Maddie stropes’s Reviews > Harrow the Ninth > Status Update

“There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow, but she had died before Harrow was born.”

I love how contradicting this sentence is which helps the reader know that it is untrue. How can you grow up with someone if they are dead? Poor Harrow. She has it all wrong.

“But Harrowhark-Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years- Harrowhark Nonagesimus has always so badly wanted to love. She had cost too much to die.”

Part of me is drawn to the fact that she was born to worship the body and therefore fell in love with it. Also “she was too expensive to die” so poetic. I love it.

“…she wrote a note explaining her suicide then went and unlocked the door. Unexpectedly, this did not kill her; and what did not kill her made her curious.”

It broke my heart that she wanted to die at such a young age. Still not sure how I feel about her falling in love with a dead body that’s thousands of years old. We shall see.

“You looked from the face you loved to the face of the Resurrecting King.”

It is still hard to wrap my head around the fact that Harrow loves a dead body. Especially when she so clearly loved Gideon. I’m sure it still explain further later.

This chapter, Tamsyn explains the science behind necromancy, and death. 2 things that don’t have scientific explanations in real life. She is a genius.

This is also the chapter where it explicitly tells you that the Body is the Body of The Locked Tomb.

I am re-reading the first 150 pages so that I can keep track of my thoughts. The first time I read it, I was very confused and had so many thoughts. I wanted to try again. At this point in the book, I thought The Body was referring to Gideon. It almost makes you believe it is. The sword she can’t touch without throwing up is definitely Gideon’s which she can’t remember the previous owner.

Harrow is throwing up, wearing a sheet mask over the bottom half of her face, and painted a skull on her face in her own blood. Good god.

“This isn’t how it happens,” said the Body.
Which gave Harrow a curious strength.
“I need you to hide my infirmity,” said Harrowhark. “You see, I am insane.”

She seems to be in a dream, or losing her mind.

POV switches here from 2nd person to 3rd. Very confusing considering she keeps calling Ortus her cav and not Gideon

“Beloved dead, hear your handmaiden. I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart- I loved you to the exclusion of aught else-let me love long enough to die at your feet.”

Still don’t know if she is talking to Gideon, The Body, or both, but I love this exclamation she makes.