, reflecting Harrow’s fractured psyche and her struggle to process the trauma of the previous book. The "Gideon" Hole:
The first 200 pages can feel like a fever dream. Around the halfway mark, pieces start clicking. By the final act, you’ll be gasping, crying, and rereading chapters immediately. The ending recontextualizes everything that came before.
While Gideon the Ninth was a locked-room murder mystery, Harrow the Ninth is a psychological horror novel set on a haunted spaceship. Harrow the Ninth
However, victory comes at a cost that Harrow cannot bear. To achieve Lyctorhood, one must consume the soul of their Cavalier. For Harrow, that Cavalier was Gideon Nav—the brash, sunglasses-wearing, sword-wielding warrior whom readers fell in love with in the first book.
She is trapped on the Emperor's space station, the Mithraeum, with the scheming Ianthe Tridentarius and ancient, dysfunctional Lyctors who are hiding millennia of secrets. Narrative Structure & Style , reflecting Harrow’s fractured psyche and her struggle
While the first book was confined to a gothic castle on a planet, Harrow the Ninth expands the scope to the Mithraeum, a space station serving as the home of the Emperor. This shift in setting allows Muir to explore the "Science" part of her "Science Fantasy" genre.
Harrow has undergone a self-inflicted lobotomy to erase all memories of Gideon Nav, replacing her in her own mind with the unqualified cavalier Ortus Nigenad. By the final act, you’ll be gasping, crying,
, the second installment in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series, is a genre-defying odyssey that transforms from a space opera into a psychological puzzle box. Released in 2020, it serves as a radical departure from its predecessor, Gideon the Ninth , by trading that book's snarky, action-heavy tone for a disorienting study of grief and fractured identity. A Narrative Built on Disorientation