Harrow the Ninth (Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

[layawaydragon]

Flips between this "you" perspective, counting down to the Emperor's Murder. Harrowhawk has done something, altering her brain, clearly. We learn she reprogrammed her memories, piecing back together her plan for Gideon, which has such been erased in the spell, while we learn about her trials and tribulations as a new Lyctor.

God is such a white dude it's disappointing. And don't skim all the ALL CAPS MESSAGES, they do have a purpose. It all comes together in the end, after a wild page-turning, necromancing murder dueling depressing protege training ride.

Quotes:

Thankfully, you no longer felt shame. Pride was swiftly becoming a planet you had travelled to once but no longer remembered in detail.

"Around that," agreed the most venerated saint, whose office had been enunciated by the admiral with the faintest and most well-bread suggestion of motherfucker.

It was only the fourth funeral you had ever been to where you had been responsible for the corpse.

Perhaps there were more likely bedfellows, but yours hadn't killed you yet.

Harrow regretted not making him take a solemn pledge of silence, to walk the place as the mute and intimidating bulk his father had been; but only a very obedient idiot of a cavalier would have stuck to that.

It was the first time you realized God could not understand you.

And the Saint of Duty lifted his lit cigarette to you in an unmistakable salute.

Part of your brain temporarily calcified into atheism.

The calm that came over you as you went to murder Ortus the First was the weary calm of someone who had already been tried within an inch of her fucking life.

You didn't have your original thumb and I'd touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.

If all of her cavaliers were this excited for death, she was definitely the problem.

"You're not waiting for her resurrection; you've made yourself her mausoleum."

"Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity," he recited, all in one breath.

"Hi, Not Fucking Dead," he said. "I'm Dad."

You remember how the fuck-off great-aunts always used to say, Suffer and learn?
If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?