Harrow the Ninth

To this book, I say WHAT?!Watch my in-depth video review on my YouTube channel.Now we’re done with the end of the first book, which was devastating, by the way. We move on to the next, which focuses on the secondary character in Gideon the Ninth, Harrow.I'm going to be honest. It was hard to open this book because I started reading literally right off the back of the first. When I say I cried at the death of Gideon, I blubbered like a baby. So the change in perspective (2nd person) didn’t just come as a shock. It was actually quite hard to get into. This alone is the reason for my 4.5 rather than a 5-star review, and I’m still not 100% sure I can downgrade it because of this. But I’ll get to that.This is where the space aspect comes in. In the previous book, the inclusion of space, or let's go for sci-fi, was minimal - in terms of the plot. In this one, it's right at the forefront. Which is a huge change and introduces a lot more complicated terminology and, generally, confusing stuff.But that’s part of the point. I’m not sure we’re entirely meant to understand what on earth is going on until the end, and even then, not really. In the first 100 pages, I was itching for Gideon's voice to say, "What the fuck is going on?!"On a few occasions, I did feel the book was missing Gideon’s presence. Gideon the Ninth was almost self-aware, with Gideon narrating it. It broke up some of the more tedious scenes and gave us comedic relief. But she wasn’t just a loveable character. She was a plot device. She provided a way for our confused thoughts to be mirrored. She was thinking what we were thinking and just as confused as we were. This alone made the book enjoyable, funny, and even tense all at the same time. But without her, it's just confusing without Gideon confirming that it's confusing.Having said this, I do understand why this was intentionally done. Our focus was on Harrow, after all, and we needed time to see the clear emotional childhood trauma she’s been through, and how it affects her present-day actions. As well as of course, the trauma of losing Gideon. Harrow's experience is, for lack of a better word, harrowing. She is undergoing some serious physical and emotional torture throughout this book. It's quite hard to read. Especially because in the first book, we start to see her open up. So seeing her broken is sad.Now let’s talk about the perspective. It took until page 387 for the 2nd person perspective to make sense. 387! It's clever using a perspective like that to help tell the story. Clever and slightly annoying. I’m honestly not sure if I’m frustrated by it, or in awe.After so much sadness and misery following Harrow around, having Gideon return in this way was like receiving a massive hug. It felt so good.I was taking photos of parts of the book throughout and sending them to my friend as I was reading, and the last 50 pages or so had SO many amazing lines that I just had to stop myself from sending them all.And then you get to the end, and things make sense, and then they don't again.This book has been so hard to rate. The writing is exceptional, and so is the complexity of the plot but is the confusion too much? Do I feel like I've been taken on a ride that I'm not entirely happy with? I think I’ve decided that I am happy, and I can’t wait for the next one.For more reviews and book recommendations, check out my YouTube channel

I...found this book very difficult. I'm not a fan of 2nd person perspective, and so much of this book was written that way. I also feel like there wasn't nearly enough world building or explanation for what was going on. It wasn't until the last 1/4 of the book that anything began to make any sense. I'm struggling to see why people enjoy this series so much, though I will read the third book in the hopes of something making sense.