(spoiler warning here!!! it’s a post about a book I am going to write about the book)
This book is the second installment of the Locked Tomb series; it was once supposed to be a trilogy, but a fourth book has been confirmed and is planned to be published at some point. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Reverend Daughter, the ninth saint of the King Undying, his fingers and his hand. She was the Ninth House cliché, as Palamedes Sextus put it, and I could not agree more. She is a girl made up of 200 killed infants and teenagers that brought the ruin to her House and to the future solely so her parents could have an heir. Harrow the First is undoubtedly in love with The Body, something locked in the Locked Tomb that her House guards.
This novel is nothing if not high fantasy and confusion and a story of a girl struggling after she loses the person closest to her. Through the first book, we see her and Gideon Nav grow together and twine their fates until Gideon throws herself at death’s door and ends her own life so Harrow could live. Then this book is the aftermath. Harrow wakes up with Ianthe, the other necromancer who accomplished becoming a saint for their god, a Lyctor. She awakes to Ianthe being the only person she can trust even slightly and the older Lyctors from ten thousand years ago training the two of them.
We meet the Emperor, King Undying, God, Teacher, Creator, Emperor Undying, Necrolord Prime, John. A man with many titles, and yet his name is John Gaius. The man whose intestines are blown apart, he is broken down into the smallest matter, and he stitches himself back together. He drinks tea and eats cookies (biscuits in the book, but I am American) and tells our Harrow that she needs a hobby. Like cooking. The man who controls all, who is the original necromancer, who is the all powerful and adores his fingers, his saints. John watches Harrow’s descent into what she thought was madness, into her turmoil and starvation because she finds no use in feeding herself.
The other saints, Mercymorn, Augustine, and Gideon (known as Ortus through most of the book), tend to Ianthe and Harrow as though they were children who needed babysitters. Although Gideon (the Lyctor) makes attempts at Harrow’s life on multiple occasions, we never learn why. We never learn who asked him to try, who wanted her dead so badly, who wanted to end the Lyctor that could not break down her cavalier’s soul enough to fully absorb her wanting to leave Gideon Nav whole.
Then there is Ianthe. The other new saint, the eighth hand to the King Undying. His fingers and his hand, the last person in the entire book to stand by his side. In the end, when Augustine tries to take the ship down, not only was she the only one trying to save her King, but she also stood between him and his end. Ianthe was the woman who made out with our Harrow and called her Harry. Who Gideon had to watch try to love Harrow even though Harrow is in love with The Body. The secret of the Locked Tomb. The Body in the ice she beheld at ten years old and could never get over.
In the end, it took me the book spelling out for me to realize what was happening. Up until the point of Gideon taking over Harrows body while her consciousness is gone for me to realize Gideon was the one narrating the book. Gideon is the one who had been watching through Harrow’s body even though she was blind to the world without her eyes. We learn that she is a descendent of John, the King, the Emperor, the higher power, and has his golden eyes. It is the point of the story that explains why she had not died when the Reverend Mother and the Reverend Father attempted to take away all the infants to form Harrow’s conception.
Yet, looking back, she was everywhere in the descriptions of the novel. Maybe not of the characters, but of Harrow herself. We read the book, and most chapters are from the second-person point of view. Only after over 75% of the book do we learn what Harrow did to end her connection to Gideon Nav, ending her ability to become a true Lyctor. She’d disconnected Gideon from herself. She’d set up a play in her own mind and in the River, where souls go, to cover over the memories of Gideon Nav with the man who was supposed to be her cavalier, Ortus Nigenad.
Throughout this book, I missed Gideon. I missed her connection to Harrow. I missed how she obviously loved the Nonagesimus heir, and yet I loved the book. Seeing it now, I was not missing Gideon, but I was missing the knowledge she was there. We wait until close to the end of the novel to learn that Gideon had been there the whole time, and hell was that frustrating. There were moments throughout this book that left my jaw on the floor. There were times where I stared at the pages and had to blink back my own emotions. Because no matter how insane and mad Harrow appears, she is still only one thing—a teenager.
She is still only a teenager, forced to grow up too fast. A depressed teenager who had lost the one stable person in her life. A girl who cannot mourn her loss because she will not allow herself. Of course the circumstances are different, but after having my own loss this past summer, it was like seeing bottled-up emotions spread across the pages. We watch her fall to pieces and follow a story only she could weave until she understood what was going on. It is not like we, as the audience, know more than her. Nor does Gideon, so we learn with the characters. We ride the emotional rollercoaster that is sitting with the suicidal grief-stricken teenager Harrow.
Closing this book was like closing my soul. I miss the characters already, and I finished it today. The moment I closed the beautiful cover, I craved for the next story. To see what happened to my dear Harrow, to know if she truly took apart Gideon’s soul and became full Lyctor as she had promised. Gideon gave her life, and it hurt her for Harrow to refuse it. But now Harrow has promised to take it completely, to embrace the newfound path she has. However, the novel does not end with an affirmative. It does not end with a positive. She lays down in the Locked Tomb’s coffin and falls asleep, or so I believe. The line I fell in love with comes back again to debut in this second book. The one that twines two souls who I thought would end up being more than just the soul who gave herself for her necromancer. A line that I think embodies everything Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus are for and to each other.
One Flesh, One End