Whatever You’re Expecting, ‘Harrow The Ninth’ Is Not That Kind Of Book

You know how sometimes people say, Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have to read the first book in this series to dive right into the second . This is not that kind of book. You know how sometimes people say, It’s like everything you loved about the first book, only MORE. This is not that kind of book. Last year, Tamsyn Muir absolutely owned the lesbian-necromancers-in-space genre. She created a crumbly, dusty, deeply haunted and wonderfully goopy horror-universe with Gideon the Ninth , peopled it with creepy, sepulchral wizards, dipped it all in the reverential tones of quasi-Catholic religious fanaticism, wrote it like a science-fantasy parlor romance full of murder and then gave it to us, still warm and dripping, like a cat bringing home a particularly juicy mouse. And it was awesome. Seriously awesome, because the coolest thing about it was that we got to see it all and experience it all through the aviator-shaded eyes of Gideon Nav, unwilling cavalier of the Ninth House, who kicked ass,