Okay, so, as I all but bragged, I received an ARC for this, and ironically, that’s actually going to make this harsher than otherwise. I don’t really rate books here, if I post about them, that already means I like and recommend them. In this case, until the very end, it was absolutely a recommend from me and even then, I’m tentative.
The plot is simple enough: the Emperor needs necromancers, all the Houses send a candidate, the Ninth House sends Harrow and as her cavalier, a kind of second and protector, Gideon. Who has grown up hating Harrow. Excellent start.
The absolute strength of the book is in the writing of those two characters. How we first meet Harrow:
The Lady of the Ninth House stood before the drillshaft, wearing black and sneering. Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus had pretty much cornered the market on wearing black and sneering. It comprised 100 percent of her personality. Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.
But hey, maybe after they’ve met all the other Houses and realize they’re going to team up to advance in the trials, they’ve warmed to each other?
Gideon the Ninth, who would have paid cash to be called absolutely anything else, rose as her mistress rose. They exchanged glances that even through one layer of veiling and one layer of tinted glass were violently hostile, but there was too much going on to stand and pull go-to-hell faces at each other.
Kind of, lol. Progress! That encapsulates their dynamic and the tone of the book perfectly. I LOVED them and they were my absolute favorite part. The book was at its best when it centered on them and would drag when Harrow was out of the picture for long. It was a really…busy book? It went from a trial to a puzzle to murder mystery whodunnit to plain old horror back to plain old scifi, and it’s not to say that I hated any of that, I just didn’t expect some of it. Which is fine, for the most part the writing bridged that, and the characters. So many characters.
There were a confusing number of characters aside from our main two and I did have trouble remembering who was who, since they’d be referred to by different titles at different times (and, in a mistake I assume is fixed from the ARC, a couple of times by the outright wrong one). But if this were just a regular book post, I’d have glossed over all that, none of that was even close to being a deal breaker.
Given how long I’d been waiting for this and how much, it was always going to be interesting to see how it’d measure up. As I was reading it, I could feel myself nodding at a particular line or reveal, at times it was better than I’d expected. And then at other times I’d catch myself thinking, huh, this could have been done better. Which is about as good as you could expect, I guess, with hopes that high?
All right, now we get to the ending. Obviously, spoilers, although I’ll try to be vague:
I’d know a lot more clearly if I was going to rec this if I knew what happened in the sequel. To put it in someone else’s words, they called the ending…daring. You can guess what that means, especially when it’s f/f. I’ve had a week to think on it, since my initial reaction was rather emotional. And you know me, what I like, what I don’t like. I was able to type up the above review about the rest of it so…bear all that in mind. I can’t in all conscience not allude to the ending, I have to bring it up. But I can’t spoil it completely, that doesn’t seem right. And I’m just not sure myself, the sequels are still left.
I kind of selfishly want the rest of you to quickly read it and then come discuss the ending with me!
