#i was rereading gtn and I still like them very much

[llovelyclouds]

notes on cytherea the first

here's all the information about cytherea that i thought seemed relevant during my tlt reread :-)

sorry for the delay halfway through posting these lol! i started school again and got. distracted

(you can find all the other posts from this project here!)

CYTHEREA THE FIRST

titles:

Seventh saint to ascend, second gen, from the seventh

notes from gideon the ninth:

Briefly wanted to be part of the Ninth when she was young, until she found out about the facepaint (although, she’s pretending to be Dulcie here, so maybe not) (gtn. pg. 105)

Was sending Pro’s body to check-up on the lyctoral labs/her old rooms without her, assumed from Pro saying “it’s shut” upon his return from elsewhere in Canaan house (gtn. pg. 108)

Very likely knew about Gideon's parentage, including Wake being her mother, as she comments "nice hair" after the avulsion trial (gtn. pg. 229)

“Do you know, it’s not worth it… none of this is worth it, at all. It’s cruel. It’s so cruel. You are so young- and vital- and alive. Gideon, you’re all right… remember this, and don’t let anyone do it to you ever again. I’m sorry. We take so much. I’m so sorry.” -Cytherea, to Gideon during the avulsion trial. (gtn. pg. 226)

"I more didn't want to die alone.  I didn't want them to put me out of sight. It's a horrible thing to fall out of sight… The Seventh would have sealed me in a beautiful tomb and not talked about me again. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. So I came here when the Emperor asked me… because I wanted to… even though I knew I came here to die." -Cytherea, to Gideon (gtn. pg. 294)

"If you want to know what I think… I think that you're a cavalier worthy of a lyctor. I want to see that, what you'd become. I wonder if the Reverend Daughter knows what she has in you?" -Cytherea, to Gideon (gtn. pg. 295)

“I didn’t want to do it [lyctorhood] either…I didn’t want to do it at all…but I was dying. Loveday- she was my cavalier- she and I thought it could make me live. Instead I’ve just kept dying, all this time.”- Cytherea, to Palamedes (gtn. pg. 402)

Was planning what happened at Canaan house for 300 years prior (gtn. pg. 402)

notes from harrow the ninth:

“When they first brought her to Canaan House, I thought there'd been some mistake. You know that I'd been to Rhodes, to see the miracle, but I asked not to see the woman- just so I could be a disinterested party- and of course once I saw that she was necromantic I said yes, she should come to me to be a disciple. She was just shy of thirty then, I recall. And I knew she was sick, but I had no idea how bad it was until Loveday brought her in, looking as though she wanted every one of us beaten to death, and she could hardly walk… I went to kiss her hello and she said: ‘Lord, I can’t kiss you back. My lipstick's’ perfect and I refuse to smear it.’”-John, about Cytherea (htn. pg. 119)

The one to say they had the choice to stop (htn. pg. 121)

"'I still think it was a crime of passion. I'm not saying she didn't have other reasons. It's just that I think some of them were heartbreakingly simple. I could have gotten through to her, given time,' said God. 'Time- it's always time- she was overworked and underloved." - John, about Cytherea & Canaan house (htn. pg. 155)

“Everyone liked her. [G1deon] liked her” -John (htn. Pg. 228)

Her favourite conversation to have at parties was debating who had the hottest cavalier (htn. Pg. 278)

Tried to plant a bomb close to the physical form of and RB, didn’t even get close enough to touch the surface, and had herald madness for several weeks (htn. pg. 337)

notes from nona the ninth:

Gave BOE information on obelisks and steles (ntn. pg. 156)

[liesmyth]

General ask:

Have we found plotholes or contradictions you've found the Locked Tomb series? Any that are like, "why didn't this character just do X since they had this power?" or "how could this character have known this information?" or anything of the sort?

I can't find any, but these books are so dense and other people are better at close reading. I've been so impressed with the way things roll out, the fact that rereads are so satisfying because you suddenly know why a character did/said something that seemed odd or just innocuous at the time. for THREE BOOKS and counting (dear jod I wish I was an outliner). It seems impossible there haven't been any contradictions.

OK. I thought about it Long and Hard and could only think of a couple. Well, one for sure, and a couple more that could be plot holes / worldbuilding issues, or could turn out to be planned all along in AtN.

Lyctoral privacy and Cytherea

This is the big one. Lyctors are “black boxes” to thanergy unless they are being touched by other Lyctors, and this is something that should have alerted the gang in GtN to Cytherea’s true nature, much like Ianthe and Harrow figured out Pro was dead all along.

Regular necromancers aren’t able to “perceive” the organisms of the people around them to the degree Lyctors do, but some of the Heirs at Canaan House are powerful enough that they SHOULD be able to sense in some way those around them, and figure out that “Dulcinea” was sus. Especially since Cytherea-as-Dulcie had a couple of moments of fainting dramatically and becoming increasingly sicker (one of the reasons why I think Cytherea had a lot of control over her cancer cells) and several necromancers used aptitude on her to check her health, including Palamedes. They shouldn’t have been able to. Assuming that “touching Lyctors allows you to interfere with their bodies” extends also to non-Lyctors, they should STILL have noticed something was off.

The fact that Palamedes was able to manipulate the cancer cells inside Cytherea’s body to turn it into a bomb is very unlikely, even assuming he was touching her the whole time (I can buy it if he distracted her with sex like in this fic). And the fact that Lyctor Harrow in Act 5 is able to visualise Cytherea’s body and “see” the cancerous mass goes against the canon established in HtN because they weren’t touching at the time.

The smaller ones!

Ninth House demographics: If anyone younger than Ortus died when Harrow was conceived, and Ortus was around 17/18 at the time, this would still leave plenty of young adults of reproductive age. There should be SOME children on the Ninth, even assuming that people were scared to have children for some times after, even assuming that some people moved away (the Houses aren’t aware that the Ninth is dying out so it can’t have been a mass exodus). I can excuse this as Gideon’s melodramatic narration saying that there are no other young people on the Ninth, because she’s 18 and a few dozen kids of ages 14 and under probably wouldn’t register to her, just because to all intents and purposes, she was raised completely alone with Harrow. But look. There should be some kids.

Who are the Cohort fighting? I talked about it a bit here; the population of the known universe just doesn’t seem big enough to sustain a continued war of aggression by the Houses (the implications in GtN/HtN) because what we see of the Empire in NtN seems to be a colonial power who are firmly established in most of their “sheperedered planets” and only have to contend with insurgence movements, not an enemy army. BUT the Cohort seem to constantly be fighting and dying. I'm very curious to find out if we'll discover more.

(There are a couple more things that will leave me ???? if they aren't cleared up in AtN, but they're even more minor)

[nonagesiiiimus]

eden's TLT reread: GTN's peripheral materials, pt 2:

part two! this turned into a super long one, and i still didn't even get all my thoughts out about the naming conventions. but it's long enough already.

A Sermon on Cavaliers and Necromancers

what a freaking interesting passage. this part does a few things for me.

it highlights the colonial attitudes and blindnesses of those living in the Empire. it uses the phrase "bullet-fueled barbarism" to describe non Resurrection societies, which is a complete and total colonialist phrase: used often to describe Native peoples, calling a group barbaric is a racially undertoned, 'better-than-them' filled word (p. 450).

this passage also says a lot about how the necro-cav pairing is a) perceived and b) marketed, to an extent, to the empires' people. the ideology of the empire is propagandized here to ensure that people view the necro-cav bond in a particular way. is it actually that way? in many cases yes, these two are bonded to each other in a love that is undefinable, and powerful, and balanced. what i think this passage does is try to hammer the reader over the head with that in a way that comes off as almost repressive towards any dissenting opinions.

i laughed at "BE MY CAVELIER V11". it reminded me of palamades' romance novel. he's absolutely dying for 6 sequels.

i also laughed at the "lowly lieutenant" remark (p.450). massive slam on marta dyas out of nowhere

this passage also gives some interesting information on how necromantic babies are born, and how the families work: “One flesh” is the underpinning of our whole Empire. We are born necromancers, or we are not; yet we are one. The non-necromancer will still have necromantic children. The necromancer will have parents who lacked the aptitude. The possibility is within us. We live under the thanergenic light of Dominicus, are born, grow, and die in his thanergetic Houses; the Resurrection made us so. We are fundamentally different to those born on thalergy planets outside the Empire. Our anxiety drives the expectant parent to arrange to give birth back home, or concern themselves with the baby’s proximity to grave dirt sourced from home" (p.451). not much more to add to this except that it seems like people in the Dominicus want their children to turn out as necromancers.

i was overall confused on the pattern marriages thing's importance and purpose. is it to hold onto necromantic power? what's up with all the bloodline stuff in the Houses, especially with the Sixth and their "set childbearing pairs" and "genetic scarcity" (p.453)? my understanding is that the sixth all descend from a very limited group of people and maybe have had difficulty marrying out of their house, which makes their gene pool limited. more of this is addressed in GTN/Dr. Sex/Nona, so i'm putting a pin in it to dive back into later.

THE NOTE. THE LYCTORAL NOTE. which reads: valancy says one flesh one end sounds like instructions for a sex toy. can’t stop thinking about that so can someone stop cris and alfred before the sex toy phrase catches on, thanks

i don't know who wrote it yet (cyrus?) and maybe we'll never know. but... hilarious. a bit of acid to cut through the fat of the propagandizing.

Cohort Intelligence Files

judith and marta have never seen action on the battlefield (p. 455)! also confirms there's a Cohort youth group, which, yuck. i guess they don't mind child soldiers.

i love that the tridentarii got in-house necromancy training. there would be no way ianthe could have kept up Corona's lie if they were in school! their parents must be committed to the matching set idea. again, yuck. i also think it's interesting the way that judith, like everyone else and despite knowing her for a long time, discounts ianthe completely. they are absolutely codependent in a lot of unhealthy and weird ways, but i feel like you'd have to be really not watching her to not notice ianthe's strengths. but tbh, she must have perfected the disguise. their descriptions are the first place we see "resurrection purity family" listed as a qualifier, under Naberius (p. 458).

the descriptions of isaac and jeannemary make it very clear how connected the fourth and fifth are. my question is, strategically, what does the fifth want/need from the fourth? we don't know enough about either of the houses to hazard a guess, in my opinion.

magnus and abigail married before magnus was her cavalier, which according to the Sermon, is a fifth house tradition they stick to in many cases (p.452). i enjoy the idea of magnus quinn leading a board meeting as a bureaucratic type.

palamades genius confirmed. also, camilla is so mysterious- and COMPLETELY DISCOUNTED by Judith (p.463). oh babe, she can soooo "compete on the cavalier stage".

heptanary blood cancer. yeesh. i'm dying to know what heptanary means or if it's a tamsyn word. also, reading judith's notes on protesilaus, it's wild to me that nobody fucking thought "hm. mr family man is acting like... a robot? that doesn't track. and he sucks at swords and is super slow? that doesn't track with his record either". hindsight on the beguiling dead is 20/20.

i didn't realize silas was 16. yikes, again! also, the breeding cavaliers thing is fucking disgusting. i feel so much pity for colum.

the poor mysterious ninth.

A Little Explanation of Naming Systems

first name refers to your family in some way. surname always in indicative of the House. first and last name can be used interchangeably to the same effect. names are not changed in marriage (p. 467)

some marraige stuff here too: non-necros must pick which house to settle on and affiliate with, and all children will be of the SETTLED house. necros can't marry out of house, which is why if they are to be married to someone from outside the house, that person has to affiliate with the necro's house instead of keeping their own house identity (pgs. 467-468).

harrow = harrowing of Hell. from swordofthespirit.net : "The “harrowing of hell” refers to what Christ did when he descended to Hades or hell between his death and his resurrection. Specifically, the early church believed that after his death Christ descended into hell in order to rescue the souls of the just, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall. When Jesus descends he beaks down the doors of hell, unbinds the prisoners held in chains, and then leads the just to their heavenly paradise."

“hark is one of those terrible, portentous words that always precedes an awful time, but in the old sense of ‘awe’.” (468)

Harrow’s name is potentially a direct reference to the plot of ATN, or her character’s end game: to descend into Hell, and free those in chains, bringing them back to the light.

gideon: one who cuts down, Hacker or One Who Hewed Down the Enemy. in the bible, Gideon is a massive warrior and prophet of God, who is called down to fight the Midianites and essentially whoops ass. interesting quote from abarim publications: "The verb גדע (gada') means to hew down or cut off, mostly of religious regalia and holy trees and such. Strikingly, there are no nouns formed from this verb, suggesting that whatever was cut off, was no longer discussed and even cut off from speech itself."

tamsyn writes: "Gideon is a prophetic name: someone named their own demise in her" (p. 468). which i LOVE. their names tell of their future story, i.e she's going to KICK GOD'S ASS. hopefully.

priam: "priam in the iliad was famously a dad in a city about to go splat. (p. 469)"

coronabeth: Corona: the sun, the halo, the crown

ianthe : quoting from ancestry.com: "The name Ianthe finds its root in ancient Greek, where it is derived from the combination of the Greek words ia meaning violet and anthos meaning flower. This gave birth to its meaning as a violet colored flower. In Greek mythology, Ianthe was a [oceanid water] nymph who was beloved by one of the gods, who granted her immortality." violet eyes, immortality by God. also interestingly, ianthe was also the name of one of persephone's companions when she was taken by Hades.

there's one more legend of ianthe in greek mythology, as presumably another individual: Ianthe, a Cretan girl who was betrothed to Iphis, appears as another figure in Greek and Roman mythology. Iphis, a woman raised as a man, also fell in love with Ianthe and prayed to the gods for permission to marry the other woman. Instead, Isis changed Iphis into a man who then became Ianthe’s husband. very queer of her!

this note on the sixth house: "any person, regardless of necromantic aptitude, marrying any member of the Sixth House (also regardless of necromantic aptitude), becomes a member of the Sixth House. This binds them to the Sixth House for the rest of their lives; additionally, any subsequent children they might have are for the Sixth, even if their current partner is not of the Sixth House" (quote from the wiki). tamsyn remarks that this makes it complicated.. which i can imagine. but it probably helps with their gene pool issue.

isaac: Named for Isaac in the Bible, who was set to be sacrificed by his father by God’s orders, in order to test his father Abraham’s loyalty. “the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ is heavily foreshadowed in the biblical account of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac…God had already asked Abraham to leave his kinfolk and give up his past, and in asking him to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, was asking him to "surrender his future as well... Just as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, God sacrificed his only son, Jesus.”

jeannemary: named for Jeanne d’Arc, aka Joan of Arc.

isaac being named for the foreshadowed death of christ, and jeannemary being named for jeanne d’arc are just masterful (p. 472). the symbolism is near heavy handed but i eat it with a spoon anyway. gideon as christ for sure.

i LOVE tamsyn’s use of the matching parts of the name to signify the necro cav pairs that were truly devoted to each other: palAMades and cAMilla… mAGgnus and abiGAil… sobbing (p. 473)

dulcinea: Named for the imaginary love interest of Don Quixote. Don Quixote believes he must have a lady, under the mistaken view that chivalry requires it… As he does not have one, he invents her, making her the very model of female perfection.

“a case of a woman you want to exist but who really doesn’t” is heart shattering foreshadowing (p.473). this foreshadows the reveal that dulcinea as they all knew her never existed: she’d been killed by cytherea before they could even meet her

but tbh she does exist… just not in gideon. gotta wait for the river for that one. i am a pal/cam/dulcie polycule truther.

not much more except i am just consistently delighted in the thoughtfulness of the naming and how much foreshadowing is layered in the very names of these characters. many in ways we still have yet to see play out in the broader story of the text.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Harrow the Ninth: Appendices

Glossary

I don't actually have much to say about the Glossary here, except for remarking on this one sentence in the entry for the Blood of Eden:

On Wake's death, Blood of Eden withdrew somewhat out of the eye of the Houses to regroup, but were enlivened by the reappearance of their legendary commander in the form of a revenant.

It's news to me that Wake was a revenant! Revenants, if I followed the lore correctly (rudely, there isn't a Glossary entry for them here or in GtN), exist when planets are killed (or resurrected - as the Resurrection Beasts are revenants). Is Wake's form as The Sleeper a revenant, and could she possess Cytherea's body as a revenant? This might be the first mention or inkling that people can become revenants as well.

(Hang on, I have to look something up -)

Ah, here it is, right at the beginning of the book:

"What happens to the soul?" "In the case of gradual death [...] transition is automatc and straightforward. [...] In cases of apopneumatic shock, where death is sudden and violent, the energy burst can be sufficient to countermand osmotic pressure and leave the soul temporarily isolated. Whence we gain the ghost, and the revenant."

This was early enough in Harrow the Ninth that I didn't pay much attention to it, I didn't know what it meant, but I remembered revenants coming up in this conversation. Though the mention I remembered was a little later:

"[...]when a soul is so rudely taken away from the planet--" [...] "A revenant," you said. "Always a revenant," he said. "Every single time, a goddamned revenant."

So I remembered revenants in the context of planets and resurrection beasts, but not people. But people very much can have revenants, and that's what was going on with Wake. Interesting!! Something to look out for for the reread.

Let's move on.

Blood of Eden Memorandum for Record

Oooohh, a look into some of the inner workings of Blood of Eden: The underlying ideology, strategies and plans of this group of rebel insurgents. Should be a fun read!

Your first tactical consideration should always be to identify present necromancers with the highest achievable degree of certainty.

Sounds easy, is anything but; the section directly after this goes into dispelling a bunch of myths regarding necromancers.

I'd look for someone who is physically small, unimposing, even weak or easily overlooked; possibly someone who is with a cavalier (armed, physically larger and stronger). This is by no means a fool-proof method, though.

Necromancers cannot "resurrect" the dead, [...] They often can animate human corpses--whether recent or heavily decayed--and use them as puppets [...] if a comrade is killed in battle, and their body is later seen walking around, they are not "alive." [...] They cannot be salvaged; they can only been avenged.

Well, when you put it like that, necromancy does sound like an absolutely horrifying craft which needs to be opposed at all costs. Yikes.

The offensive technique most commonly attributed to necromancers in popular anecdote - the so-called "death ray" - appears to be complete fiction.

This made me laugh. Though the idea is terrifying, it seems like the idea of necromancers has been rather elevated and twisted in popular culture. This is most likely to be common on occupied planets, where necromancers can't access thanergy and therefore don't have their full powers - and therefore presumably just don't go there very much.

Oh -

Necromancers seemingly do, however, gain energy from proximity to violent death. Although this is a disgusting notion, intelligence sources and tactical analysis make clear that a major House strategy involves trying to inflict multiple ground casualties as quickly as possible at the beginning of an engagement, in order to give any necromancers present a "boost" in their abilities.

Makes sense - if a planet lacks thalergy, just make some.

The actual mechanics of this process are still very poorly understood, and investigating them remains a strategic priority.

It didn't occur to Wake to ask her Lyctor friends about this? They should be able to explain at least the basics of this just fine.

If a necromancer happens to be in the next room - even if it cannot see, hear or in any way perceive your presence - it will immediately know that its minion has been killed, and how. Even if you conceal yourself or leave the room, it will still somehow know where you are.

The use of the "it" pronoun here is chilling. Clearly, necromancers are not quite seen as humans by the Blood of Eden. The act of necromancy - even the aptitude for necromancy - depersons them in the insurgents' eyes. (At least some of them - assuming that this was a collaborative effort - in the next bullet point, necromancers are referred to with singular they.)

Like, I can see why you'd want to deperson them in this way, given how they see necromancy. But hey, necromancers are people too.

Anyway, what they're describing here is definitely scary, especially from a recon/assassination attempt perspective. How the fuck do you even.

Ah yes, by killing the necromancer(s) first, if you can, or just avoiding engagement if you can't.

It would be dangerous to end this memorandum without mentioning the Emperor's most powerful servants, the so-called "Lyctors". Where these creatures are concerned, no normal rules of engagement apply. Avoid them at all costs.

This memorandum was likely written before Commander Wake's time, if they know so little about necromantic theory and caution to avoid Lyctors at all costs. I kinda really want to know how the collaboration between Wake and Augustine and Mercymorn kicked off - did she seek them out? Or did they look for her? She was driven by the desire to find a way to kill the Emperor, and with him the Empire - the Lyctors were driven by the desire to find out what had happened to Alecto, and what was in the Locked Tomb. And they were willing to sacrifice an entire Empire for it.

Which also, still doesn't explain the affair between Wake and Gideon the First/Pyrrha.

This concludes today's liveblog session - we will be back tomorrow hopefully, with As Yet Unsent!!

[muninnhuginn]

For character bingo: Camilla Hect

Thanks for asking! I accidentally deleted my initial response to this so I'm going to go hide in a corner, I think. Anyway, I used little spiral things so hopefully it's clear what I went for.

Honestly, when I first read GtN, I liked Fifth and Sixth House but it was in a kind of "we hardly knew ye" way. So I thought Cam was neat and I thought Pal was super neat, but I was much more into the mystery aspects of the book. It actually took me until NtN for me to actually become properly attached to Cam, but I suspect I'll understand a lot more about her when I get around to a full reread of the series.

I think with Cam, she's generally the most sensible person in the room, unless it's about Pal and then her objectivity goes out the window. But her objectivity goes out of the window in a self-aware way? She knows she's biased here and she doesn't care to shield herself against it, which is why it's so tragic when she has to face the consequences of that. You can't talk about Cam without also talking about Pal because they're so codependent. That's why Paul was inevitable.

"If anything happens to them" and "canon isn't real", well, let's just say I have some mixed feelings about Paul. I'll have to see what happens with them come Alecto, but at least as of Nona, it feels like both of campal are gone and it's an irreversible reaction as far as we know. And yes, it was their choice. It seemed like their only route to some form of survival.

But Paul still told Nona that they would pick an option that neither Cam nor Pal would. What is it like to lose yourself to the very one you would dedicate yourself to? To mutually subsume each other until you're neither pink nor blue but purple? They aren't either of Cam or Pal. They're gone and someone entirely new is in their place.

[hedge-rambles]

"And who even cares about Babs?"

Been having some thoughts about Naberius Tern, following on from this post (OP @sainamoonshine) about Babs, and how we really ought to think more about him.

First things first: 1 - Our views of Babs are, I think, heavily skewed by the fact that Gideon is our POV character in GtN and she just straight up doesn't like him. 2 - I think @masctoast was onto something about Taz dropping Boofy to get us all thinking about Babs, but take it one further and it might be that he's still going to be important somehow beyond as just a fancy outfit for Ianthe.

I've written afore about how I think we need to definitely not underestimate Coronabeth, that despite Ianthe's view of things, Corona is wickedly smart and in a lot more control of situations than her sister ever realises. From that post:

The Third House is the house of lies and deceit said with a shining smile, of pretty words and poisoned knives. The reductive characterisation of the house as a whole is grasping and underhanded and raised to deceive for their own motives, it’s their job, but Coronabeth Tridentarius is an entire level beyond that.

But the thing to remember is that Babs is also Third House, and he was in on the ruse the whole time as well. Babs knew Corona wasn't a necro, and spent much of his life bonded to the two of them as part of the Grand Deception. And we know that was a partnership made up of two cavs and a necro really. I think that, fundamentally, Corona and Babs had a lot to connect over, having similar strengths (beautiful, strong, cavaliers) and similar trials (24/7 Ianthe exposure) and, though we don't see it played out in the books explicitly, we can infer some things.

In NtN, what is one of the first things Crown says to Ianthe wearing Babs? She complains that Ianthe just can't do Babs' hair right, and implies that she can and always could style his hair. She also used to do Ianthe's hair for her, and it's an intimate act in many ways, social grooming.

In GtN Corona reveals herself to be a fairly decent swordswoman, trained with the rapier in secret. Who exactly do we think trained Coronabeth? I think it's safe to say it was Babs, one of the only people in on the fact that she wasn't a necro. They shared their training with each other.

The first post I linked talks about the fact that, read a certain way, Babs is plausibly spending a lot of time making an arse of himself in order to protect Corona's secret. But I think, with that in mind, we can reread a specific early scene in GtN to suggest Corona is also protecting Babs.

Ianthe is cruel and vicious and self absorbed and prickly, and of the trio she's the only one who's an adept. A flesh adept no less, and presumably able to inflict some truly unpleasant non-lethal acts on anyone who draws her ire. In their first proper scene, Gideon spies them all having one of their little tiffs, in which Babs has a go at Ianthe in defence of Corona. How does Corona respond? She leaps to Ianthe's defence, pinching Babs' ear and telling him to back the fuck off. We know now that Ianthe was not someone desperately in need of protecting, neither physically nor emotionally, she wasn't some weak, wilting wallflower.

So why did she do it? Was it because of her deeply enmeshed, codependent thing with her sister? Well, yes, obviously. But if we consider that Corona and Babs may have been genuinely close friends, actually cared about each other's wellbeing...that can be read as having another layer to it. That is to say, Corona is protecting Babs from Ianthe, by taking control of the situation, salving Ianthe's anger and also ensuring that the only harm that comes to Babs is relatively minor, compared to what Ianthe might be able to do.

And it makes sense, the three of them have been together for a long time, and for all Ianthe and Corona desperately love each other in their fucked up way, I think Corona and Naberius may have had a very deep connection as each other's confidants and friends. Babs was one of the few people Corona could bitch to about Ianthe, one of the only people who genuinely knew what was going on with them. Babs was the only person she could really talk to about cav shit, who knew she was truly made to be a cavalier, not a necro - her secret sparring partner.

We can never take anything said and done by the Third House at face value, their whole deal is social subterfuge. Knives and plots hidden behind glittering smiles. I think Corona spent much of her life deceiving Ianthe as to how much power she actually wielded, how much control she actually had over their ruse. In NtN we see how quick and adept she is at handling Ianthe, even when her sister is on a level of power unto a minor god.

And I'm not sure we can even trust her words fully at the end of GtN when Ianthe ate Babs. In that scene, Babs is dead, Ianthe is Ianthe and Corona is a blubbering mess, distraught.

Corona recoiled from Gideon and looked up at her, her golden hair smeared to her forehead with sweat and tears. “She took Babs,” she said, which seemed fair enough. But then Corona started crying again, big tears leaking out of her eyes, her voice thick with misery and self-pity. “And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.

I think it's safe to say that part of this is 100% as it's surface read, Corona's massive co-dependence with Ianthe, she honestly feels upset that Ianthe didn't eat her soul. But I think there's another layer to her grief, that Gideon thinks she's been mistaken about after the first pass. I think she's genuinely upset about the loss of Babs, her friend and confidant, her second closest person other than Ianthe.

"And who even cares about Babs?" You did, Coronabeth Tridentarius. You cared about Babs.

[idolshineitai]

⚔️ 💀✂️

SAW THIS ASK AND GOT IMMEDIATELY SO EXCITED IT FELT LIKE I COULD THROW UP. rabbiting heartbeat. IM SO RHGHGJHJNJBMGN. thank you beloved :3

from this ask game!

⚔️ Fav Gt9 quote?

THIS ONE IM ACTUALLY UNSURE OF. in the end it’s probably something from the pool scene. almost definitely the one about harrow consenting to being ritually drowned but thrashing away from a hug (not gonna go grab my book copy right now but you get the gist). im in the middle of rereading GTN and it took a while to finish the first time, so there are MANY good tidbits, hints, and clues that totally escaped me then! so many bangers too. Properly enjoying them now 👀 i will also say that “ghosts and you might die is my middle name” is currently consuming a lot of my brainspace <3 I Love Gideon Nav The Regular Amount (Which Is A LOT)

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

again. so many good good GOOD ones. thinking of the entire last dance exchange. thinking of “Around you, people would go back and forth, giving you the widest berth possible, ignoring you so entirely that at one point you were convinced you were dead. With that conviction, you had felt only intense relief.” because it makes me want to TEAR MY HAIR OUT. but i really really have to give it up for *gestures at my current bio* “There were a couple of callouses now on those soft necromancer’s palms, and I was proud of you.” THIS IS FOR A MULTITUDE OF REASONS and half of them are praise kink /j NO NO NO OK SO. god, just… the fact that gideon could be PROUD of harrow for ANYTHING. the fact that it’s this. the distinction of “soft”, to call harrow of all people in any way soft, and to be a “soft necromancer” even just in reference to the flesh… the pacing, the timing, where this line falls 😭 like ok my girl ok. i genuinely am considering getting this one tattooed but i need a good design for it. I WAS PROUD OF YOU!!! she can be SO mad at her and still PROUD of h— *dies on the spot*

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

SHORT. FUCKING OBVIOUSLY IT’S SHORT. i can admit that the slightly longer hair is cute on the HTN cover, and nona’s braids are fucking awesome for NONA, but for harrow? the length of her hair is something that she kept up with meticulously — every one of her most devout people had their hair cropped close — and the way that her hair DOES grow longer is bc she gets too damn sick to take care of it, and bc someone magically manipulates her hair for fun. WITHOUT HARROW KNOWING. to me it’s a companion to the autonomy-stealing haircut (i think there’s an actual real life term for this, or at least a trope one, but can’t recall it rn. that’s also… very gender-y to me). this new length actively distresses harrow, who doesn’t have the wherewithal to comprehend the unfamiliar sensory experience and who is already dealing with a Whole Fucking Lot. so yeah. it’s short. it’s the short hair. i love my darling girl.

thank u so much stein im actually indebted to you now /j. infodumping is my life’s greatest joy and this felt SO GOOD to talk abt !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🫶

[lluvia-otsana]

2,13,20 (book ask)

I got an ask, time to overshare -w-

If you make it to the end, you get a cookie (or you can cheat and scroll to the end!)

2. Top 5 books of all time:

Harrow is def no.1 by far for me, as much as I loved and devoured GtN in one sitting. Both of those books I've reread a million times and hold such a grip on me I can recite so many lines word for word, I can repeatedly open the books just to revisit scenes, I'm so invested in what will happen next in the series, and somehow they're even better on reread. There is always a portion of my mind now possessed by this series lol.

Ugh I'm bad at top 5 tho. I love the Murderbot series too but there's so many novellas in that series that if I include them TLT and Murderbot could take all the top 5 slots. It's sci fi action packed but also the narration is just such fun snark a bit like GtN.

In the same vein of the above books with their dark humor and banter I really enjoyed Nevernight. Probably also cuz the sidekick was a magical sarcastic cat made of shadows. And horny bi girl rep.

Also love When Women Were Warriors - it's my cheesy wholesome romance go to series. It's enemies to friends to lovers ish but soft.. except the swords.

Since the question says of all time, I will include that when I was a little weird kid I was obsessed with the Silverwing series and reread those a million times. Including and *especially* the very strange Firewing book that took place in bat hell lol. One of the main characters gets burned to death in the beginning! Great books for kids.

13. Do you have a goodreads?

Yeah, I've mostly been using that one lately. Trying to combine books/manga/webcomics in one site even tho goodreads isn't always great for shelving manga/webcomics.

If you wanna snoop and spend a second harshly scrutinizing me I think the link is:

goodreads.com/lluvia_otsana

Haven't been using it to keep track of books read per year as much until recently cuz I usually read physical books* and wasn't updating times before.

(*I live close to a gigantic indie bookstore I love to support. A dangerous place to live.)

20. What are things you look for in a book?

I like authors with a crazy imaginative mind. I wanna be thrown into a really different universe and experience the passion they put into the details of their beloved story. Bonus points for funny world building footnotes and appendices - I don't care that it detracts from the plot. I don't care if I don't know wtf is going on and I need to think and squint for foreshadowing and to understand the truth of what the characters are feeling - I like biting thru the layers of thick plot and characterization tbh. I love humor interwoven into the series and want to care about a diverse cast of characters. Not cuz it's forced in there but especially if it's SFF if you're gonna write an entirely different world why not put that care into writing different perspectives rather than the default usually cishet and male ones. I care more about the characters' motives and feelings and actions feeling real than them being morally correct. I don't need romance in it I can read diverse relationships, platonic or hateful or whatever (more fun if it's still intense in some way) But truthfully I am a sucker for deep monog romance if it fits somewhere in there.

Here 🍪 („• ᴗ •„)

(And thx for the excuse to ramble at myself @ghostlament)

[vvienne]

camilla and palamedes……

[nav-ix]

ok so i’m sure other folks have said similar things, but here’s the Alecto theory i’ve been thinking about

Jod calling Alecto “Annabel Lee” is a direct reference to the poem by Poe, and the last bit of that poem goes:

And neither the angels in Heaven above

 Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

 Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

 In her sepulchre there by the sea—

 In her tomb by the sounding sea.

First of all, “dissever my soul from the soul” feels. noteworthy. but the part that stands out to me most is the very end, referencing Anabelle Lee’s “tomb by the sounding sea”. We’ll get back to that in a second, but there are a couple of things in both GtN and HtN that I can’t help but notice go unaddressed:

-Teacher insists over and over that there are horrible ghosts/monsters that haunt Canaan house. We assume this is what’s killing people, and when it becomes clear that its Cytherea, we dismiss it. But even if that wasn’t the cause of the deaths, Teacher was insistent that this place, which he had looked after for maybe thousands of years, was haunted by monstrous things, and that just goes nowhere?

-harrow and palamedes have two conflicting theories about what the lyctor trials are pointing them toward. palamedes is more on the right track, saying its leading toward a “megatheorem” (eightfold word), but harrow thinks that the trials are clues leading toward a thanergy source powerful enough to fuel the lyctor trials (in the way that a necromancer needs thanergy or a lyctor needs a cav or, crucially, Jod needs Alecto). We know harrow is incredibly clever, but when pal’s theory is more or less confirmed, harrow’s theory is more or less discarded, even though they’re not mutually exclusive. but what was fueling the lyctor trials in Canaan house? what thanergy battery?

-multiple times, its indicated that Canaan house is much larger than they have access to. there’s a part in HtN where Abigail says offhandedly that she thinks that the “lost chambers of the emporer undying” run sidelong to the facility (meaning Canaan house). This is a conversation in the river bubble, but it struck me as specific and detailed and out of place, especially for something that was never returned to

-we know that after Anastasia and Samael failed to ascend to lyctorhood, she was sent to guard the locked tomb and she founded the Ninth house

there might be more, i’m still mid-reread lol and i probably missed some stuff bc about half of my knowledge is from the first read, when i was considerably more confused by the goings-on. but my theory right now is that the tomb guarded by the Ninth house is a false tomb, and that maybe the person in it is Anastasia (there are some parallels between how she and Harrow look, namely the curve of the lips/philtrum that’s noted more than once in both of their descriptions). I think that Alecto is entombed at Canaan house, in Jod’s old chambers, a thanergy-battery for the lyctor trials and, remotely, for Jod’s power.

Tbh, I wouldn’t be surprised if the series doesn’t find its way back to Canaan house at the end, it would be fitting and circular, and I feel like there’s still a lot there that was dismissed or left unsolved

[chaos-has-theories]

Part 1: The Eye of John

You’ve heard of „Alecto is a Resurrection Beast“, „Alecto is Gaia“ and „Alecto is a seamonster“, you’ve heard of John’s sun symbolism, now get ready for:

John is Ra and Alecto is Mehet-Weret

or less specifically Hathor, or The Eye of Ra

[Image description: A picture in the Ancient Egyptian style. It shows a large blue cow with stars along its belly. There are nine people under it, keeping it steady. An empty boat floats by its back legs, and another boat by its front legs, this one with the god Ra as a passenger. A large red arrow points at the cow and is labelled “Alecto???”.]

(More under the cut, because this shit will get long.)

First, for the record, I am emphatically not a learned egyptologist, so I might be getting things wrong here.

Secondly, ancient Egyptian mythology is a gorgeous mess. You can’t ever just say that x is the child of y, because they’re bound to also be siblings, and spouses, and x is also a and b and y is also b and c and... yeah.

Anyway, let’s do this.

---

I was rereading Harrow the Ninth with my roommates and we got to this part:

"Your sword will not rend its armour”, he said, with his back turned to them. “It’s weapons will ruin your flesh. It will not stop until it has subsumed its quarry.” (HtN p. 329)

and I thought to myself, huh, that kind of sounds like the Eye of Ra.

So let’s talk about that!

Now, the main story of the Eye of Ra is that, long ago, when the gods were still like, living on earth with the humans, people started to criticize Ra, their ruler.

That pissed off Ra, so he sent off his „Eye“ to punish them. She did, killing almost all the humans, but then Ra couldn’t really get her to stop. So the gods made a bunch of dyed beer with some blood in it, and the Eye drank it all and became drunk and docile.

So far, so good. Technically, at that point Teacher is talking about the Sleeper, but we all know that there are heavy parallels between the Sleeper and the Body. Also, there’s more where that came from.

"My lord,” said Augustine formally, “you told us the truth about Annabel–about Alecto–because she knew the truth too, and you never could control her.” (HtN, p. 478)

”Annabel Lee... was not the dying kind,” said the Emperor. It might be more accurate to say that I switched her off.” “You came to us and we asked, Is she dead?” said Mercy. “And you said, As dead as I can make her... I remember, Lord, that you wept.” (HtN, p. 479)

Neither Alecto nor the Eye of Ra are stopped by death or reason but instead kept somehow subdued.

But it gets better, and weirder.

The most famous version of the Eye of Ra is probably Sakhmet, the lion goddess. Sometimes she's a cat, Bastet; but just as often she’s depicted as a cow, Hathor.

There's a specific version of this myth called „The Book of the Heavenly Cow“ or „The Destruction of Mankind“. Here’s a translation of it.

I just learned about this myth. I learned about it under the Name of „Mehet-Weret“. Hathor and Mehet-Weret are… the same goddess? Not the same goddess? Sometimes the same goddess? They’re both cow themed, and occasionally take the same roles. Mythology is confusing, y’all.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Hathor was given the epithets "mistress of the sky" and "mistress of the stars", and was said to dwell in the sky with Ra and other sun deities. Egyptians thought of the sky as a body of water through which the sun god sailed, and they connected it with the waters from which, according to their creation myths, the sun emerged at the beginning of time. This cosmic mother goddess was often represented as a cow. Hathor and Mehet-Weret were both thought of as the cow who birthed the sun god and placed him between her horns. Like Nut, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god each dawn.

Since I remembered the name Mehet-Weret and was very proud of that, that’s where I actually started my research here, and…

Mehet-Weret or Mehturt (Ancient Egyptian: mḥt-wrt) is an ancient Egyptian deity of the sky in ancient Egyptian religion. Her name means "Great Flood". She was mentioned in the Pyramid Texts. In ancient Egyptian creation myths, she gives birth to the sun at the beginning of time, and in art she is portrayed as a cow with a sun disk between her horns. She is associated with the goddesses Neith, Hathor, and Isis, all of whom have similar characteristics, and like them she could be called the "Eye of Ra". Mehet-Weret is primarily known as being the "Celestial Cow" or "Cow Goddess" because of her physical characteristics, but she contributes to the world in more ways than that. She is also the Goddess of Water, Creation, and Rebirth; in Egyptian mythology, Mehet-Weret is one of the main components in the making and survival of life. (...) She was credited for the birth of Re, also known as the Sun God Ra; she is also the one who protects Re. (Wikipedia)

SHE’S (a version of) THE PRIMORDIAL FLOOD, Y’ALL.

You said, “Teacher, what destroyed the House of the First?” “Not much,” said the Emperor, and he tried to smile. It was awful. “Rising sea levels and a massive nuclear fission chain reaction...it all went downhill from there.” (HtN p. 346)

"Even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck (...) But when the work was done (...) they bade him kill the saltwater creature before she could do them harm...” (HtN p. 328)

Next to you, the body said quietly, “The water is risen. So is the sun. We will endure.” (HtN p. 294)

On this same read-through I snagged on „The water is risen, so is the sun“ because it sounds so much like a quote, but I couldn’t find anything. Yes, John has sun symbolism and Alecto all that water stuff, but where is the connection?

Well, here. It’s just Ancient Egyptian Creation Myths.

The different creation myths have some elements in common. They all held that the world had arisen out of the lifeless waters of chaos (…) The sun was also closely associated with creation, and it was said to have first risen from the mound, as the general sun-god Ra.

That makes Alecto literally the First One. It makes her John’s protector as the Eye. It gives her a connection to water and and even death and the underworld. (It also gives her a connection to the sky, which always fits in a Space Fantasy.)

Essentially,

I can see two figures in Egyptian mythology that fit what we know of Alecto. Those would be the Eye of Ra, an uncontrollable creature of rage and revenge; and the flood from which the sun god rises during the creation of the world. And Mehet-Weret fits into both.

But you’re not convinced yet? Alright then. Remember how Hathor/Mehet-Weret is a cow?

"Oh, singular,” said Dulcinea quietly, more to herself than to Gideon. “Lipochrome...recessive.” (GtN, p. 106)

When she spoke at last, she sounded frozen and numb. “I see. I understand. Lipochrome. Recessive. You are the evidence.” (HtN, p. 410)

I did not know what the fuck to say to her incoherent spew. She said, ragged, peevish: “What? No tongue in your head, you–you mutant, you mistake, you great big calf-eyed fuck-up?”

If you’re like me and know nothing about biology, you’ll hop over to Wikipedia  and find this:

A lipochrome (from Greek λίπος ("fat") and χρῶμα ("color")) is a naturally occurring, fat-soluble pigment. Lipofuscin—a product of fat breakdown in lysosomes—is a type of lipochrome that is associated with the decomposition of cell membranes. Beta carotene, a lipochrome, was found in the retina, pigment epithelium, and iris of cattle eyes.

This is the entirety of the article by the way.

…and I was wondering why Tamsyn didn’t just call the eyes „Amber“.

Now you might say, but Chaos, you know they’re not really her eyes…

Yeah.

They’re John’s eyes.

They are, you might say, the Eyes of John.

---

THERE WILL BE MORE PARTS because I am LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS but this post is already longer than it has any right to be.

In the meantime, here’s an article on Mehet-Weret that I think is actually well researched and probably does a better job explaining how all these different gods fit together than I ever could.

[sendme-2hell]

Rating the Books I read after Gideon the Ninth (in order) by how well they made me forget my Gideon the Ninth angst

I starred the ones that I actually recommend if you want something similar to gtn.

I was bored so I made this. Mostly just so I can look back at this and laugh at myself in a few months and remember what I’ve read. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -

**Harrow the Ninth -Tamsyn Muir 

Summary: A depressed girl has to navigate murder attempts by both the mom and the dad of her dead ex-girlfriend who she can’t remember. She tries to make soup and writes fanfic to cope. 

How well it helped me forget: -100/10 but also 10/10 

Rating explanation: This one gets a 10/10 because it did make me feel better about a *particular* GTN plotpoint which I was very angsty about, but tragically it did make me more feral. After reading it I reread both books so I don’t think it helped me forget my angst. 

Similar themes to GTN: all of it, plus more memes 

I Want to Be Where The Normal People Are - Rachel Bloom 

Summary: Rachel Bloom who wrote the world’s most relatable song: “You Stupid Bitch,” and starred/created in Crazy Ex Girlfriend, writes about having anxiety, feeling like she’s not normal, and Harry Potter fanfic.

How well it helped me forget: 8/10

Rating explanation: For a few minutes I actually did forget about my griddlehark angst while I learned more about Bloom’s life and laughed at the painful relatability of it all. 

Similar themes to TLT: ummm depression, feeling very out of place, memes

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Summary: The book The Handmaiden was based on. A girl is sent to become a Lady’s handmaiden to con her out of some money. She falls in love. Many plot twists. 

How well it helped me forget: 5/10

Rating explanation: I was sadly still thinking about TLT the whole time I read this. I liked it but I actually like the Handmaiden better because the women spend more time together. Like in this book, I wish that Harrow and Gideon could spend more time together. 

Similar themes: wlw enemies to lovers, at some point you realize the main character’s love interest understands what’s going on way more than the main character

Kindred - Octavia Butler 

Summary: Very dark book about slave narratives. I cannot make a joke here, but this book is excellent. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10 

Rating explanation: Again, I can’t make a joke. But Octavia Butler is amazing. 

Ash - Malinda Lo 

Summary: A wlw retelling of Cinderella with fairies and an emphasis on stories 

How well it helped me forget:7/10

Rating explanation: This was really quick and fun and I definitely was rooting for the lesbians. Also it was nice it had a happy ending! If you liked Crier’s War (which I did), this was clearly an influence for Nina Varela. 

Similar themes: wlw, the magic one + the fighting one dynamic

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

Summary: A deadly pandemic wipes out so many people that the world spins into chaos and no one can figure out how to use electricity apparently? But the book is really about fame and wanting to be remembered. Go figure.

How well it helped me forget: -10/10 

Rating explanation: Ok that’s not fair. It helped me forget about Gideon and Harrow but it did NOT help me forget about Corona. It was technically good and a lot of people I respect love it, but either because I was still thinking about TLT or because it was about a pandemic, I couldn’t really enjoy it. 

Similar themes: post-apocalyptic 

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston 

Summary: The Prince of England and The son of the president of the US are enemies. They are definitely enemies.

How well it helped me forget: 6/10

Rating explanation: This was such a fun read that it almost distracted me! Tragically I was in such TLT headspace that I kept pausing to read fanfics where Gideon and Harrow switch eyes. 

Similar themes: Enemies to lovers, queer

Troubling Love - Elena Ferrante 

Summary: In true Elena Ferrante fashion, an event spurs an Italian woman to do a lot of internal processing and have some flashbacks. 

How well it helped me forget: 7/10

Rating explanation: This book was a bit disturbing so it distracted me in that way. Plus I love Elena Ferrante’s writing so much that it felt like coming home to an old friend. Unfortunately for me, this is Elena Ferrante’s least queer book. I know because I have now read them all. Her most queer book, The Lying Life of Adults, would have distracted me better. Also just using this space to tell anyone who’s still reading this (probably no one) to go read My Brilliant Friend (and the corresponding Neopolitan Novels). They are not similar to TLT except they are vaguely queer and about competitive friendships where the girls are obsessed with each other in maybe an unhealthy way. Ok so a bit similar. Genuinely my favorite books ever. 

Similar themes: mommy issues, daddy issues, childhood trauma

On This Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous -Ocean Vuong

Summary: A Vietnamese immigrant reflects on his mother, grandmother, and his own life experience in the US. It is poetic and beautiful and will make you cry. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: This book is beautiful. It really changes how you think about the US. Plus really interesting stuff about the western way of telling stories. Cannot recommend it enough, though very little to do with TLT. 

Similar themes: queer, stuff about language, childhood trauma, you will cry

**The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon 

Summary: OK sorry none of those were good suggestions for what to read after GTN. THIS is what you should read after GTN. It is an incredibly slow burn wlw enemies to lovers. There are dragons, there is magic, there are very cool female characters who I am in love with. This is like Game of Thrones but if it was good, queer, and only one 800 page book. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: Enemies to lovers!!!! What more do I have to say? Also very cool world-building, interesting religious themes. 

Similar themes: wlw enemies to lovers, religious themes, magic, very old wizard milfs, also mlm

*The Traitor Baru Cormorant 

Summary: Baru is a very smart girl in a colonized island. She decides she will play the game of the colonizers, rise up in their society, and destroy them from within. How is that going, Baru? 

How well it helped me forget: 100/10

Rating explanation: This DID make me forget TLT. The only book to truly make me. It made me forget so badly that I wanted my Griddlehark angst BACK. GIVE ME IT BACK I don’t wanna feel sad about Baru anymore. I cannot recommend it more, it is so good, but it did make me ugly cry. It also made me majorly depressed about colonization and the state of the world. 

Similar themes: wlw enemies to lovers, ending will make you cry

*The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson 

Summary: Baru is depressed, has brain damage, throws up a lot, is sad about (redacted), does some things without remembering them because there’s something going on in her brain. Sound familiar? It’s kinda like Harrow the Ninth but more depressing. Oh also a lot of new characters are introduced, old characters come back, a lot of setup for the next book. Euler’s identity shows up out of nowhere?! 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: Again, it made me forget but only because I was so engrossed in this story. Also kinda depressed. This book is kinda depressing. But Baru is very fun to be around, and there are some other great characters. Marry me, Yawa. 

Similar themes: again, this is just harrow the ninth on steroids, I am in love with every single woman in this series

*The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson 

Summary: Baru makes a new bestie, reunites with an old bestie, and discovers a dead bestie in her brain!

How well it helped me forget: 1000/10

Rating explanation: I loved this book. There were a few scenes I reread >four times. This book makes the other books in the series worth it. 

Similar themes: please see my venn diagram comparing tlt, baru, and A memory called empire for more information

*The Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo 

Summary: A girl has seen ghosts her whole life and because of that, gets accepted at Yale even though she didn’t finish high school. Yale is like a hotspot for ghosts I guess. It’s dark academia, the girl has a secret, the narrator is pretty funny.

How well it helped me forget: 6/10

Rating explanation: I was trying to get distracted from TLT (and Baru at this point), but it’s hard to forget about Harrow and Gideon in a book called The Ninth House (hello?). It was enjoyable and there was some good humor. I’m curious about the next book in the series when it comes out. It is not wlw unless you squint (which I do). 

Similar themes: debatably wlw body posession, nine houses, the ninth one being important, nerd boy who reminds me of pal, woman is revealed to be MUCH older than I originally thought, soul eating, revenants, tombs, necromancy, character named Mercy

The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon 

Summary: It’s the future and London is a hotspot for clairvoyants. Paige is a woman who has a special gift and can jump into people’s bodies and possess them briefly (among other things, this is a terrible explanation). Because of this, she is sent to a secret part of the city where clairvoyants are trained to be monster fighters (but also like, kept there in captivity against their will). Unlike every other book on this list I honestly wouldn’t recommend. I know there are other books in the series. If you’ve read on and it gets better let me know. (I know no one has gotten this far reading this but still)

How well it helped me forget: 4/10

Rating explanation: This one was disappointing because I loved Priory of the Orange Tree so much. This book did not distract me from my griddlehark or barhu feels. There’s also a character named Warden so I thought about SexPal a lot. 

Similar themes: enemies to lovers, ghosts, possession, queer but only background characters 

****The Unspoken Name - A.K. Larkwood 

Summary: A girl is in an isolated cult that wants her to die as a sacrifice (sound familiar?). A definitely not evil wizard helps her escape. She meets a cute necromancer who’s also kinda from a cult. She goes on some gay adventures, gets the help of a morally grey older necromancer (who I’m in love with), and fights with her frenemy. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: This is the most similar to TLT on this list. Gideon and Csorwe would be friends. Seriously I recommend this! And the second book comes out soon! And it’s not sad like TLT or Baru! 

Similar themes: sword lesbian + necromancer dynamic, wlw enemies to lovers, cults, tombs, necromancy, character named “the sleeper”, also mlm

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue - V. E. Schwab 

Summary: Adeline Larue made a deal with a demon in 1714 France, because she wanted to see the world and stuff. It backfires of course. She is immortal but no one remembers her. This causes all sorts of problems and makes her very angsty. The narrative flashes between her going through the years, and her falling in love with the only person who will remember her. 

How well it helped me forget: 2/10

Rating explanation: I know people loved this book but I did not. I liked the last 50 pages, I’ll give it that. I wish it was more queer (it was a little queer). 

Similar themes: as I said, a little wlw, immortality, demons, I guess falling in love with someone and them not remembering you now that I think about it 

Sula - Toni Morrison 

Summary: A story about two black women in the 1920’s-1960’s in an Ohio town. It is really great and interesting. It is a book about complicated female friendships (among so many other things that better writers not writing a list no one will read about their TLT feels have outlined) which I love. I was told I should read this after the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante and it did not disappoint. Same vibes. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: This was just a great book. Has really nothing to do with TLT

Similar themes: debatably queer 

*Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect,  - Martha Wells

Summary: Muderbot is an artificial construct who just wants to be left alone to watch tv, damnit! It doesn’t want to interact with humans, and it definitely does not want to talk about feelings. Too bad some humans want to become friends with it.

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: These books were so good. They did help me forget! The books are really about having anxiety, making friends, and letting yourself have feelings. Also they are SO FUNNY. Highly recommend. In the way that I love Gideon’s POV, I love Murderbot’s POV

Similar themes: funny narrator, queer characters, space, people who don’t want to deal with their feelings being forced to deal with their feelings

*A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine 

Summary: Mahit is sent a dangerous, evil empire to be an ambassador. Lots of beautiful writing about colonialism, assimilation, language, and culture.There is gay angst and funny characters. I am once again in love with a morally grey older woman character. 

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: Yes this book is great and did distract me from gtn (mostly. I did end up reading a great fanfic about wake, g1deon, and pyrrah in the middle but otherwise...). It is part of my holy trilogy of wlw books (this, baru, tlt) that I just read recently. The next book comes out on March 2nd so it will be a good distraction from waiting for Alecto. Like Baru, it made me feel like shit about colonialism but unlike the other two books in my trilogy (redacted but if you’ve read those books you know) didn’t happen. It had a not too sad ending. 

Similar themes: see my venn diagram, but seriously what is going on with brain surgery in these books...

*The Luminous Dead - Cailtin Starling 9/10

Summary: A woman needs money and to get the money she goes on a risky cave dive. It turns out the only contact she has with the rest of the world is a woman who’s kinda a dick. It’s 400 pages of creepy cave diving and these two women talking to each other. It’s creepy and uncomfortable and I loved it. I did spend the whole book thinking it would be such a good story podcast.

How well it helped me forget: 10/10

Rating explanation: It did make me forget about tlt! There are some kinda boring parts but it pays off. The relationship between the two main characters is very interesting (though a bit fucked up). 

Similar themes: wlw enemies to lovers, traumatised characters, shitty moms

[thunderon]

I noticed something in my reread of GtN and i have not yet seen any posts about this so i would like to ask if you know more about this. (You have many smart insights I thinn)

(Chapter 10)

So Cytherea sent protesilaus to check on something. And he comedy back to verbally report it to her. This confuses the shit out of me because

1) if protesilaus is an empty vessel he should not be able to tasks on his own, let alone talk. So maybe he is not empty but possessed?

2)this could be a set up by her moving protesilaus around and using his vocal cords somehow??? (Wich would mean she would also need to move certain muscle for him to get air moving inside his trachea) wich seems a bit much tbh

3) ??????

ooooh i love this ask. not gonna lie, my knee jerk reaction to your ask was 'no way he was possessed', but then i actually sat and thought about it and went 'well, wait a second'. so let's look at this.

She hadn’t executed it very well—her parents were fine from the shoulders up, but from the shoulders down they were bad

so if harrow improperly executed the diaphragm/lungs she would be unable to control them to speak, especially considering her specialty is bone magic and not beguiling corpses. but does this mean cytherea wouldn't be able to accomplish it?

so we know the bitch is a lyctor and has powers far beyond what harrow could have accomplished pre-lyctorhood, and that appears to extend to puppeting pro. here’s another snippet of him speaking:

Every so often she would say something terse to Protesilaus, who would take sixty seconds to think about it before making replies so uninflected and curt that they made Harrow sparkle by comparison.

so his speaking wasnt super chatty and animated, but was that cytherea controlling him or not? was she really carrying on two conversations at dinner at one time? i mean, maybe. in addition to being a lyctor, cytherea is of the seventh house. beguiling corpses is their specialty as said here:

The Seventh House have been perfecting the way of the beguiling corpse for years and years and years. It’s just—not entirely allowed... And it’s not unholy—it’s entirely useful and blameless; just not when you do it like this, which is the very old way. The Seventh aren’t just soul-stoppers and mummifiers. ”

now this tracks nicely but harrow, who has an unexpected knowledge of beguiling corpses, still insists that it still shouldn’t be possible three times.

That doesn’t add up.” Harrow was stiff as concrete.

“It’s not possible,” insisted Harrow, words hard and clipped in her mouth.

Harrow said to him, slowly: “Undoing the cavalier’s bodywork should have killed her. It would have been an incredible shock to her system.”

i can imagine harrow sitting there like:

cuz like,,, what the fuck? harrow, a necromantic powerhouse, has puppeted her parents around for years and doesn’t understand how ‘dulcinea’ managed to control protesilaus for that period of time and survive the shock (which has interesting implications for what would have happened if someone would have been able to necromantically probe at harrow’s parents, but i digress).

obviously we find out cytherea is a lyctor and we all chalk it up nicely to “it was all in her lyctor abilities and House necromantic specialty”. but is this a closed case? here’s this little excerpt in harrow the ninth. if anyone hasn’t read it, stop here (although it shouldn’t contain any major spoilers just to be safe):

Harrowhark was bemused all over again by Protesilaus Ebdoma, whom she had never seen alive; if anyone had seen him alive, they never would have mistaken that shuffling zombie for his real self. Cytherea was a Lyctor and could have easily done better; she simply hadn’t bothered.

that's what actually made me think 'hmmm you may be onto something with your possession theory'. so as choppy and uncoordinated as cytherea puppets him, voice and all, HARROW SAYS SHE COULD HAVE DONE BETTER. and she just... didn’t? and was the scene you attached pro seemingly having autonomy (via possession), or was that cytherea giving the appearance of pro having autonomy? that also has interesting implications.

if we choose to look past the neatly wrapped up storyline, if we want to start asking questions like ‘did she really just not give a fuck?’ and ‘was protesilaus actually possessed?'. i think we can. i mean, the descriptions would match up very well with how cytherea’s body was possessed by wake (as opposed to how colum was possessed). as to who or what would be possessing pro? i have no idea. but it’s definitely a fun little theory, if more on the conspiracy side.

tl;dr: pro's body probably talked because cytherea was both a lyctor and an expert in beguiling corpses, but i think there's enough wiggle room to speculate pro's body could have been possessed.

[darlingofdots]

Which is a list of reasons that I believe Harrow and Gideon will get a Happy For Now, at least:

it’s thematically set up this way. GtN was about the two of them figuring out how not to hate each other, HtN is Harrow rejecting a world without Gideon with every fibre of her being and starting to learn that love is not acquisitive, as Ianthe says, and that sacrificing herself for Gideon the way Gideon did for her isn’t the right way, either. HtN was not Harrow’s journey through the stages of grief, culminating in acceptance, it is Harrow refusing to accept that the choice presented to them at the end of GtN – the choice of Lyctorhood or death – was the only choice available. HtN is all about choices, from the false one God gives her when he says she can be his Saint or return to the Ninth despite the latter being impossible, the choice to lock her memory of Gideon away to protect her soul, to the final decision whether to stay in the River and fade or return to her body and complete the Lyctoral process. In her letter to herself, pre-homebrew lobotomy Harrow says ‘Look upon me as a Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives’. Gideon didn’t think she had a choice when she died for Harrow and Harrow didn’t think she had a choice when she consumed Gideon’s soul, because the universe/God/the narrative did not present an option other than Death. Everything in GtN said ‘this is how it has to be’ and HtN is Harrow saying ‘not if I get a say’. Thematically, the only way this story can be concluded is by the two of them getting to decide what the options are, and I don’t see either of them not choosing to be with the other.

The bubble sequences in HtN allow characters who were wronged in GtN to make their voice heard. The reader comes out of GtN sad, and frustrated, and probably finding it all quite unfair, and then we get to see some of the characters who were unfairly killed again and this time, they have agency and power over their situation. I’d say Dulcie is the strongest example of this: she was killed off without a thought, off-screen, but in HtN she gets to be a person who gets to actively participates in her own narrative. I choose to read this as a continuation of the theme about choices and inevitability; just because the narrative/the universe/God treated you unfairly before doesn’t mean you won’t get to have your say.  

The pieces are all there. I would say at this point it’s established that there is a way to achieve perfect Lyctorhood in which the cavalier doesn’t have to be consumed, namely because:

a) in chapter 33 of HtN, Camilla’s previously dark brown eyes are ‘neither grey nor brown but both’, a mixture of her own and Palamedes’ eye colours, which we have established is a ‘symptom’ of the bond between souls that occurs in Lyctorhood, and Palamedes’ reaction to Harrow showing up in his bubble suggests he’d figured out how to do it, made provisions for him and Camilla to do it, and fully expected Harrow to do the same

b) the whole Gideon Prime/Pyrrha situation which suggests an albeit imperfect version of the Lyctoral process can occur in which both souls survive (this is most like what Harrow ended up doing to herself, I’d say)

c) Augustine and Mercy’s theories about God’s connection with Alecto, including the eye switcheroo, sounds very plausible to me, and God pretty much admitted that the reason he killed Samael was that Anastasia was too close to achieving perfect Lyctorhood and he couldn’t risk the others either finding out that it would have been an option and resenting him for the deaths of their cavaliers (fair) or figuring out where he actually got his power from

So here’s a way for Harrow and Gideon to both be alive, fuelling each other’s power (I’d say for the final showdown against God but that’s mostly unfounded). It has also been established that Gideon’s really hard to kill: she didn’t die of the nerve gas on the Ninth and the siphoning challenge, which Palamedes calculated would leave most cavs who weren’t bred to be human batteries with brain damage at least, just knocked her out for a couple of hours. And on top of that, we know for a fact that Blood of Eden took Gideon’s body from Canaan House because it wasn’t there when the Cohort arrived and Mercy saw it. If you put all these pieces together, that looks to me like it’s setting up Gideon returning to her own body and achieving perfect Lyctorhood (which I would say symbolises perfect cooperation, perfect togetherness, perfect partnership) with Harrow. Camilla’s actions in HtN also indicate to me that she is confident she can somehow restore Palamedes in some capacity, as long as the bone she restored has his soul attached to it, and the fact that Harrow transforms the bit of skull into a hand because ‘he specifically requested movement’ suggests that there’s something to it. Admittedly Palamedes is a revenant at this point and we’ve been told they don’t really tend to stick around for too long and usually lose cohesion of spirit eventually, but I’m willing to discard that in this instance because Harrow also said he’d be mad already after eight months in the river, and she was clearly impressed by the way he’d ‘preserved’ himself in the bubble on the Riverbank. The parallels to Gideon’s soul being stored away in a kind of bubble in Harrow’s memory are, in my opinion, too strong to ignore.

Tamsyn Muir does not strike me as the kind of person who writer spend two books setting up the bond, the relationship between two characters the way Gideon and Harrow have been set up only to go ‘lol no’ at the end of it.

Bringing all of this together – obviously most of what I’ve said is ‘just’ foreshadowing and doesn’t mean it’ll actually happen this way. But there’s an awful lot of foreshadowing in both GtN and HtN, ranging from subtle to fiendishly subtle, and it’s the kind where the reader gets to a big reveal and either goes ‘oooh I was right, I knew x would happen because of y and z’ or, alternatively, spends their first reread gleefully pointing at bits of dialogue and cackling ‘Tamsyn Muir, you legend, I should have known’. It is not the kind of foreshadowing that leads the reader down one path only to go ‘ha, idiot, you really thought you knew where this was going’. Of course, sometimes you don’t know where she’s going (especially if you’re like me and just accept the wildest shit on face value the first time around), but it’s still all there if you know where to look. I think when people say they’re scared of Gideon and Harrow not being endgame or the whole trilogy just leading up to tragedy, it’s because the ‘ha, gotcha’ attitude to foreshadowing has become more prevalent in the last couple of years despite being really frustrating for audiences and, in my own opinion, not really Good Writing. Yes, the ending of GtN was a punch in the stomach, and I understand that people might not be so ready to trust the series after that. But you can’t really read HtN, which, again, is a complete and utter rejection of the ending of GtN and instead sees Harrow accepting help and care and advice from others and starting to grow into a more whole person who does not try to do everything by herself because that’s the only life she knows, and not see that bleak tragedy is not where this is going.

[elftwink]

i know i said i would take a few weeks but i’m almost done htn lol yesterday one of my classes was delayed by like 20 mins after i already got there over half an hour early so i banged out a couple hundred pages then (side note i always forget how fun it is to read that much in a day, but also if i keep doing it i’m going to run out of books to read during my commute). i think i have a chapter or two left? maybe less if there’s stuff at the back after the story like in gtn. anyway some thots under the cut. spoilers obvs

i am a LITTLE annoyed at myself bc i was gonna post about a couple theories i had but i just kept reading and now you all just have to take me at my word that i was right about some stuff (what happened to gideon and harrow’s brain surgery that she did on herself fwiw) but anyway. gideon is back at least temporarily and omg i missed her so much. i’m like RIGHT in the middle of the final battle (confrontation? both?) so i have no idea if she makes it through... intact but i missed the quips

in general i would say that i enjoyed reading gtn a little more (i like gideon’s internal commentary quite a bit and the second person perspective, although BEAUTIFULLY used holy shit, took me awhile to adjust to), i think htn is... not better written per se but more artfully constructed [i guess??]. i think i’m almost more excited to do a reread than i am to actually finish because then i can go back over and see the big picture because htn is very good at showing you only a little bit but also making you feel like you can figure out what’s going on if you pay enough attention (you can’t, i don’t think, not all of it; harrow never has enough information at her disposal). every time things are revealed it feels like another puzzle piece snapping into place and it’s all so intentional that even when i think i don’t particularly care for an element it always ends up making total sense and being incredibly well suited to the story. 

anyway like i said i’m not done done yet and so the final resolution and explanation of everything escapes me still so this is more me rambling than anything else but iirc when the fourth kids died in gtn the writing on the wall that gideon saw was at least the same font as all the notes to harrow in this one so. i think maybe i’m just not keeping very good track of who is in what body at any given time but at that point it was just cytherea in disguise killing people. we knew she killed fifth the first time (magnus or abigail said so when harrow asked), and afaik the sleeper [cant remember her name because she had like. several? wake me up inside? though that might have been someone else. i’m always getting names mixed up. good grief. anyway] really only exists in harrow’s fake memories at the moment (well, i think she is tied to the two handed longsword. was? you can really tell i’m gonna need to do a reread to have any coherent thoughts about this all lmao) sooooo. i don’t know where i’m going with this i feel like i can’t draw conclusions without like taking notes on it all but ive connected the dots. ive connected them. what is the picture that i’m connecting the dots for? i don’t fucking know i’m just connecting them

it is imo just very fun to talk about these books and try to predict what’s going to happen next because i always guess enough that i feel self satisfied but am missing enough that every reveal still gets me. muir is an excellent author i will say that much. anyway i have class now and i’ll probably be done htn before the day is out so expect another long ass post about it lol