4.5 stars
First Sentence: Your room had long ago plunged into near-complete darkness, leaving no distraction from the great rocking thump—thump—thump of body after body flinging itself onto the great mass already coating the hull.
Thoughts: Harrowhark Nonagesimus survived the chaos at the end of Gideon the Ninth and has become the newest Lyctor, one of the Hands and Gestures of the King Undying, the Necromantic God, Author of the Great Resurrection, John Gaius. Yes, God’s name is John, the most boring male name in the English language. He’s not nearly as imposing in person as his multitude of titles implies. He’s actually a nice guy who will sit down and have a cup of tea and a biscuit with you. Except Harrow wants neither tea nor biscuits. She actually would like her stomach to stop rebelling against her, especially since she spends her first few weeks as a Lyctor throwing up every time she moves.
Her fellow Baby Lyctor, Ianthe Tridentarius, the other survivor of Canaan House, shows up at Harrow’s bedside one morning with a packet of letters Harrow wrote to herself before they boarded God’s starship to go to their new homes on His space station.* This is the first hint that whatever’s going on with Harrow is self-inflicted. The next hint is that the chapters narrating Harrow’s present-day adventures are all in the second person. The third hint is that her memories of Canaan House, especially who died and who was her cavalier, are one hundred thousand percent wrong.
To make things worse, Harrow has to get it together quick because there’s a Resurrection Beast coming for them. And what is that, you may ask? The ghost of a dead planet, specifically the first planets that God killed in the Great Resurrection. Two of the remaining three original Lyctors, Augustine and Mercymorn, take Harrow and Ianthe under their wings to teach them how to meld their cavalier and necromancer souls while they fight the beast in the River.** Except Harrow can’t meld with her cavalier. And just to make things more complicated, the third Original Lyctor, “Ortus,” keeps trying to kill Harrow.
The storyline is confusing at first, but stick with it because it will all come together at the end. The line between living and dead is constantly movable and just because someone died in the previous book doesn’t mean that they can’t return in this one. Which makes sense, this is a series about necromancers after all. You’ll be rewarded with lots of cool bone magic (even if the bit where Harrow regrows Ianthe’s arm gets a bit too graphic) and awesome fight scenes. By the end we have more answers about what’s going on but even more questions about what the heck God and his Lyctors are up to. These people are all deeply disturbed and I love it.
*What does God need with a starship? Or a space station?
**I’m not explaining the River to you. Read the book.
The Eclectic Reviewer 