I Read Books: Harrow The Ninth
“The Necromancers are back and they’re gayer than ever,” declares the back cover, and you know. Yes, sure. Though that aspect is probably third, maybe fourth in turn of the various threads this book picks up.
At the end of Gideon The Ninth there were two big reveals. First, how liches, the Emperor’s immortal necro-saints, are created. A necromancer’s cavalier sacrifices themselves so their soul lives within the necromancer, creating a self-sustaining source of thanergy (death magic energy); also this soul takes control of the body when the necromancer goes spirit travelling, which will be important later.
Second, a missing lich had infiltrated Canaan house impersonating one of the necromancer-candidates, seeking to disrupt the investigation and initiation of them and destroy the emperor. At the climax Gideon, a cavalier, sacrificed herself so that her necromancer Harrowhawk could survive the attack and become a lich.
Harrow, now a lich-saint, remembers none of this. Or rather she remembers it differently. And her powers aren’t working properly. Her cavalier-soul doesn’t take over when she spirit-walks.
This is a problem. The liches and the Emperor attract Resurrection Beasts, creatures created ten thousand years ago when the Emperor killed the planets and then brought them back as undead. They live in the River, the stream where the dead live. To fight the one coming the necro-saints need to leave their bodies and enter the River; meanwhile they will be attacked in the regular world. Some of the existing liches think Harrow is a waste. A danger. Would be better off dead.
All this plays out in the Emperor’s Mithraeum, a gargantuan gothic space station. There the new and old liches learn how to control their powers, and about each other and the secrets that have been hidden.
Yes, also there’s a lot of romantic, necromantic and generally queer yearning and once or twice some sex goes on too.
Read This: Convoluted mystery box of necromancers plotting
in space
Don’t Read This: Bad jokes, teenagers making mistakes, ten
thousand year old necro-gods being very stupid
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