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Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Series Book 2) by [Tamsyn Muir]

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Tamsyn Muir

Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Series Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Tamsyn Muir (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

6,621 ratings

Book 2 of 3: The Locked Tomb

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Harrow the Ninth, an Amazon pick for Best SFF of 2020 and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station.

“Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” —Charles Stross on Gideon the Ninth

“Unlike anything I've ever read.” —V.E. Schwab on Gideon the Ninth

“Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original.” —The New York Times on Gideon the Ninth

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath — but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

THE LOCKED TOMB SERIES
BOOK 1: Gideon the Ninth
BOOK 2: Harrow the Ninth
BOOK 3: Nona the Ninth
BOOK 4: Alecto the Ninth

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Print length

538 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Tordotcom
Publication date

August 4, 2020
File size

6492 KB
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But you were always too quick to mourn your own ignorance. You never could have guessed that he had seen me.
Highlighted by 1,684 Kindle readers
There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.
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You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“To read Harrow the Ninth is to enter a labyrinth haunted by loss and sacrifice and a truly top-tier selection of memes. But don't bother with breadcrumbs or red threads―you won't ever want to leave.” ―Alix E. Harrow

“Harrow the Ninth is a psychological rollercoaster covering forty billion light-years. It’s wonderful to see the universe of Gideon expand, while staying as twisted and full of bones as ever.” ―Django Wexler

“Maddeningly brilliant.” ―Kiersten White

“The patient reader will be rewarded tenfold with brilliant original characters and magic, heartbreaking intimacy, laugh out loud humor and the best damn soup in the galaxy.” ―Rebecca Roanhorse

“Deliciously bonkers, achingly, heartbreakingly twisted and purposefully broken... So beautifully, wildly and precariously weird that I couldn't help sliding through page after page, rolling around blood-drunk in the mess of it all, and waiting, waiting, WAITING to see how Muir would bring it all home.” ―NPR

“An incredible journey into the chaos of the mind, Muir’s latest (after Gideon the Ninth) doubles down on all the wonderfully queer and pulpy moments, body horror, and macabre humor of her debut―and exceeds it.” ―Library Journal starred review

“This dark, bloody puzzle box of a sequel is a knockout.” ―Publishers Weekly starred review

“Muir presents a series of enigmas and revels in gory detail before bringing everything to a riveting, no-holds-barred conclusion that will leave readers both satisfied and gnashing their teeth for a finale.” ―Booklist starred review

PRAISE FOR GIDEON THE NINTH

“Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original.” ―The New York Times

“Brilliantly original, messy and weird straight through.” ―NPR

“You’ve never read anything like... Gideon The Ninth.” ―Forbes

“Unlike anything I’ve ever read.” ―V.E. Schwab, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

“From Gideon the Ninth's peerless first line, Gideon Nav is one of the most charismatic narrators I’ve ever met. I would walk through the bowels of hell with her, and basically have.” ―Melissa Albert, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Hazel Wood

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Series. Her fiction has won the Locus and Crawford awards, and been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Dragon Award, and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07WYSGHC7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tordotcom (August 4, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 4, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6492 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 538 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 125031321X

Best Sellers Rank: #9,471 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #82 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #174 in Space Operas
- #182 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy eBooks

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Tamsyn Muir

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TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth, and concludes with Alecto the Ninth. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

6,621 global ratings

5 star		67%
4 star		21%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Cora Borgens

STICK WITH IT

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 3, 2023

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Alright. We all loved Gideon. If you were like me you were less sure about Harrow but by the end of this book, I am a Harrow stan. This book does not hold your hand and absolutely throws you into the middle of what seems like an entirely different story but stick with it! Muir is a brilliant writer and this book had me hooked start to finish.
SPOILERS:
The part that really blew me away was the switch in narration from 2nd person (which this book starts with) back to 1st person (as in the first book). So clever and I don't think I've encountered writing like this before

One person found this helpful

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Caleb Kelley

Slow start

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2023

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I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but this one starts off at a very different pace and with a very different view. It did pick up by...2/3 of the way through, but i wish the rest of the book had been done in that manner. The author also really likes using odd vocabulary just for the sake of it i think.

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Josh Mauthe

Not as "fun" as GIDEON, but more complex, stranger, ambitious - and just as good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 20, 2020

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I absolutely loved Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir’s “lesbian necromancers in a gothic mansion in space” story told from the perspective of a jock whose interest in the plot around her couldn’t have been less, and whose main concern was fitting with the cute women around her. Gideon had a wild story, one that involved an ancient puzzle, some horrifying uses of necromancy (lots of bones involves), a bit of an Agatha Christie murder mystery, and a climax that tied together a lot of the emotional beats that lays so quietly and subtly under the story.

Now comes Harrow the Ninth, the second entry in a planned trilogy, which switches narration from the jock warrior Gideon to the young, crafty necromancer Harrow, who’s still reeling from the events of Gideon, and finds herself in a whole new hostile environment and trying to figure out her place in a whole new hierarchy. What unfolds from there gets…well, it gets complicated. Very, very complicated. And that’s without mentioning the alternating chapters that find Harrow remembering the story of Gideon the Ninth…except that Gideon’s not there, the characters aren’t quite the same, and the plot keeps diverging from our memories.

Harrow the Ninth is undeniably dense and complicated, even without the weird questions of memory that those chapters bring up; add to that the shift from Gideon’s careless, simple narration to Harrow’s careful, secretive perspective, and you have a book that feels exponentially more challenging than the original. That goes for the plot as well; while Gideon had the hook of this strange gothic murder mystery, Harrow has all the scheming of Game of Thrones as people jockey for the favor of God (whose name might be John?), prepare for an apocalyptic threat, and bully Harrow and another newcomer into showing the powers that they need to display very quickly - oh, and no one (and I mean no one) is being honest about their motivations or even their actions.

All of that can make Harrow the Ninth a bit less “fun” to read than Gideon, but it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable, stunningly imaginative, richly characterized, or compelling and gripping. If nothing else, Harrow kicks off the mystery early with this alternate version of the events of Gideon, but it won’t take long until you’re just as immersed into this weird relationship with God, the people around him, or the story of the one man who keeps trying to murder her in increasingly horrifying ways.

Muir’s imagination is allowed even more free reign in Harrow than in Gideon; while the first book allowed us to see a truly wild version of necromancy and horrifying magic, Harrow takes it even further, creating spectral horrors, alternate dimensions of death, magic of wholly unexpected schools, and a whole lot of violence, all while developing her universe far beyond the limits of Gideon’s limited interest. In some ways, Harrow definitely feels like the middle book of a trilogy; while it’s entirely self-contained, you can definitely feel the threads being placed for what’s to come, and the end of the book sets up a third book that should just be a delight.

But that doesn’t detract from any of the pleasures of Harrow the Ninth, whose writing is so good that the simple shift from second-person to first-person made me sit up straighter and gasp a little bit. Gideon is a blast, but Harrow might just be better for its complexity and ambition, and it’s all the better because Muir more or less nails it, taking on some astonishing difficulty curves and sticking the landing perfectly. What a joy this book is; here’s hoping that book three comes soon.

6 people found this helpful

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Wormdoc

Worth hanging on for the ride

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 5, 2022

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I breezed through Gideon the Ninth, which has a relatively straightforward narrative line, and loved it. Not at all prepared for the complexity that is Harrow the Ninth. You know that feeling you sometimes get reading a book and you don't know where it's going, and you are talking to the author saying 'I hope you have the skill to resolve this narrative house of cards you have built and pull this off', but you watch as the page count rises and it still isn't happening, and you get more and more anxious... I was 300 pages in, mostly lost, almost ready to put it down. But then in the last 200 pages she pulls it off, puts the ducks in a row and makes it all worthwhile. What skill. Sure in lots of places her writing resembles Ortus's poetry, but it is still worth the ride. I instantly wanted to reread this book once i finished it.

4 people found this helpful

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Frank R. Anderson

Not as good as the 1st, but still great.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 19, 2021

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Harrow was probably my least favorite character in Gideon the Ninth. So, I worried about a book solely based on a character who mostly acted like the foil for Gideon, but once wrapped my head around what the book was I liked it quite a bit.

First the parts that might bug people. The books feel wildly different. The first book was basically a murder mystery book with space wizards. This book is a mystery, but more like Memento. A good story is made up of a main character who needs to go through some sort of personal transformation. The journey there is just how they navigate and address the things that help or hinder them. So, most of the world around the main character is more 2 dimensional. Like Memento you are drip fed things in portions of portions, but in Memento the main character is actively playing a part because he's trying to get to a known goal and the memory loss itself is a supporting character of sorts that he has to address. In doing so he goes through that transformation. Harrow is the exact opposite. She basically already went through the transformational journey, and spends most of the book being passively pulled back to that state with bits of the plan she already made being explained in the moment they are needed. What's even weirder is that it's not like her transformation comes through struggle. It's more like a child who is a blank slate growing into their personality, but one that is already predetermined. Needless to say, the book can feel very disjointed and like a novella that got stretched into a novel.

As negative as that all sounds, by the end I appreciated this book. Any negative reactions I had were more from just how off the book feels after the first. It's like going to see a movie expecting a comedy and it turns out to be a good drama. Even though the movie was good you can feel a little disconcerted. This book ends up being a lot like the Silmarillion to the hobbit, or chronicles of Riddick to pitch black. The first story is very character driven in a much more isolated world, and then the sequel, or other book, spends the majority of the time expanding the universe instead of capitalizing on the existing characters. There really just isn't a sequel to Gideon the Ninth without expanding the universe. The world was too small for the characters to really grow. So this book is about world building and I felt that was done really well. The universe feels very unique and interesting, and opens up a lot of opportunity for what the 3rd book can be. I would guess that there was a bit of a kill your darlings situation with the first book where the extended universe was drastically cut to get to the meat of the story, and this was a book to get all that out.

I'll also note that the story of Harrow is still good even if it is dragged out. The last 1/3 of the book is much better in this regard. So, I think the secret to enjoying this book is to understand that it is really two things put together. A really cool world building effort with a character story that's dragged out through the first 2/3rds and then really committed to in the end. I liked it by the end, but I would be disappointed if it doesn't get back to something more character driven in the 3rd. Also, I think this would have worked better as a couple of novellas.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Fantasy Geek

Brilliant, Surreal and Mysterious sucker punch of a second novel.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 5, 2020

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This is book two in the locked Tomb series. This is Science Fantasy or what was once known as space opera so pseudo magical powers and hand to hand combat involving swords goes hand in hand with Space Ships. Set in a futuristic empire where the Emperor Undying has mastered the power of death in his long war agaisnt a powerful enemy in book one the call went out to the nine houses of the empire to find new Lyctors, also known as Necro saints, the emperor’s most powerful servants most of the original nine have been destroyed in the long war. The events of that novel Gideon the ninth directly lead into this so if you are new go back and start there. While on the surface the format is near identical to Gideon the ninth, a young inexperienced queer protagonist is trying to find her way in a universe much bigger and more dangerous then she could imagine, in practice this is a very different experience.

Where Gideon started her book as a fun loving teen desperate for adventure in a book who despite its Strange setting was mainly a straight forward adventure with a mystery at the heart of it, Harrow starts book two traumatised suffering from PTSD physically depleted with none of the combat skills that should have come with becoming a Lyctor, one of the Emperor’s undying Hands, with her Elders in the emperor’s service foretelling her demise. On top of that she is having recurring hallucinations, is at the mercy of the newly made lyctor Ianthe, and most worryingly can’t remember a certain someone from the first book and is instead remembering and dreaming about those events with another character in there place.

All this set agaisnt the coming of the Emperor’s ancient, implacable enemy one who has destroyed Lyctors far more powerful and accomplished then Harrow.

Told mainly in the 2nd person this is a gothic, overwrought tour de force of a novel while that may sound very dreary or dark while Harrow hasn’t the outsider perpesctive that Gideon had, Harrow is about as close to the ideal of a necromancer that you can get, Harrow is still a brilliant bitchy 17 year old with razor sharp observations and who is quick with a come back so the book is filled with humour if a good bit more pitch black then Gideon.

The mythology expands and develops more about the emperor and his hands and there enemies are revealed even as it asks for more questions then it answers. Indeed if you were to pick a fault it’s that the ending doubles down on the mysterious and the metaphysical and has a lot going on to the point where I was not clear what happened at all on first reading and had to do a reread how you take that I suspect will directly affect how much you enjoy the book, in my case i thought it fit the whole tone of the book where Harrow, and the reader, doubted the reality Of everything and where unlike Gideon, Harrow neither expected or looked for easy answers.

This is a amazing second book in many ways it’s a mediation on grief if shot through with some very funny moments, with it’s strength like Gideon the Ninth lying in its characters and there surprising depths and the strength of there entanglements with each other but it is brilliant and I now I wait with bated breath for book three. Magnificent.

11 people found this helpful

Mr. A Weston

Stick with it for the spectacular ending

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 4, 2021

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I found this second book of The Locked Tomb Trilogy rather tiresome.
Yes, I know. I absolutely adored Gideon the Ninth. It touched a nerve, deep inside my darkened soul. What’s more, I’m usually spot-on when it comes to choosing reading material and the kind of saga I think I’ll enjoy. Alas, I failed in this regard. Though – I’m glad to say – my faith in Tamsyn Muir was restored as the story drew toward its climax.
Here’s the blurb to start you off, and then I’ll explain what I think was a major flaw that sucked all the joy out of this particular book.
*********
She answered the Emperor's call.
She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.
In victory, her world has turned to ash.
After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath -- but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.
Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?
*********
Sounds epic, doesn’t it?
And to be fair, it is . . . after a fashion.
As before, we have all the elements of Dark City, the Necromongers from The Chronicles of Riddick and the evocative imagery of the Bene Gesserit nuns in Dune, blended into a ‘whodunnit” style murder/killer-on-the-loose/mystery to fathom out. And yes, as before, it’s interspersed with clever dialogue, untrustworthy characters with their own agendas, a brutal magic system, and plenty of action that keeps you guessing . . . And more importantly: who is it that seeks Harrowhark’s death?
Buuuuut. . .
In my honest, heartfelt opinion, it still falls flat. And the main reason for that is the amount of time/perspective/and literal head hopping spent flitting backward, forward – and sometimes – sideways, in between an imaginative and appealing opening, and the Hail-Mary redeemer of an ending that saves the day by lifting the story arc – at last – to a level that matches the pedigree of Gideon the Ninth.
And the reason for that is Gideon Nav.
Fans of Gideon the Ninth know all about Gideon Nav. A sassy, smart/foul-mouthed, hooligan with a sword the size of her ego. But, my oh my, she made battling foul necromantic monsters and backstabbing opponents to the death lots of fun!
SPOILER ALERT:
And yet we hardly get to see her? A surprise, as fans will also know that once a necromancer and sword wielding cavalier have blended to rise to Lyctorhood, they become near all-powerful immortal servants of the everlasting resurrection, nigh on impossible to kill.
Yet amazingly, Gideon is missing from most of the story.
END OF SPOILER ALERT:
So, okay. There IS a reason for that. And it took me until about halfway through the story to guess why that might be. (Slow, for me, as I’m usually sharp as the proverbial nail in working out the plot). But THAT was due to all the time/perspective/head hopping I mentioned. It’s distracting. And far from enhancing the mystery element, it stymies it completely.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This kind of thing doesn’t usually bother me. I’ve seen it employed in other stories by a variety of writers. Yet they managed it in a cohesive way that allows you to maintain a proper grasp of the storyline. And it’s here that Tamsyn Muir falls short. The temporal skipping is haphazard in that it often comes so unexpectedly that it takes a while for you to appreciate you’ve left the main story thread. So it becomes irritating. And that’s a mistake, as far as I’m concerned, as it spoils what could be – and does its best to be – an awesome sequel.
Now, this is only my opinion. As I mentioned at the outset, the story is saved by a much more consistent beginning and spectacular ending. But in between? All I can say is that I do read and review a lot of different books by a wide variety of authors. And when something I enjoyed immensely first time out is unnecessarily tainted by an avoidable trait? THAT vexes me.
I’m still a huge fan of the Locked Tomb trilogy, and hope Tamsyn Muir’s concluding chapter returns to the original format. Something I look forward to very much.

4 people found this helpful

Richard Middleton

Frustrating, but stick with it as it gets good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 12, 2020

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I thoroughly enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, with its necromancer magic and sparky characters. Given the potentially universe-spanning canvas, the small-scale Agatha Christie style 'characters trapped in a mansion' mystery was unexpected and fun, but suggested the author's fondness for 'one-set' play-like stories might become an issue in subsequent books. This is borne out in the first two thirds of Harrow The Ninth, where we are given a second-person perspective of Harrow, a small cast, another 'trapped in a mansion' setting and another supposed mystery. It quickly becomes a frustrating read, as by page 63 it's abundantly clear what the topline 'mystery' of what has happened to Harrow and Gideon is, but it's not until around page 380 that this 'revelation' is provided in the story, so there's an awful lot of readerly waiting around in the meantime (particularly given that for a lot of it, Harrow doesn't have 'agency' and things just happen to her, which is narratively very unsatisfying). Fortunately Muir's always-interesting writing saves all this from becoming unbearable, and once the revelation is out things kick into several higher gears and Muir's creativity and imagination suddenly explode onto the page. The last 120 or so pages return to Gideon the Ninth greatness and leave us nicely set up for book 3. So if you find the much of the book less than satisfying, hang on in there because it brightens up hugely in the latter stages. If Muir had cut a couple of hundred pages from the 'pre-revelation' section and added more meat (as it were) to the post-revelation section then I'd have given this 5 stars, but as its stands for me it barely scraped 4.

6 people found this helpful

Stephen

A confusing surprise

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 4, 2020

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I want to start with this - Harrow the Ninth confused the hell out of me but, for the most part, that was my fault and I do thoroughly recommend it (it will be interesting to see if others struggle also).

Harrow the Ninth continues directly from Gideon the Ninth with the titular character as she steps into the world of the Lyctors. However, Harrow is extremely unwell and has obviously done something to herself - though we do not know what til much later - and has made a seemingly unwise deal with an enemy that leaves her without much of her power, her memories and perhaps her sanity. It's a great setup, I especially love the letters that Harrow has made for herself before the memory wipe that should be opened if certain things happen even if I question how Harrow knows these things will come to pass (we get some reveals to this effect but not a full accounting).

That is only about half the book though. For the other half, we dive into what seems to be an alternate history of the first book - though it took me way too long to realise what was going on as I had not read Gideon the Ninth for ages. I feel this side is weaker even discounting my confusion but mostly because the reveals here seem somewhat disconnected from the more intriguing questions as to what has happened to Harrow and why did she do it.

The actual reason I am docking a star is the same problem a lot of mystery stories run into; the final reveal of the real plot comes too quickly and is a little too dense to easily follow.

I can't easily talk about this final section without engaging with spoilers so let me try to phrase it like this: imagine that the final reveal of your detective story didn't have the detective present - in fact the speech came from the perspective of a character who had appeared on the scene just for this reveal and is confused even as to who half the people present are. Then make it so a couple of characters share names (even the characters in story find that confusing). Finally add that we basically hadn't had any answers to any of the real meat of the mystery til this point. There is a really interesting set of reveals here, but combined with the confusion, the reveals are so fast that you don't get a chance to have one hit, process it, deal with its ramifications and then move to the next.

In some ways I make this ending sound worse than it is - the problem you run into when dancing round spoilers - so let me end with this; whilst I feel the ending was messy I literally cannot wait for the next in the series. Heck, maybe some of the questions I have about the way the ending was presented here will be countered in its sequel. Either way, bring on Alecto.

5 people found this helpful

Paul T.

Brilliantly confusing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 22, 2021

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Is this SF or fantasy? Rule of thumb: necromancy, magic, and a lot of fighting with swords, that's fantasy. Spaceships, advanced science - that's SF.

But what about when they're all in there together? And what's more, the advanced science is necromancy?

If that sort of question confuses you, you'd probably better not attempt 'The Locked Tomb' books. Because it gets a lot worse than that!

If, however, you like complex but beautifully detailed world-building, vibrant characters, sharp dialogue and breathtaking action scenes, then you might want to give the series a try.

You might still experience some confusion, though, because the plot isn't just convoluted, it's twisted half-way to insane. For example (while trying to avoid spoilers), the recollection you may have of events in the first book (and I would definitely recommend you read it before you attempt this one - it is NOT stand alone) is increasingly different from the main characters memories of those events. And some parts are written in a strange and different tense from others.

It takes a lot of courage, if not outright cheek, for a writer to treat their readers like this. Muir gets away with it, firstly because she built up a huge amount of credit with me in the first book, and secondly because her writing is simply so good, so utterly engrossing that I was prepared to put up with the abuse just to find out what happened next!

And what happens next did not disappoint. Not that it got any less confusing, but some things were explained. The weird style of writing some passages, for example, is not only fully justified but indeed demanded by the plot. And some mysteries were satisfactorily resolved - only to make way for other and deeper mysteries. I am desperately hoping that all things will be come clear in the next book, and I hope that it will not be delayed!

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