gideon(all “Bodies” from Harrow’s past in one way or another; some excellent wordplay whether intentional or no), the plot is obscured so that it can develop in a naturally suspenseful way. All these other possibilities obscure the possibility of Wake’s haunting, even though she and revenant possession are mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, laying out the development hidden in plain-sight. And that, in turn, works mechanically to allow these related plotlines -What’s up with The Body; what’s going on with Gideon; who’s the Narrator- spool out in a smooth, naturalistic, engrossing way as well.

 It’s obvs by the end, and spcl given the reveal about Alecto’s eyes and how she leaves just when the Resurrection Beast arrives(ie just when it would start making a spirit leaving difficult), that “The Body” -Alecto- is a real visitation; from the moment they become gold on at least. I’m still not sure if her presence going back to Harrow opening the tomb are real or fabricated; I feel like she’d have told this to Gideon with all the rest. But: they didn’t have much time together, and it wouldn’t make much sense to fabricate visions which began post-Lyctor back into her past when the transformation itself could be blamed for them, so there’s good reason to think this aspect of her remembered “madness” was real even if the rest seemed to be part of the backstory needed to “make her a different person”(e.g. in fact she disdained grave dirt on the trip to First House and perennially disdained comforts or reliance on others of any kind, but the her she remembered not only always took the dirt, but also told Ortus about her “madness” immediately when it became pertinent. Pre-Surgery Harrow would never do that).

As to the Body and her visitations by it, based on what was said about Alecto(that she wasn’t really “dead” just sort or “turned off”) and the mechanics of revenant-possession/spirit-visitation(running along thanergic links created through relevance and physical contact/called up by powerful necromancers), I think that Harrow, through her religious devotion to the Tomb-turned romantic ecstasy(and what a cool callback to medieval sexualization of faith THAT is!), and by physically TOUCHING Alecto(who maybe was still spiritually aware even if her body was “turned off”) probably created an avenue for Alecto to remain in contact with her through the River wherever she went(though I can’t remember her mentioning having Visions of The Body on Canaan House? I need to look through Harrow again to see), potentially further amplified by Harrow unknowingly summoning her through sheer emotional need. Gideon’s description of “surfacing” pretty definitely nixes the idea that any of those visions were overlays masking interventions by her.

Jumping off from there to the sleepwalking/body-sharing/possession... Gideon makes it clear her “surface” moments were incredibly short(she kept getting “clotheslined down”) and that she never manifested or had any control over Harrow’s body until the climax. The description of how Harrow’s Memory-Stage works states Harrow’s soul “emptied” from her body whenever she was on the Stage, which was everytime she slept or otherwise became unconscious(I really need to go back and see if the Break Chapters always followed “Whole” chapters ending in sleep/unconsciousness) but, as above, Gideon was too well partitioned to ever take over until the moment near the end. Wake was in Gideon’s sword(thinking back to GtN, Harrow DID have an odd antipathy for it even then), and at somepoint post-Lyctor(post-surgery? That makes sense given that’s when the Dream Stage was built and Harrow’s defenses would have been down) she jumped to possessing Harrow herself. It must have been Wake who sleepwalked her to impale Cytherea, perhaps so she could transfer her “anchor” from the sword to her corpse. Though maybe revenants can haunt multiple objects at once from their anchor; I find it Ominous that Pent kept mentioning the need to exorcise the anchor there at the end and that no exorcism took place. Could the sword STILL be haunted? But what role could she possibly have to still play in the story?

But gosh this book is dense! Not in a bad way certainly, but there’s just such a sense of Stuff going on in it, and I keep finding myself reading passages over and over again & checking vocabulary to make sure I’m grasping it, which works REALLY WELL with a narrative abt someone buried in grief, struggling with unreality, and not entirely in control of their own thoughts, behavior, and body.

“Insanity”, The Body, and Gideon

Ok so now I know that, whatever this is, it’s not JUST a psychological break but also some actual physical and metaphysical injury that Harrow did to herself(partly through the semioblivious assistance of Ianthe) which has created these false(or perhaps falsified, given the constant refrain of “is this really how it happened?”) memories, as well as Harrows physical and metaphysical frailties, and her blackouts/episodes of lost time.

I’m also getting the sense that the hallucinations&memories of The Body might be an alteration too? Like: there was no evidence of something like the “insanity” Harrow has in these memories, nor mention of the visions themselves, in Gideon the Ninth, and the letter DID say Harrow’s intent was to create a “new” Harrow(obvsl partly through a new history), and The Body(and similar manifestations like when Magnus’s eyes turn a color she won’t let herself comprehend[probably a golden yellow], or when she hears Lyctor!Gideon’s name -edited to Ortus- and immediately starts anxiety-bleeding from her ears), seem to crop up at moments which recall Gideon.

So I’m wondering if “The Body” and this “insanity” are not just set-dressing(though I was initially taking The Body hallucinations as real and previous to all this) but directly a method Harrow has used to hide Gideon from her, like an overlay? I mean: obvsl that’s the whole point of this Ortus alternate history, but I’m wondering if also, perhaps, the memories of The Body are overwriting memories of times with/thoughts of Gideon, and if some of these visions are Gideon manifesting for her, and her brain recasting it as The Body(which, if that’s the case, says some very Interesting Things about her feelings for Gideon[I mean: her whole “I cant live in a universe without you in it” speech in GtN was pretty explicit abt the intensity of her feelings, so it’d really only confirm a romantic/sexual component to that, if again that is what’s happening]). Though it could more be moments when she THINKS about or wants for Gideon(she tends to show up at tense or frightening moments as well) and her brain brings up The Body as a distraction. Also just the terminology here, “The Body”, is suggestive. I mean obvsl it’s an understandable term for the girl in the tomb, but it’s also the common term for a corpse(and also the title of a Buffy episode famous for dealing with the sudden death of a loved one and the grief that brings and I KNOW Muir knows that) like, for instance, Gideon’s corpse and all the trauma, grief, and heartache that it represents. Basically I’m just saying: it’s specific genericness makes it Ambiguous, and THAT makes it prime dictional real-estate for symbolic masking u_u

Also I’m wondering What The Deal is with those blackouts, obvsl? In the last one she impaled Cytherea’s corpse. Could this be Original!Harrow resurfacing, or another construct like New!Harrow, or violent responses to triggering events which her brain is then “forgetting”, or are these episodes more like the memory loss associated with psychosis? There are many possibilities here.

Also Also: I wonder why she rewrote Teacher as using her sort of over-the-top diction? Though, when she relates what he told her about the facility to Gideon, that was also more in her mien(though not nearly so as in the false memories in HtN) than what we’d seen before in his interactions with Gideon, so could it be that, one-on-on, Teacher behaved differently with everyone there?

Also Also Also, while we’re on the subject of diction, there’ve been moments where the 2nd person narration has used thoroughly Gideonian phraseology, and attributed it to Harrow’s inner thoughts, so I’m wondering if that’s a sign that she still IS connected to Gideon’s soul but has blocked it somehow, or if it’s just supposed to be suggesting Gideon as a narrator, or if it’s just Muir’s style(I mean: it very much IS Muir’s style either way, but is it JUST that or intended to convey something?). I’d read an old interview recently where Muir talked abt writing Gideon as being “very human”(also: “a kiwi hero”, but neither here nor there :p :p) in opposition to Harrow who was trying to deny her humanity, which makes Gideon’s diction popping up Suggestive; either of her continued presence in some sense, or of a change in Harrow towards the more humane(and I mean: she’s literally altered her own memories to make herself a different person because of the disgust she felt at herself over Gideon’s death and all the abuse she put her through in life, so...).

FTL

The shuttle Gideon and Harrow used didn’t, and couldn’t, have had a stele, so either there is another form of FTL the Empire is using, or Ninth isn’t Pluto, or Muir just fudged the numbers in Gideon the Ninth :p Maybe there’s some other FTL transit method connecting the Houses?

EGGS

WTH is the DEAL with these Egg messages, HUH?!? They’re a bit too coherent to be word-salad, and they’ve only popped up in these false memories so far(in fact; other than The Body visions, these “insanity”-hallucinations have only ever manifests in those false memories so far), so I wonder if it’s something to do with Gideon; a message perhaps? The “You Lied” is suggestive, given the message in the final Lyctor room. Maybe this is just me trying to read into something that’s not meant to have meaning other than to be disturbing&build the mental-illness narrative for New!Harrow. They are pretty over-the-top, and Harrow has an obvs love for the over-dramatic

Harrow and The River

So, even tho she’s deliberately maimed herself so as to prevent her use of Lyctor abilities, she can cast within The River, which no one’s supposed to do/be ABLE to do, and she didn’t experience any of the dislocation, at least not til the end(?), AND she felt as if she remembered the experience? What’s up with that?? And her dislocation seemed different than how the Emperor described it, losing touch with your body. Like: she set it off by casting, which was amplified and misdirected for some reason, and her blood got into The River, and then she saw that vision of the Ninth House dead, then the Gideon!Baby which REALLY set her off, and the Emp talked of this as an attempt by The River to disrupt her(meaning: she wasn’t disrupted at the time, meaing she was holding together really well). And she got kind of Ascendy and could see the shuttle from The River’s perspective?? ?

And then the whole thing with the Lights.

“one, two, three, four, five, all around you, and one beneath”

“... five points of light...”

The Sleeper

Ok so:

Has a two hander and a gun

has a garishly orange jumpsuit

shows up in Palamedes’s construct when what he’s saying starts challenging Harrow’s false memories

Revenants keep getting mentioned, as does revenants bound to objects

They had been talking about the Lyctor process, getting it “right”, and her cavalier; Palamedes touches Harrow, and whatever he sees psychometrically pleases him wonderfully

Palamedes sees the Narrator

The Narrator’s voice

I’m simultaneously wondering at this point if 1)The Sleeper is The Narrator(and possibly responsible for what Harrow’s doing during her “sleepwalking”/blackouts?), 2)the Sleeper is Gideon, 3)The Sleeper is Old!Harrow.

Like: Palamedes was sure there was more to the process in Gideon the Ninth bc he found the idea of consuming cavaliers monstrous, and we know Anastasia thought the same thing, and that Harrow absolutely did not want to go through with it(to the point Gideon had to corner her into doing it, bscl), and that Pal was sad when he THOUGHT that Harrow had done it conventionally, then was happy after touching her, so the vibe that she modified the process somehow, either in how she did it or after the fact, is pretty strong. Which would mean Gideon was preserved inside her, potentially? That this scene happens in a chapter established by Palamedes binding his spirit to his own body while maintaining said soul in a subspace btw The River and The Shore is also Suggestive; could Gideon be bound to the sword?

The Sleeper being Old!Harrow would make sense plotwise and tonally; We know her previous self is still in there because she can come back, we know she’d want to prevent whatever she did to herself being undone, and the Narrator’s voice is similar to Harrow’s(like: Gideon would NEVER say “But you were always too quick to mourn your ignorance” but that’s completely within Harrow’s wheelhouse). On the other hand those persistent pommel asides are absolutely Gideonish. This could be evidence of them being merged or sharing headspace; I mean it’s literally two voices. As to Sleeper!Gideon, the evidence is more in design; the orange jumpsuit and sword(tho she doesnt use it) are suggestive of Gideon, and I could see her doing this stuff if it was defending Harrow in some way(would she be willing to let Harrow hurt herself, as she obvsl has, though? That seems like a hard sell). As to the Sleeper is Narrator bit, I’m mostly thinking that from the “he saw me” at the end of the last chapter, though I suppose they could have been revealed in Harrow leaving, or stepped in to prevent him getting shot? Or MAYBE he saw The Narrator when they touched! HMMMMMMMM......

Also just an aside; this whole undead-astronaut thing feels like a Doctor Who monster/reference? Dont have a terribly good memory of Doctor Who eps, nor any idea how that’d be relevant, however.

Cytherea

Ok so obvsl the RezBeast is driving her corpse around, right? I mean: OBVSL right!? I suppose Blood of Eden’s also a possibility if one of the other Lyctors is a traitor like the Emperor thinks Cytherea was...

Gideon

So that moment btw Harrow and Gideon... Cytherea COMPARED our Gideon to this Gideon in GtN, he can feel something in Harrow which reminds him of a past love, he REALLY wants Harrow’s sword(tho that’s Gideon’s two-hander and I don’t remember anything special about it being mentioned? Again: could Gideon be bound to it and that’s what he’s detecting??), Augustine mentions the last few decades, when they were fighting Blood of Eden, being the hardest time he’s ever had with Gideon and the reason why he wants him dead, Gideon has very powerful&mixed up feelings about Commander Wake, Gideon ALMOST mentions a baby... Could our Gideon be THIS Gideon’s kid somehow(I cant imagine Lyctors can have kids normally, but the Empire’s got wombvats so obvsl they’ve got the tech for external fertilization)? Could she be WAKE’S kid? She was shoved out an airlock but that wouldnt have been anywhere near Dominicus, surely(and surely she couldnt have River jumped there).

Then again, we know he kinda romanticizes his quarry, and he’s been chasing Number 7 for ages, AND Number 7 is the one who just tried to kill him, so... could he be thinking he’s talking to Number 7 here? I very much doubt it but it occurred to me so I figured I’d put it out there *entirely metaphorical shrug*. I mean: how would a Rez Beast have a baby?  This whole baby thing also got me thinking about those Egg messages again, too, what with the mention of “implantation” and the romtalk. Also I wonder if his spear is a Herald weapon, given how slowly he was healing from that wound?