Tamsyn Munir is just…so good man. After my reread of htn the one things that really stuck with me was that sense of frustrated helplessness I felt throughout the book. As a a reader you are basically just a passenger watching a character you have come to care so much about go through some of the hardest, most gruesome experiences of her life. Mentally and physically Harrow is being Put Through it, and while we are so close to her, exposed to her inner thoughts and how she is processing all of this, we’re still so far away. There’s nothing we can do to protect her in any way. We love her and there’s nothing we can do. This book is so good at making you feel desperate, like if you had one wish it would be to alter the rules of reality and pull Harrowhark Nonagesimus out of her own reality to provide her some relief for once in her life!!! But we can only watch everything unfold.
And then you realize…this is what it means to be Gideon Nav. Stuck in that alive/unalive, subconscious/unconscious state…feeling helpless right alongside Harrow, but not really alongside her…but also closer than you’ve ever been to her…sighhh
