{"id":38689,"date":"2020-12-07T06:30:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T17:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=38689"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:18:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T08:18:14","slug":"just-arrived-harrow-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2020\/12\/07\/just-arrived-harrow-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Arrived: “Harrow The Ninth” by Tamsyn Muir"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 1, I featured Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth<\/strong> <\/em>as part of my Worldbuilding in Fantasy series<\/a> on the Supernatural Underground<\/a> blog. Although my focus was on the world, I did conclude that: “the juxtaposition of sorcery and space, adventure and action, politics and mystery, makes for exciting Fantasy…” <\/em><\/p>\n

Others must have agreed, because immediately prior to my post, Gideon the Ninth <\/em>received the Locus Award 2020 for First Novel<\/a>. An outstanding achievement, just by the way.<\/p>\n

As the first in a trilogy (The Locked Tomb<\/strong>), naturally I have been looking forward to the next “exciting Fantasy” instalment — so was delighted when a beautiful hardback edition of Book Two, Harrow The Ninth<\/em><\/strong>, arrived on my TBR table.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is a very<\/em> beautiful book, including the artistry and detail of the cover illustration, and style and texture of the fonts. In fact “gorgeous cover” is almost becoming a theme, since another of this year’s Just Arrived’s<\/a>, Underland<\/em> by Robert MacFarlane<\/a>, was similarly distinguished. And as those who’ve followed me for a while now (waves!) will know, I do have a bit of a thing for beautiful and evocative book jackets.<\/p>\n

If you want to check a few of those covers out, take a peek at:<\/p>\n

SFF Cover Art Love: Some Favourites<\/a><\/p>\n

SFF Cover Art Love; More Favourites<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Getting back to Harrow The Ninth, <\/em>as you’ve probably guessed I’m quite keen to read it. In terms of hints offered by the back and inside covers as to the contents within, there’s not a lot on offer. The reader is offered three sentences, two of which deal with the prior book, Gideon the Ninth<\/em>, and only one with Harrow<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“In victory, her world has turned to ash.”<\/em><\/p>\n

So, I guess I’ll find out in the best way, by diving in and finding out for myself.<\/p>\n

A quick scan of reviews suggest they’re generally positive, although there’s a suggestion this book doesn’t necessarily tread an expected path from where Gideon <\/em>left off. From my point-of-view, this makes the book far more interesting than otherwise, whetting my appetite to “read on.”<\/p>\n

Something I intend to do, over the Christmas-New Year break, if not before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 1, I featured Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth as part of my Worldbuilding in Fantasy series on the Supernatural Underground blog. Although my focus was on the world, I did conclude that: “the juxtaposition of sorcery and space, adventure and action, politics and mystery, makes for exciting Fantasy…” Others must have agreed, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justarrived"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38689"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38696,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38689\/revisions\/38696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}