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iane_reads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Blood, Gun violence, Hate crime, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Murder, Toxic relationship, Addiction, Alcohol, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Suicidal thoughts, Emotional abuse, Violence, Self harm, Stalking, Torture, Body horror, Dysphoria, Gaslighting, Gore, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, Bullying, Cursing, and Death
Moderate: Eating disorder, Genocide, Ableism, Sexual content, Child abuse, Suicide, Cannibalism, Child death, and Confinement
Minor: Sexual harassment, Trafficking, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Miscarriage, Cancer, Terminal illness, Animal death, Dementia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Acephobia/Arophobia, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, and War
schmetterlingsbluetenartige's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Vomit, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Blood, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Gore, and Violence
Moderate: Cannibalism
fishbones's review against another edition
3.75
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Alcohol, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Cursing, Death, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, and Murder
msradiosilence's review against another edition
Graphic: Child death, Cursing, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, War, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Death, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Infertility, Medical content, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, and Vomit
possibilityleft's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Toxic friendship, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Stalking, War, Vomit, Animal death, Blood, Child death, Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, Dementia, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Murder, Suicide, Torture, and Violence
elizmoe's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
i'm screaming, i'm crying, i'm throwing up even more than harrow in the first 5 chapters of this book. gideon and harrow have forever altered my brain chemistry. i understand that these books are perhaps not for everyone, but they are definitely for <i>me</i>; every reality-bending, viscerally disgusting, brow-furrowing-inducing moment of this stupid lesbian necromancer and her stupider lesbian cavalier were for me, and i am wretchedly grateful.
too early to say for sure, but this book may have ruined me for other books? we'll see, but i have a bad feeling that anything else i will read that contains any of the following:
necromancy
swordplay
space
nonlinear storytelling
unreliable narrator(s)
enemy lesbians
will just leave me wondering why that book can't be her*.
*the locked tomb series
also the payoff of this book is CRAZY. if you are like 20% through and not seeing the vision and considering DNF, i urge you to carry on even if the 500 pages feel daunting. you won't believe your eyes when shit starts coming together, because so many pieces do. even pieces that don't, i am confident will be explained in the next two books, as there were many many setups from book 1 that made for some incredible reveals in this book.
i have so much more to say about this book but most of it is yelling. even the occasional ill-advised meme inserts couldn't mar this book for me! and that's pretty insane!!
Graphic: Physical abuse, Gun violence, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, Blood, Violence, Medical trauma, Genocide, Cursing, Child death, Body horror, Death, War, Torture, Gore, Vomit, Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Stalking, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Toxic relationship, and Suicide
erebus53's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
There are times where I wish I was capable of reading proper, honest to goodness, paperback books, but seeing as I'm bound to Audiobooks due to my infirmities, all I can say is OUCH.
Tamsyn Muir writes with a sensual love of words, that does not make the content of her prose accessible to most people. To say it plainly - she uses big words, and weird words. a lot. I am well at home in anatomical and psychological textbooks, and literary critique; one of my friends suggested that in conversation with me it would be easiest to carry a notebook to write down all the odd words I use to look up later... and even _I_ needed to read this with a dictionary nearby. It seems quite clear that the author was mauled or possibly traumatically wounded by a feral thesaurus as a child.
I'm sorry, Moira Quirk. Your work on this audio narration was ok, but you fail to catch the Kiwi parlance. It sounds SO weird to hear kiwi idioms in your accent (we don't pronounce a$$ like that) and your attempt at te reo Māori words was wince-inducing. Thankfully that was only one line.
I'm doubling down on my comparison from the first book. This is definitely like an anime. Great chunks of this book feel a bit like watching Neon Genesis: Evangelion. A good proportion of the narrative is in second person perspective, which definitely leans hard into the claustrophobic and unhinged aesthetic. You spend the first half of the book trying to figure out why things in this book don't tally with the happenings in the previous book. That was kind of cool and didn't leave me feeling anywhere near as confused as I thought I would. There were enough breadcrumbs to keep me from feeling too lost in the woods.
Upside of the audiobook was the similarity I was amused by in the fast travel; I was reminded of Douglas Adams's, Hitchhiker's Guide, specifically his description of hyperspace, and the Infinite Improbability drive. "The River" having weird brain melting effects on a backdrop of a woman's voice calling out time-stamps felt so much like HHGTG with Trillian in the Heart of Gold.
Many twists and turns, the reappearance (in various forms) of characters who were bumped off in the last book, the list at the front of the book of the dramatis personae (alive and dead) being actually useful, and a sense that you still don't know quite wtf is going on.. all leads me to think that the third book could go either way in my estimation. I'll have to see what it's like.
Graphic: Self harm, Child death, Violence, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Vomit, Blood, Dementia, Dysphoria, Genocide, Grief, Pregnancy, Cursing, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Medical trauma, and Murder
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders and Toxic friendship
Minor: Miscarriage
solarel's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Cursing, Grief, Mental illness, Toxic friendship, Medical trauma, Abandonment, Body horror, Murder, Violence, Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Gaslighting, Medical content, Physical abuse, and Terminal illness
Minor: Cannibalism and Death of parent
purplepenning's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Grief, Violence, Body horror, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, Child death, and Gore
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Genocide, Physical abuse, Alcohol, Sexual content, War, Death of parent, Panic attacks/disorders, Cursing, and Mental illness
Minor: Pregnancy
anxiousnachos's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a master class in point of view, plot structure, horror as comedy, the exceptional use of gothic genre, and divinity. I’d like to discuss each of these in turn.
Point of view
I think second person POV gets a real bad rep in the book community but I am a big fan of it, it’s one of my favourite tools Muir used in this book. I think this showed the same expertise that Jemisin showed in her use of second-person POV in the The Broken Earth trilogy. This tense creates such an element of mystery and omnipotence and horror - it is a POV for horror and it is used expertly in Harrow.
Structure
I know lots of people found Harrow’s structure confusing, but somehow I actually found this one less confusing than Gideon. Maybe because of my love of books with timelines that jump around and you kind of just accept not knowing what’s going on and go along for the ride?? But I loved not knowing what the fuck was happening, loved the timeline structure that gave us past and future Harrrow, I thought it allowed us a much deeper sense of who Harrow was and a much closer connection to her which made the events of the book so much more horrific for the reader and so much more unbearable in their grief.
Horror as comedy
Have I ever read a funnier book? I definitely can’t quite remember ever laughing at one quite so much as this. Page after page, I just could not stop laughing. The soup scene absolutely undid me, and I want it to get the love it deserves as peak humour and utter genius.
Gothic
Where do I even begin? This entire book is a masterclass in the idea of gothic genre as haunting; Harrow as haunted by past, by trauma, by loss, by the genocide of her conception, by grief. It it fantastic, and it is so deeply traumatic to read, I never wanted to stop and yet it also felt like I was being repeatedly punched in the chest, and then I read the author's note and it made sense. Muir gets Harrow because Muir has lived Harrow.
Divinity
The twist to such has intimate relationship with, and worship of, divinity in Harrow was an interesting choice but one which I loved because I am of course always obsessed with the portrayal of religion in SFF. I am deeply looking forward to delving closer into divinity on reread as I feel this will be an area that so much more is noticed on reread. But all I can say is I loved the fatherly vibes, I loved the subtle darkness below the surface, I loved the relationships God had with each of his companions and how that manipulated the relationships they had with each other, I loved loved loved it.
This book is a masterpiece of gothic science fantasy, it will emotionally haunt me as Harrow is haunted by a 10,000 year old corpse.
Content warnings: hallucinations, depictions of severe mental health crisis, grief, mass child death, genocide, graphic blood and gore, war, body horror, vomit, self-harm (for magic), graphic descriptions of corpses, murder, necrophilia, sex, death of parent, death of loved one, suicide, physical abuse, emotional abuse, amputation
----
Finished it with 3 minutes left of sapphic September to spare!! A MASTERPIECE. Full review incoming after I sleep.
Graphic: Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicide, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Vomit, and War