once again just in love with how realistically tazmuir writes people especially since tlt is a totally off the rails with background lore sci-fi/fantasy series. specifically ianthe because i fucking hate her. shes a dick especially to my favorite character harrow and id fucking kill her if i could but also godDAMMIT shes funny. when everybody finds out protiselaus has been dead the whole time and theyre examining his severed head she makes a head pun. when the spaceship shes on is being attacked by unstoppable planet soul monsters she says choke me daddy. when she enlists the old dude shes been sucking up to to help harrow murder one of his friends and he starts making out with god and another one of his friends on the table of the dinner party they arranged specifically so he could do that shes like old people should be shot. in each of these instances and more ive had to stop reading to feel indescribable rage because NO you fucking suck at no point should i be actively reminding myself of that the hatred should just be there but i just have to excuse her antics for a scene because the unfortunate truth is that ianthe tridentarius is a bitch but shes also a comedy gold mine

harrow the ninth has that quality, a quality which could make a world feel smaller or shallow but that, if done correctly, it can make it feel both endearing and urgent. it can give gravity to the plot.

i love it when every character you meet, regardless of the difference in their goals or the place they came from, regardless of interpesonal conflict or misalignment of character, all seem to be on the same page and trying, each in their own special way, to figure out the same larger mistery. worm and unsong excelled at this, giving us that feeling of we are all in this together, hero and villain, part of the same shit and all trying to understand it and perhaps ocassionally collaborate or cross reference notes or giving each other the ocassional middle finger. and oh yes we will try to kill each other in ocassion but that is just part of the game. in the end we are all going to the exact same place and god we hope someone can figure it all out by the time we get there.

to go back to my metaphor of htn as your first years as a young adult, every adult she meets seems to be doing “fine”. harrow herself is an absolute mess, and emotional wreck and mentally broken barely capable of witstanding her life whereas almost all the adults, even ianthe, seem to be coasting by without problems. palimede, abigail, carmilla, ortus. sure they are tired and weary and perhaps resigned but still seem to be fully in control of themselves knowing exactly what they are doing and where they are going and hey harrow, do you mind trying to catch up? but then you start to realize for a lot of them that is not necesarily confidence or strength, even for the emperor, their main emotion is just resignation

(also quick aside, its amazing how all the necromancers keep pulling their own distinct tricks to cheat death that constantly shocks all other necromancers, harrow with her lobotomy, palimedes locking himself up in a piece of his own skull, abigail studying the river beyond the river)

finally on a quick aside, im making a callout post for my friend @theothin to whom at the beggining of this journey i asked:

  “ok i have one question, i had one pretty big spoiler regarding the second book of the locked tomb and is that harrow has a lobotomy in order to communicate with gideon somehow, when in the book does it happen? near the beggining, in the middle of near the end?”

now when i said “when in the book does it happen” it was pretty damn clear i was talking about gideon and harrow talking to each other

but she, my dear sweet friend marisa, the sneaky, slimy, sleazy weaselly little liar, looked me dead in the eye and with a coy smile and a silver tongue said, paraphrasing:

“beggining :) :) :) ;) ;) ;) :3″

and i said “awesome”

so whew, you got me good marisa, you sure got me good