“I would have thought you would be happy that I needed you,” [Harrow] admitted. “That I showed you my girlish and vulnerable heart.”
“Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,” said Gideon. [loc. 836]
It took me, despite the word-of-mouth encomia and Hugo shortlisting, several tries to get into this. I kept baulking at the bleakness of the first chapter, where Gideon Nav -- orphan and indentured servant -- is all packed and ready to escape a gloomy, lifeless planet inhabited solely by ancient warder-nuns, labouring skeletons, and Gideon's nemesis Harrow, heir of the House. And I wasn't convinced by Gideon placing the key to her security cuff on her pillow, 'like a chocolate in a fancy hotel', since I did not see how she would have any idea about hotels fancy or otherwise.
But one day I was ready to relax and go with the idiosyncratic, pop-punk flow. And it was an immensely fun ride. Muir's language is lush and pacy and witty, and Gideon's narrative voice relishes the gruesome and the weird. Which is just as well, since the whole novel (the whole trilogy) is deeply weird, and replete with body-horror. This is a universe in which necromancers tap into thanergy, the energy produced by death, to power animated skeletons and create weapons from their own flesh and blood and bone. There is a lot of blood and bone in this novel, much of it originating from Harrow, who chooses Gideon to be her cavalier (bodyguard, minder and muscle) following a summons from the Emperor. (To be fair, there is not much competition for the role of cavalier, as Gideon and Harrow are the only two survivors of a 'flu pandemic', which wasn't.)
Off they go to the First House, where the heirs of all the nine Houses have assembled in order to undergo the tests and trials that, if successfully passed, will permit them to become Lyctors -- immortal 'saints' who support the Emperor's rule. However, the Emperor is not present; the guardians of Canaan House warn them against the dangers of the place; and suddenly the novel becomes a country-house murder mystery (in spaaaace), except with more skeletons, more lesbian necromancers, and a great deal more body horror.
The prose reminded me, at times, of Neal Stephenson at his most exuberant: colloquialisms, hyperviolence, flowing and pacy. Muir, though, has a great many more credible female characters: I am always happy to find a novel in which many / most of the significant characters are women. I also thought, from time to time, that this'd make a great video game: room after room, level after level, boss after boss ...
I really liked the ways in which the rules of the universe, the cult of the Locked Tomb, and the stories of Gideon and Harrow, were gradually revealed. Gideon is an excellent narrator, tough but compassionate, vulnerable in weird ways and fierce in others, and her observations about the other heirs and their cavaliers are a delight: '“Hm,” said Camilla neutrally, and Gideon knew immediately that she organised her socks by colour and genre.'
Which is not to say that I didn't spend a lot of the novel wondering what the hell was going on, and losing track of the various tests and experiments, and getting characters confused with one another. The volatile relationship between Gideon and Harrow, and the glimpses of the deep history underlying the Houses, kept me interested enough to be willing to go along with the story. Similarly, the humour and wit balanced out the gore and bone (did I mention bone? Gideon, or Muir, mentions bone a lot) and let me feel charmed by the characters even while they were committing or suffering atrocities. And Muir's sheer glee at her own creation, foregrounded in the Appendices, was immensely cheering.
I liked it enough to immediately embark upon the second volume, Harrow the Ninth -- not least because, yes, kind of a cliffhanger there.
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