Checking my highlights/bookmarks, for me 'Harrow' picked up around the 25% mark, but also kind of intermittently. The post-GtN Harrow POV continued to be grim and claustrophobic and not a lot of fun for me, but it does eventually become diluted by other things, and those things worked for me much better, and some of them were even a lot of fun (although in a different way than the Gideon POV had been fun in the first book).
I ended up liking/appreciating Harrow the Ninth quite a bit more than I did 'Gideon', but I should also mention that there wasn't anything in particular in 'Gideon' that was my thing -- the aesthetic was not (as for you), the "bonkers sight gags"-equivalent aspect you mentioned was not, and while there were aspects of character dynamics that did work for me, it was not the Gideon-Harrow relationship, but rather dynamics between other characters -- and I got more interesting bits of that in 'Harrow', where I hadn't been expecting to.
no subject
I ended up liking/appreciating Harrow the Ninth quite a bit more than I did 'Gideon', but I should also mention that there wasn't anything in particular in 'Gideon' that was my thing -- the aesthetic was not (as for you), the "bonkers sight gags"-equivalent aspect you mentioned was not, and while there were aspects of character dynamics that did work for me, it was not the Gideon-Harrow relationship, but rather dynamics between other characters -- and I got more interesting bits of that in 'Harrow', where I hadn't been expecting to.