You knew how you would do it: she was still fool enough to keep two jewelled candlesticks by her bed, thick with topaz and delicate flecks of polished tarsal, and from those you would smash two ropes of petrous bone straight into either side of her skull. It also doesn’t help that Harrow very much entertains the idea of killing Ianthe, whom she knows is a stone-cold murderer herself. Augustine is at least kind to them, but Mercymorn is hyper-critical, and Ortus-well, he’s taken it into his head that Harrow needs killing, which doesn’t make for a conducive learning environment at the best of times.

Harrow and Ianthe loathe each other even as they’re forced to rely on one another in the face of their erratic teachers. This sanctum, Mithraeum House, becomes the universe’s grimmest training ground imagine a magical boarding school run and populated by members of the extended Addams Family. The Emperor has thus spirited the girls away to his own personal sanctum, light years away from their home galaxy, to be taught by himself and the Lyctors still standing-Augustine, Mercymorn, and Ortus-in their new powers and responsibilities. Harrow and her fellow “graduate” Ianthe immediately find themselves going from being the most talented necromancers of their age to baby Lyctors desperately in need of training before death comes to claim them all in the form of relentlessly destructive Resurrection Beasts that home in on the Emperor and his ascended ones.

Plus, it’ll ease you into this book’s challenging but rewarding science-fantasy system, as our titular hero finds herself one of only two new Lyctors who have ascended from the ruins of Canaan House to serve at the Emperor, the Undying Prince’s side. Don’t worry, there are also reams of brilliantly audacious puns in this book, too, but if that’s your thing, you really mustn’t miss out on the gloriousness of the first. There’s a chance that you’ll understand and enjoy Harrow the Ninth without it, but there are definitely layers-and a whole lot of brilliantly audacious puns-that you’ll miss if you start here. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is the second book in the Locked Tomb Trilogy where a galaxy is turned inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor’s haunted space station.įirstly, do not bother reading this book if you have not already read the superlative Gideon the Ninth, the first in the Locked Tomb Trilogy.

Harrow of the ninth