Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth (2020) is the second novel of the science-fantasy series The Locked Tomb by Kiwi author Tamsyn Muir. Harrow begins where the first novel, Gideon the Ninth, ended: Harrow’s cavalier, Gideon, has died and turned her soul into a battery for Harrow. Harrow joins the Emperor and wrestles with false memories and an imperfect ascension to power as a Resurrection Beast hunts down the Emperor’s Lyctors, which now include her. Harrow must also contend with a conspiracy to end the Emperor’s life, an angry revenant attached to her fallen cavalier’s sword, and the return of people she thought dead. Meanwhile, Gideon tries to break through the barriers Harrow placed in her mind in order to stop herself from consuming, and thus destroying, Gideon forever.

Harrow the Ninth explores themes of Coping With Grief and Lost Childhoods and expands the series’ views on Religion and Cycles of Violence. The book is narrated in second person as Gideon watches the events of Harrow’s from within; the novel changes to third person when narrating Harrow’s false memories.

This guide references the Tom Doherty Associates e-book version of the text.

Note: To avoid confusion, Gideon Nav will be referred to as Gideon, while Gideon the First will be referred to as the Saint of Duty, or “Duty” for short, throughout this guide.

Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of gore and child abuse and neglect, as well as references to genocide, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.

Plot Summary

Shortly after the events of Gideon, Harrow Nonagesimus formed a pact with Ianthe Tridentarius before Emperor John Gaius’s ship rescued the two of them from Canaan House. Harrow has erased all her memories of Gideon and programmed her brain to hear “Ortus” whenever she hears “Gideon.” This will stop her from consuming Gideon’s soul for the Lyctoral process, so that she can try to save Gideon. Before the surgery, she wrote 24 letters to instruct her “new self” on the old Harrow’s plans.

Harrow and Ianthe are picked up by the Erebos, the Emperor’s ship. As she recovers, Harrow struggles with latent feelings attached to Gideon’s two-hander and often fails to remember who she is. Eventually, John takes her and Ianthe to the Mithraeum, his inner sanctum. John renews the Ninth House with cryogenically frozen people from the Resurrection, fulfilling his promise to Harrow.

Harrow, Ianthe, John, and one of John’s original Lyctors, Mercymorn the First, must travel through the River, where the dead reside. They bring the body of Cytherea the First, the Lyctor who infiltrated Canaan House in Gideon, with them for a proper burial. Once at the Mithraeum, the Lyctors learn that a Resurrection Beast is heading for them. John explains that the Resurrection that saved humanity required him to “kill” the planets of Dominicus, flipping their thalergy (life energy) into thanergy (death energy). The violent and sudden death of these planets turned them into revenants: powerful vengeful spirits, which they call Resurrection Beasts. They devour planets and utilize their power as they chase down the Lyctors, which they’ve done for over 10,000 years.

Harrow struggles with her “half-Lyctor” state. She is disliked by the remaining original three Lyctors: Mercy, Augustine, and Gideon the First (whom Harrow believes is “Ortus”), also called “Duty.” Everybody believes Harrow will die when the Resurrection Beast arrives. When the Lyctors enter the River to fight, they must rely on the souls of their cavaliers to defend their bodies. Due to Harrow’s attempts to salvage Gideon’s soul, her body will be totally vulnerable in the River.

As Harrow’s mental health is impacted, Cytherea’s body begins to move around on its own, and Duty inexplicably tries to murder her repeatedly. Meanwhile, she and Ianthe develop feelings for one another while also using each other to their own ends. Harrow is also haunted by the Body: the woman in the Ninth House’s Locked Tomb. Nobody else can see the Body, which has Gideon’s eye color.

Harrow’s time on the Mithraeum is punctuated by third person chapters that re-tell the events of Gideon with severe deviations: Ortus is her cavalier, a monster called “the Sleeper” stalks the underground facility, and people die in ways incongruent with the first novel. Any time Harrow is made vaguely aware of Gideon or her covered-up memories, her brain is injured, and she panics.

The Sleeper is actually Gideon’s mother, a rebel named Commander Wake who sought to destroy the Nine Houses. She exists as a revenant attached to Gideon’s two-hander. Wake stalks Harrow in her dreams, hoping to kill her spirit and take over her body in order to kill John. Unbeknownst to everyone except Mercy, Augustine, and Wake, John is Gideon’s father: Gideon was the result of a conspiracy between Wake, Mercy, and Augustine to open the Locked Tomb and destroy John and the necromantic houses permanently. As a child of John, Gideon’s blood would “match” his magic and thus break the seals on the Locked Tomb. Wake, in Cytherea’s body, attempts to kill Duty, who killed her over the Ninth House. Wake’s plans interfere with a conspiracy between Harrow, Ianthe, Augustine, and Mercy to kill Duty before he can kill Harrow. Harrow saves Duty from the zombie Cytherea, not knowing Wake is controlling the body.

Harrow and Mercy make several trips to murder the souls of planets to weaken the Resurrection Beast before it reaches the Mithraeum. On one of these planets, Harrow encounters Camilla Hect, who went missing after Gideon’s death. One of Harrow’s letters instructs her to help Camilla, who carries fragments of Palamedes Sextus’s skull. Harrow enters the River to discuss Palamedes’s fate with his spirit before they are interrupted. When Harrow surfaces, she discovers that Camilla is accompanied by Captain Judith Deuteros and Coronabeth Tridentarius, who were presumed dead and missing. Harrow learns that the three are with the rebel group Blood of Eden, once led by Wake. Deuteros tries to warn Harrow that an inside agent is going to kill the Emperor.

When the Resurrection Beast attacks, Mercy and Augustine launch their conspiracy. When Harrow enters the River, Mercy stabs her, intending to leave her to a swift and painless death. Harrow’s approaching death shunts her into the River and pulls Gideon to the forefront. Gideon’s awakening causes Harrow to remember everything: Harrow formed a pocket dimension under her control in the River to simulate Canaan House; the spirits of the Fifth House, the Seventh, Martas Dyas, and the real Ortus Ninegad were all pulled in. They staged these false “play memories” while piecing together what was happening on their own. In the pocket dimension, the Sleeper tries, relentlessly, to take control of Harrow. The spirits cannot exorcise the Sleeper entirely, but they expel her from Harrow, and Harrow’s pocket dimension begins collapsing. As the spirits depart to help Duty fight the Resurrection Beast, Dulcinea Septimus, who was killed by Cytherea before the events of Gideon, tells Harrow that Gideon is in control of her body. Harrow is faced with an agonizing choice: If she returns to her body with her memories intact, she will kill and consume Gideon; if she stays in the River, she will die but become a revenant and haunt her body, potentially also leading to Gideon’s final death.

Meanwhile, Gideon is thrust into the conspiracy. She fights Mercy, who recognizes Gideon’s parentage by her eye color. Gideon is saved by Wake in Cytherea’s body, who then goes to confront John. Gideon rescues Ianthe and the two head to the final confrontation. There, they learn the extent of the conspiracy and Gideon is confronted with her parentage. Mercy, Augustine, and Duty arrive. Duty is actually Pyrrha Dve, his cavalier; Gideon the First perished fighting the Resurrection Beast. Pyrrha uses Gideon Nav’s sunglasses to disguise this fact and shoots Cytherea’s corpse to expel Wake’s spirit. Ianthe and Gideon learn that the Body in the Locked Tomb is John’s cavalier, and that there is a method of “perfect Lyctorhood” that does not require the death of the cavalier; John’s immense, god-like power is derived from his perfect bond with the Body, also called “A.L.,” Annabel Lee, or Alecto. Mercy kills John for lying about the cost of Lyctorhood. John’s death will lead to the death of Dominicus and the Nine Houses since the star relies on his endless supply of thanergy.

However, John revives and kills Mercy for her transgression. He asks those who remain for their loyalty. All swear loyalty except Augustine, who drags the Mithraeum into the River in a final bid to kill John. Augustine wants to drag him down to the bottom of the River, where the stoma, the gates to Hell, reside. As Augustine, Ianthe, and John fight in the River, Pyrrha drags Gideon to safety. They watch as Ianthe rescues John and Augustine falls into the stoma. Pyrrha offers Gideon a choice: They can wait to die as the River crushes the Mithraeum, they can shoot themselves, or they can go out into the River and drown. Gideon chooses the slim possibility of survival and breaks a window on the ship. As Gideon makes this decision, Harrow finds herself back in the Locked Tomb, where she crawls into the empty tomb and sleeps.

Six months later, the titular Nona of the third book, Nona the Ninth, finds herself living without memory in a city. She is taken care of by Pyrrha, Palamedes, and Camilla (the latter two share a body). The group is in hiding while Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes try to help the childlike Nona remember who she is and how she got there.