Posted by u/AnAmpleSupplyofNight on September 5th 2022

Welcome, friends, to the penultimate edition of the Hot Tomb Summer! We are a mere eight days from meeting the enigmatic Nona, and will spend this post discussing Chapter 50 through the Epilogue of Harrow the Ninth. These chapters are deliciously dense, with a lot to digest and even more to speculate about as God and the lyctors take turns confronting each other in increasingly escalatory ways, bodies get swapped, and we meet an unknown woman in an unknown city with a very familiar friend. So let's have some fun!

Chapter 50, Skull: Second House, 30 minutes before the emperor's murder

Ianthe leads Gideon-in-Harrow to the emperor's chambers, although Gideon doesn't want to meet God. They hide behind the door and peek into the sitting room, where Cytherea's dead body is tied to a chair being questioned by God. Totally normal. Wake, piloting Cytherea, accuses John of genocide against humanity, which seems to bore John, who's more curious about how she got there. Gideon is not happy to be so close to Ianthe. God presses Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity about the Ninth House mission; Wake calls necromancy a disease released by John, and asks how many babies died in the bomb and whether the ten billion gave him telepathy. Interesting stuff, but it's all interrupted by the arrival of Mercy and Augustine, who have already met Wake. The Saint of Duty arrives as well, which seems to brighten Wake's day. Duty puts on Gideon's glasses, then enters the room and shoots Wake. With a gun. But, before you can think too much about that, Dios Apate Major is revealed - get God's genetic material, have a baby, kill the baby to create a thanergy bloom combined with God's child's blood to break open the tomb. But the baby died when Wake was shoved out of the shuttle above Ninth House, right? Right??? Gideon enters the room and addresses our necrolord prime. "I'm not fucking dead." "Hi, Not Fucking Dead. I'm Dad." Legendary.

Chapter 51, Skull: Eighth House

Gideon opens the chapter by recalling the time she spent talking to her mother's skeleton as a child, including the fight she had with Harrow just before Harrow went to enter the tomb with Gideon's face under her fingernails. Back in the present, God tries to dodge the issue of Gideon's eye color matching his own, including by asserting that he told his elder lyctors the truth about Alecto's resurrection (maybe he could tell us, too? Guess not). Turns out that Alecto isn't dead, she's just turned off. She's also called a monster by Joy and Patience, though Duty didn't hate her. Mercy and Augustine reveal that they engaged in the Dios Apate Major plot because they didn't understand John's power source - he was once a man, after all, so where'd that immense power come from? And the eyes have it, John - Alecto held those yellow eyes in her head because she was John's cavalier. John and Alecto attained perfect lyctorhood before any of the initial disciples turned up, and Mercy and Augustine are pretty upset that he's a big fat liar who made them think their cavaliers had to die. But wait, there's more! Anastasia didn't screw the process up, she figured it out! John claims that she attempted the perfect lyctorhood process but panicked partway through, and he killed Samael in order to prevent them both from dying. Augustine asks if that's the truth or just the truth John tells himself. "What is the difference?' said God." Augustine asks John to stop his mission, to stop expanding, that nobody else need be punished, but John forcefully declines. Mercy says she'll forgive John if he can look her in the eyes and say he loved Cristabel, and that he's sorry for lying. John does so, and then Mercy explodes him. 

Chapter 52, Skull: Fifth House 

So, turns out that killing God has consequences. As the power source of Dominicus, God's death will kill off the sun, leading to the death of all nine houses. Mercy and Augustine seem resigned to this fate; Gideon and Ianthe want to try to save everyone. Augustine says they need to sue for peace with BoE and ensure a life for the survivors before he and Mercy can end each other. Duty seems to have something to confess to Augustine, but before that can happen, John returns and immediately kills Mercy. The sun has stabilized, John says, before he begins to clean house. John also reveals that he's only acting scared of the Resurrection Beasts - they cannot kill him, apparently - and he is not here to take your questions. Duty and Ianthe pledge loyalty to John, but Gideon is spared the question because John doesn't want to start their relationship off on the wrong foot. John then asks Augustine for his loyalty, which Augustine declines before bringing the entire Mithraeum into the river. God is sucked into the water, with Augustine and Ianthe chasing after. Duty grabs Gideon and they head through the station, watching through a window as John and Augustine fight. Duty takes off the sunglasses to reveal his - actually her - brown eyes, and tells Gideon Nav that the original Gideon is dead. Pyrrha Dve, Commander of the Second House, introduces herself, and reveals to Gideon-in-Harrow that both she and OG Gideon had romantic relationships with Wake, who is, you know, Gideon's mom. As Gideon processes that news, they watch as an enormous hole in the bottom of the river, complete with equally enormous human teeth, opens up as Augustine and John approach. Pyrrha says that the stoma must believe John to be a Resurrection Beast. The stoma grabs John and Augustine in its tongues, sucking them in, and the station gets pulled towards it as well. John's nearly done for and he's terrified, but Ianthe saves him, dooming Augustine to the stoma alone. This section of the chapter ends with "the pressure closed its hands around your wrists, and your chest pounded inward." The chapter itself closes with Gideon looking at Harrow's "bullshit dead girlfriend," complete with yellow eyes and a wrong voice twice removed, giving her chest compressions. "Hands pressed. We died."

Chapter 53, Skull: Strike Through Ninth House, Half an Hour Ago

Back at Canaan, which is completely collapsing, Dulcie tells Harrow that someone is piloting her body, and that someone is not the Sleeper. Harrow holds hope that Gideon is still alive and pops the bubble, allowing the river to rush in around her. She remembers being in the pool at Canaan with Gideon, before emerging at the locked tomb. She enters the tomb, tired but relieved and, perhaps for the first time in the entire book, content. The chains inside the tomb are broken, and Harrowhark climbs into the empty coffin, holds the two hander in an embrace, and finds a copy of Frontline Titties of the Fifth. Harrow lies down as the tomb rocks, like an explosion or a cradle, and she falls asleep, or dies, or both.

Epilogue, Skull: Sixth House, Six Months After the Emperor's Murder 

We seem to be in an entirely different setting - a city during rush hour traffic, where the threat of violence is evident in the curfews and the antisniper window striping. A woman lives with three people, one of whom tries to teach her by giving her bones while blackout curtains cover the window. One of the other people, the one who looks after her, would train her physically with the sword. Later in the day they go to get some food from a corner store; they had to stop going to a different spot when the vendor had noticed that the woman wasn't hurt by the hot food. Occasionally they hear gunfire at night, and then they hide in the bathroom. One of those nights, as she lied on the bathroom floor, she looked into the clear and beautiful grey eyes of the person who looked after her, and asked if they'd figured out who she is yet. Camilla says that they have not.

There's a lot that gets revealed or explored in these chapters, and I have SO MANY questions:

1. What do you think are the details of Alecto's resurrection? Her lyctorhood with John is his power source. How can she give him so much power, and what does it mean that she was just "turned off?"

2. When Pyrrha shot Wake, did Wake die? Or, as a revenant, is she still around somehow? Also, where and how did Pyrrha get the gun?

3. Talk to me about Anastasia. John seems pretty noncommittal about whether the story he tells about her panicking is actually true. Is John being honest? Or did Anastasia crack it, and John stepped in to prevent her from succeeding? And if that's the case, did Anastasia know what John was doing?

4. What is John's mission that Augustine wants him to stop? When Augustine brings this up, John tells Augustine that his (Augustine's) pre-resurrection self would have killed him at that suggestion. What does THAT mean?

5. John says he cannot be killed by Resurrection Beasts. Why does he act scared of them? Why not tell the lyctors? Why lock himself in the center of the station when they attack?

6. What do you make of the stoma opening for John?

7. What's with the chest compressions at the end of chapter 52? Gideon's description ("your bullshit dead girlfriend") seems to imply The Body is giving the compressions, but who is The Body talking to? And how do you interpret Gideon saying "we died" at the very end of this chapter?

8. Where is Harrow at the end of chapter 53?

9. Chapter 53 occurs "half an hour ago," which I believe is the only time that a chapter's timestamp references anything besides the emperor's murder. It also seems to imply that there's a "now," if this section occured just 30 minutes "ago." What do you think about the timestamp of this chapter? 

10. What's going on in the epilogue? Who are the woman and the other people? How did this woman wind up with Camilla? Camilla's eyes also seem to have changed color… (If you refer to Nona preview material in your answer to this question, please use spoiler type).

Link to full discussion on Reddit with Comments