#lyctor

My friend absolutely loves this joke and wanted to use this slogan for con badges. I already had the font and added a cute little skull for good measure!

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #2)

Disorienting. Unhinged. Revelatory. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 4.5/5

This was my second read, and this time I tried immersive reading, following along in the text while listening to the audiobook. I usually save audio for non-fiction, and my earlier attempts at fiction on audio never stuck. But the Locked Tomb is a mind-fuck, so I figured reading and listening at once might help, a bit like sitting in class while a teacher walks you through the hard material. It worked. The series carries enough real, low-frequency words, as well as the usual invented sci-fi and fantasy ones, that hearing and seeing it together made the whole thing more pleasurable.

As for the book itself, every Locked Tomb instalment is disorienting, and Harrow the Ninth is the most disorienting of the lot. Muir opens up the world-building, but she hands it to you through Harrow, who has misplaced her mind. Did she do it to herself? Probably. But is someone else meddling too? Probably. Everyone around her can tell something is off, and part of the tension is that you cannot work out whether they understand why, or how, or whether they even care to sort it out. If you keep reading you'll get answers. Mostly.

We also learn a great deal more about the emperor undying, and it is unclear whether anyone actually likes him. The lyctors have been alive for so long that being thoroughly over it, all of it, makes perfect sense. But do they have any fucks left to fix the universe?

Anyway, I think everyone should go on a wild ride at least once in their life, and Muir lets you take this one from your reading chair.

Start: 2022-11-21 Finish: 2022-12-27

I think the Resurrection is a lie.

I think John fancied himself a god, and realized he could use his powers to exert his ultimate will - killing everyone. Which he did, snap, bang, all dead.

What he wasn’t expecting was the absolute terror of being alone after his snap decision to kill everyone. So he tried to bring them back.

But he can’t.

He can’t reconnect a soul to a body. So he took all the bodies and their pieces and made new ones. He knew how much of a drain on his focus and power it was to pilot around the Dead President, and he didn’t want to do that for thousands, millions, billions of people.

So he gave them free will.

And he’s hated them for exercising that free will ever since.