I confess that I vacillated on scoring this. Gideon the Ninth was my favourite book of 2020, narrowly beating out A Memory Called Empire, so Harrow had a lot to live up to.
And it was, to put it mildly, confusing.
Chapters more-or-less alternate between third-person and second-person narrative. That latter is unfamiliar to many people as it is little used, for a very good reason: writing the you viewpoint - "The sword hated you to touch it", "You still prided yourself in three things..." - is very tricky to pull off well. It's usually a method to put the reader in the centre of the action, as Iain Banks does in Complicity. The confusion is further intensified by it being difficult to keep track of who is being referred to and the characters in general, as all characters have multiple names and titles, and the generally wordy, Gothic style in which Muir writes. Early on I was tempted to put it aside and re-read Gideon, but then just began to let it wash over me and engulf me and pull me along.
When the reveal comes about who you are (is?), that does make much of what has gone before come into focus but it is still quite tangled and I suspect I will need to re-read both books, likely ahead of the next volume or as a full series read once it is all published, to really understand what is going on. However, like much Gothic literature, I feel the point is to be experienced and enjoyed more than to be understood - which isn't to say there isn't a deeper understanding to be had, this is very complex and multi-layered, and I'm certain will reward further study.
One thing to add is that Harrow is much more science-fiction-y than the previous book. While there was (minor) space travel Gideon the Ninth read more like fantasy, mostly due to the necromantic "magic", but there was the underlying sense of scientific structure and here in the second book this is more to the forefront. This, a science fiction in which there is a vast power that could possibly be described as magic operating over vast timescales with familial conflict, slightly gave the feel of Dune.
One thing I have heard from other reviews that I somewhat agreed with was that the first volume worked so well partly due to the bitter, angry, sarcastic humour of Gideon, and that is sorely missed in this volume, however I still found this book a mad, enjoyable, captivating and sometimes infuriating ride.
The end also hints at what is to come. I can't wait to see where this story goes.
