Work Text:
After Action Report of Harrow the Ninth
Prepared by: Аstro Аron
26th of Februrary, 2022
Overview
As someone with a reputation for flaunting the socially accepted guidelines for consumption of multi-installment media, discord user Аstroаron of server [Name Expunged] has provided analysis of media from this alternative lens in hopes of providing new pathways for examination of the central themes and structure of an artistic work. For this project, discord user Аstroаron was contacted by user [Name Expunged] with the proposal outlined below. Relevant background information includes that multiple members of the server had either already consumed or were in the process of consuming the current installments of The Locked Tomb, of which the first two installments are available, and that user Аstroаron had expressed interest in consuming the series at prior dates but had not managed to do so yet.
In the interest of brevity, background on The Locked Tomb series will not be provided.
The proposal user Аstroаron received was a simple one. Upon initiation of consumption of The Locked Tomb series, user Аstroаron will not start with Gideon The Ninth (henceforth referred to as "Book 1"), as is traditional for those reading a series of multiple books to do. Rather, user Аstroаron will commence from the second installment, Harrow the Ninth (henceforth referred to as "Book 2"). Over the course of the experiment, user Аstroаron would relay updates, reactions, and hypotheses to those who had already consumed the series (an activity commonly referred to as live blogging), to build a paper trail as to the experience of starting with Book 2 as your entry point into the series.
This experiment took place between February 18th, 2022, when user Аstroаron pirated the Book 2 ebook from libgen.is, and february 26th, 2022, when user Аstroаron finished Book 2. Prior to February 18th, the only knowledge user Аstroаron possessed as to the nature of The Locked Tomb series was that it was about "gay necromancers in space". Three instances of nominal plot spoiling of Book 1 occurred over the course of the experiment, all of which did impact the thought lines of user Аstroаron while reading Book 2. For a full report on those spoiling events, please contact the report writer directly. No spoilers of Book 2 are known to have occurred during the course of the experiment. The report writer has no conflicts of interest or other disclosures that they feel are relevant at this time.
Goals and Objectives
The main goal of this project is rather inherent to the starting parameters; that is, to observe one's reactions to consuming Book 2 without having the context of Book 1. Because of this implicit understanding of the intent of the project, no tangible objectives were outlined and confirmed prior to commencement of the experiment. However, the report writer feels the unspoken objectives of the researchers and the participant can best be described as follows.
1) To evaluate Book 2 as a work of fiction without the emotional bias that consuming Book 1 would produce.
2) To follow the events of Book 2 and understand the characters and plot without the context of Book 1.
3) To attempt to reconstruct the plot of Book 1 without having consumed it.
Analysis of Outcomes
Overall, this experiment proceeded smoothly and rapidly, with substantial amounts of content and opinions generated by the subject over the project's lifetime. Objective 1 faltered due to an infamiliarity with the author's writing style, but Objectives 2 and 3 were successful in producing valid attempts, although the validity of
Objective 1:
The main hurdle experienced with evaluating Book 2 as an abstract literary work is Tamsyn Muir's unique writing style. The subject often found the glib referential humour off-putting, as it did not match the overall self-consistency of the work. The book is very clearly from a cultural background in fan fiction, as opposed to late 2000s YA fiction directly, and that could be responsible for some of the trope and thematic mismatches between Book 2 and the subject's expectations.
Beyond the humour, though, Book 2 was remarkably self-consistent, and arguably sci-fi, although the subject feels that a term like Science Fantasy might be more appropriate. Many terms that were never defined in Book 2 were still understandable, if not definable, due to the rock-solid usage of said terms. The setting of this novel drew immediate comparison to Dune's person-focused worldbuilding and small scale that is atypical for most sci-fi worldbuilding. Whether space was still the best setting for this novel, as opposed to say, cyberpunk, largely depends, in the subject's view, on how much broader worldbuilding of the setting occurs in later novels, or did occur in Book 1.
Also immediately recognizable was the attempt at cosmic horror, where Muir played significantly with the concept of madness and an unreliable narrator masterfully. The subject found themself unsure what scenes were reality or mindscape illusions at multiple points, although how much that would be corrected by Book 1 context remains to be seen. The largest mark against the usage of this genre would probably be in the execution of the Resurrection Beasts, large Yog-Sothoth-like entities that spew forth legions of insanity-inducing insects, all bearing the characteristic lack of morphological cohesion. However, by making it known that the Resurrection Beasts can be detained and removed from reality, much of the fear is removed, and the Resurrection Beast that functions as a crux of the plot ends up being nothing more than a glorified egg timer to track how close one is to finishing the novel.
While these evaluations are useful, none of them are impossible to achieve if one has read Book 1, and as such this objective was not met to the report writer's specifications.
Objective 2:
The plot was successfully understood, with only small hitches to grasping characters, and most significant reveals caught immediately or when they were foreshadowed. The usage of multiple perspectives greatly assisted in this process, with the user quickly declaring an incorrect but still usable difference between the third-person chapters and the second-person chapters. The major hurdle were the characters named Ortus, which the subject errenously believed were the same character for much longer than one reasonably should. Because of this significant confusion the subject did not feel that the plot twist emerging from these names worthwhile.
The two plot twists that were wholly unexpected were that of Canaan House and of Mercymorn. Canaan house is a unique situation where the "plot twist", as it were, would not be mistaken as flashbacks by anyone who read Book 1. However, someone without the background into the timeline of Harrow could be excused for falling into this trap, while no hard feelings can be carried for not having foreshadowing of a plot twist that was never supposed to be one. The second plot twist, that of Mercymorn wanting to eliminate Harrow in the eleventh hour, does not get such leniency. Its lack of foreshadowing left the subject substantially less endeared to Mercymorn's character, as the rationale is just barely explained and not supported in previous actions at all.
Over the course of the experiment, the subject postulated many hypotheticals, most of which were incorrect. The subject quickly latched onto mind-wipe theories, but made the mistake of declaring Canaan House as pre-mind wipe. This left little time for Harrow to meet Gideon, and as such for the first two acts the subject postulated that Gideon and Harrow existed in seperate space-times. This was later refuted by a spoiler message the subject received after reading Act 2 (see the disclaimer at the end of the overview section). Because of this fascination, most of the theories centered around Harrow's past or current character dynamics, with the refrain "I wonder if _____ is gideon in disguise" being sent frequently during the course of the liveblogs. Theories about the worldbuilding, or broader concepts, tended to fall by the wayside.
The following theory, as described by the subject in discord DMs to [Name Expunged] at the opening of Act IV, is included due to it reaching the correct conclusion from incorrect assumptions.
> Starting to wonder if it wasn't a mind-wipe and more false memories overwriting old ones
> harrow forgot her cavalier and replaced it with Ortus
> wait, what if gideon is the real cavalier
> that would be funny
To preserve the dignity of the subject, a full list of these hypotheses is not available.
Objective 3:
The subject's reconstruction of the plot is included below, without editorialization.
"Hey, uh, hope text-to-speech works. So when I was first starting Harrow I assumed that gideon would be pretty blood of eden-centric since that seemed like a nice counterpoint to Harrow being stuck in the machinations of the empire. However, as backstory reveals really ramp up in the final act, this assumption had to pivot greatly. I think that, basically, so gideon is some upstart who somehow becomes cavalier to harrow, maybe when ortus died, maybe the swordfight in the church happened and gideon won the right? Unsure. Either way, they somehow end up at Canaan house, which is either like Among Us or Hogwarts, still not sure which, but it seems to be the proving ground for new lyctor-cavalier pairs. And gideon makes a ton of friends, and goes through classic teenage drama with Harrow, and then at some point their friends start getting ganked by Lyctors in disguise, and shit really hits the fan. Still not sure why the lyctors did that, maybe its some real social darwinist shit? Maybe because gideon has Special Magic Eyes? Anyway, gideon's about to kick the bucket, which apparently is still a thing in necromancer world, so she impales herself on a fence post do to the weird lyctoral soul transferance party time. And at some point around here it has to fade out, because otherwise the big reveal of Harrow would be completely underwhelming. It probably ends with Harrow crying over the body in a very "did gideon hop into harrow's mind or not? read book 2 to find out :)". That's the only way I can rationalize it."
This reconstruction has been verified with independent authorities to be largely correct.
## Analysis of Performance
The rapid timeframe of this experiment and subject's engagement with the content proved that such an arrangement could be repeated with a whole host of media properties. While further trials will need to be conducted to assure longevity of this model, there is reason to believe that the subject would be enthused to participate again.
Summary
Discord user Аstroаron read book 2 of The Locked Tomb series without reading book 1. While this is generally frowned upon, the ability of the subject to engage with the material, comment on the writing, and postulate about the events prior to book 2 all point toward this method of media consumption being usable in more general cases. However, this method's ability to produce significantly alternative reactions to the source material in service of facilitating wider discussion can not be considered statistically significant at this time, due to the qualitative nature of this project's goals.
Recommendations
The author of this report strongly recommends applying this methodology to other examples of multi-volume print media.