Nona Devátá

The Locked Tomb #3

by Tamsyn Muir, Alžběta Lexová (Translator)

Třetí část nekonvenční a nespoutané sci-fi série Zapečetěná hrobka

Její město se ocitlo v obležení. Zombíci se vracejí.

Ale Nona myslí na jediné — na svou narozeninovou oslavu a vytoužené gumičky do vlasů.

V mnoha ohledech je Nona jako ostatní lidé. Žije s rodinou, pracuje v místní škole a miluje procházky po pláži, plavání s medúzami a psy. Jenže ve skutečnosti Nona není jako ostatní — před šesti měsíci se probudila v těle, které jí dost možná ani nepatří, a teď má strach, že ho bude muset co nevidět vrátit.

Město propadá panice. Na obzoru visí zářivě modrá koule a chystá se celou planetu pozřít. Jednotky Krve Edenu obklíčily poslední výspu Kohorty a čekají, až Nehynoucí císař dorazí svým lidem na pomoc. Velitelé chtějí mít z Nony zbraň, která by je před Devíti klany ochránila. Nona by ovšem raději vedla normální život se svými blízkými, Pyrrhou, Camillou a Palamedem. Zároveň však ví, že nic netrvá věčně. A do toho se jí každou noc zdá o dívce, která má na tváři nakreslenou lebku…

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Audiobook, Horror

480 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 2022

About the author

TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth, and concludes with Alecto the Ninth. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[urwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading a Locked Tomb book is the equivalent of trying to understand an intricate chess game, while Muir gaslights you by saying there was no chess game, it was a football match all along. -31/07/21

Review

4.5 stars

Life is too short, and love is too long.

I am sobbing like an idiot, this book was everything I wanted.
Nona the Ninth was a very different book from the previous two books in the series, it's a slow burn, and instead of the typical action necromancy setting, we have a more civilian/domestic approach to the story. That does not make it any less of a story, rather it makes it all the more tender and fragile. I still find Harrow to be my favorite installment yet, but Nona features my favorite character in the series yet, Nona! Yes, I know Gideon is almost everyone's favorite, but after finishing this book, I found myself deeply attached to Nona. Not to mention Camilla and Palamedes, for whom I would die a thousand fiery deaths. Move over Griddlehark, these two are now my fav necro-cav pair (i'm sorry okay).

“Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said. “We had something very nearly perfect … the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”

On the whole, I did find that Nona was a lot less confusing than the last two books, probably because Harrow gave us so much information and backstory about John, and the Lyctors and Blood of Eden. Like most of the Locked Tomb books, Nona does have a rather slow start before all hell starts to break loose. I for one loved the slow domestic parts, it gave us a glimpse of the people affected by the war, it also gave us a lot more nuance to Blood of Eden, where things aren't as straight as Commander Wake would want us to think. It also had the vibes of a bridge book, unlike Harrow, Nona is obviously a middle book that builds up the climax for Alecto.

There's a lot of biblical imagery, it's literal Bible fanfiction. It was fun to see what led to the Nine Houses and Blood of Eden, as well as the fact that John's villain origin story was basically just capitalism and cancel culture, which, fair enough.

The cast for Nona is also probably my favorite so far. Nona, Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrah are an adorable family and while I loved them as much as Nona did, the secondary cast of characters including Noodle the dog, Hot Sauce, Honesty, and the Angel were all delightful characters that I had a lot of fun reading about. Another thing about this book is how unapologetically and unassumingly queer it is. Muir took the gender binary and smashed it with a two-handerwhere IS Gideon's two-hander though?? It's mentioned at the end that Gideon is carrying a rapier, so is it back with John? or is it the sword with Alecto?. The majority of the characters are genderqueer and it is expressed without any big fanfare, which is something that makes it feel rather normal. And also something that SHOULD be normal about the book about swapping souls and bodies.

I won't mention any big spoilers here, but I think if I hadn't reread, highlighted, and annotated the shit out of Gideon and Harrow I probably would have been a lot more lost about what was going on.

Definitely lived up to the hype, Nona the Ninth is a book about love and the transient and fleeting moments between the people you care about that end up becoming the most important thing in the world. It is a tender and heartwrenching/warming story featuring my favorite protagonist yet. Yes, Ianthe is as terrible as ever, yes, you will have to wait a bit for Griddlehark, and yes, Noodle the dog gets loads of pats.
I am so excited for all hell to break loose in Alecto the Ninth; bring it on apocalypse barbie!

[Baba Yaga Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We were children, playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space."

I'm fine. This is fine. I am okay with the events that occurred in this book. These fictional people do not influence my psycho-emotional balance. I did not sob on an airplane while reading this. The epilogue did not completely floor me. I will now resume my normal life and not at all freak out about what I just read.

But also: fucking friendship bracelets? With her? Really??

[library fairy · Rating 5 out of 5]

*chanting and beating my fists on a table* MORE GAYS, MORE BONES, MORE GAYS, MORE BONES, MORE GAYS—


Update: they let ME, a feral little librarian, read this book early and I binged the whole thing in ~24 hours, god damn I love this series

[Emma Cathryne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nona the Ninth is a contradiction - both the fluffiest and most violently grim novel of the series so far. The first half of the book and the second half of the book seem at times to bear only passing resemblance to each other. It is clear that the first half was added sometime after the second half was written. Some will argue that this first half - full of the beautiful tedium of eating meals and going to school and arguing with your family - is irrelevant to the wider story. I would dispute that this slower start is highly relevant - even crucial. Tamsyn stated in an early interview, and I paraphrase, that the story of Nona is one in which our protagonist is living in a cheesy coming-of-age drama while everyone else around her is operating within the framework of real-footage docuseries that comes with a list of content warnings longer than your arm. This is painfully accurate. Nona's innocence requires a lot of reading between the lines to understand what's actually going on, but also allows Tamsyn to hold our hand as she pulls back the curtain on the world outside of the Nine Houses. We get teased about Blood of Eden, we are educated about the Cohort presence on other plants, we see the "other side" of the story we know and the infinite grey area that exists between good and evil in this far-future. We see normal people living their lives alongside the worst horrors ever visited upon the universe. We see an unconventional family loving and taking care of each other while racing against the clock to save the lives of everyone they hold dear.

And this is just the first half.

The second half, which I won't dive too deeply into to avoid spoilers, returns more closely to the The Locked Tomb series as we know it, but with a well of context that we lacked up until now, making me totally revaluate everything I thought I knew. If Harrow the Ninth was all about gut-punching, explosive information bombs, Nona the Ninth is a slow burn - recontexualiations rather than revelations. This is not even to MENTION everything we learn about the origin of the Nine Houses and the Necrolord Prime through cunning little biblical snippets. The whole novel is bathed up to the throat in beautiful, complicated religious imagery and creation mythos. As a lapsed and largely cultural Jew I will need people wiser and and more religiously inclined to explain it all to me, but artistry of Tamsyn's intention is astounding.

I could talk on this subject forever, but more important than the plot of the book is what the book is actually about, which is nothing more or less than love. The thesis of this book - and I would argue all of the books up until now - is that love and grief are the same emotion in two different directions. Grief requires love to manifest itself, and love cannot exist without the inevitable acceptance of an ending. Whether this ending is in the long term or the short is irrelevant - the beauty of existence is in its temporal fragility. And BOY, does understanding this suck. Because love and grief are also about change and impermanence and learning to let go of the things that make your life worth living. You watch the characters undergo this catastrophic revelation, and Tamsyn Muir — evil wizard, word magician, agent of primal psychological warfare—puts you through it right along with them. As a reader, this was the hardest part of the book to grasp - seeing characters that I have grown to love savagely break apart and come together and become something new and unfamiliar. Trauma changes people. Power changes people. The duality of love and grief, changes people. My emotion driven monkey brain does not like this, even as my logic-driven human brain recognizes the truth of this. I want these characters to stay the same, because I love them, and because I love them, I grieve for their necessary metamorphosis. I went through this process with every single major character in the story to different degrees, recognizing the importance of their evolution even as it ripped me into confetti. Grinding my teeth trying to avoid spoilers here, but I feel like no one exemplified this better than Camilla and Palamedes, who will go down for me as one of the most legendary, beautiful, and devastating love stories of all time; and Nona, who did absolutely nothing wrong but broke my heart anyway. I haven't cried this hard over a book since finishing The Song of Achilles in the back of my parents' car when I was thirteen.

This is all a very long and discursive way of saying HOW CAN LITERAL INK ON PAPER MAKE ME WANT TO CRASH MY CAR INTO THE OCEAN? All I know is there's a part of me that will be drowning until it all comes together in Alecto. Tamsyn Muir, I prostrate myself in awe before you. Life is too short, and love is too long.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

i understand maybe a fraction of this unintelligible series but i will continue to pay TM’s rent

[Nataliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nona, sorry, but hold on,” said Palamedes. “This isn’t making as much sense as I’d like it to, and we’re short on time.”

And here comes the next chapter in the absolutely bonkers story of space necromancers, the story that I’ve once described as a lovely migraine of a book, drenched in buckets of confusion and oddball strangeness. It’s a beautiful labyrinth of a story that requires you to stop guessing and just follow along with it, blindly trusting Tamsyn Muir to make it all eventually make sense. Just embrace the confusion and enjoy the ride.

“[…] But what we know is that we don’t know anything, okay? I want you lot to make that your motto. What we know is that we don’t know anything.” Nona quite liked this motto. It was an accurate summary of her entire life.”

When I picked up the first book in this series a few years ago, I really struggled with it for the first third, even abandoning it for a while because it just wasn’t clicking. And this book was similar — one third of the story of irritated frustration followed by a feverish inhaling of the rest of the book.

What almost broke my patience this time was the titular Nona. A personality trapped in Harrowhark Nonagesiumus’ body after the events of book 2, a pollyannish child whose upbeat wide-eyed innocence initially grated on my nerves enough to make me almost abandon the book (and I’m so glad I stuck with it). So far with a different narrator in each book we got obnoxious brashness with Gideon, dark sanity-cracking depression with Harrow, and now almost painfully naive childish innocence with nevertheless creepily dark undertones in Nona. And dammit, that’s annoying for a good chunk of the story (and how I wish all that story with her school friends was just culled from the final draft, taking out about 100 pages with them).

“Yes, congratulations,” said the Prince sarcastically. “No, babycakes, I didn’t fool you. Who is this literal goddamn infant? Can someone give her like a rusk or something and shut her up?”

But then we got the great supporting cast with the duo that warms my crusty shriveled heart - Camilla and Palamedes, the duo I adored since “Gideon”. Pyrrha. Crown (oh, you’ve gone far from that Canaan House, girl). John’s unreliably angrily weird segments. (On “Paul” I’ll reserve my judgment yet, I’m still a bit heartbroken). And “Kiriona”, dear, we need to talk and perhaps trade some quips.

“And so Nona lived with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on the thirtieth floor of a building where nearly everyone was unhappy, in a city where nearly everyone was unhappy, on a world where everyone said that you could outrun the zombies, but not forever.”

Now book 3 of the trilogy that became a quartet, Nona the Ninth actually gives a few sorta-answers to the entire bonkers universe setup with John the God (and as it was pointed out to me in a comment, with John and Paul we are *this* close to the Beatles reunion).

And in the end, despite me almost bolting a third of the way through, it ended up beautiful. Sad and lovely and still absolutely insane, with heartbreak and ass jokes coexisting without clashing (yes, it’s possible, trust me). I can’t wait till the final book although I’m sure it will break my heart, again.

4 stars. With Palamedes and Camilla responsible for most of them. Naturally.

“Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect … the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”

___________

Pre-review:

Ah, ok. The trilogy is now a quartet? Ok.

Just don’t pull a George R.R. Martin on us, please.

——————

Also posted on my blog.

[elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

me when i shepherd in the complete annihilation of humanity and ignore the collective suffering of billions to have extremely problematic sex* with my cancelled wife

*recreate a bastardized version of the genesis myth

[Brittni Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I’ve processed.

This is my least favorite book of the series so far. Gideon is my all time favorite book, I loved Harrow only a small step below but still adored it, and Nona is the most filler of the three.

Nona’s strengths lie in the small moments. I think it’s easily the most emotional book in the series so far, with us being in the head of a well intentioned teenager without much life experience. She loves easily and is incredibly loyal and feels deeply about the people she cares for. It was a sweet story, and the only book in the series to make me cry.

However, I do think this book only exists to set up Alecto. I think Tamsyn couldn’t start Alecto off where we ended with Harrow and just had to figure out a way to get us to that jumping off point. My enjoyment of this book is really going to be decided in hindsight when I’ve read Alecto, because I need to see how much the events of Nona mattered. As of now, having just finished the book, only the last 40 pages or so of the book affected the overall plot.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to my reread of the series when Alecto is impending. Every book in this series benefits from being read at least twice, and I’m sure Nona will be no different.

[C.L. Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to describe this book, but it is really special and I'm just, in general, astounded by Muir's control and attention to detail in Nona. Especially knowing what kind of patience that requires as a writer.

This book is very different from Gideon and Harrow in style and scope, but it builds on them both well. As I was reading, I told people, if Gideon is a locked-house (heh, tomb) mystery, and Harrow is a grief-driven psycho-thing, then Nona's genre is dystopian post-apocalypse. And each book carries a bit of the previous books' genres, so...you know.

Anyway, it's a surprising but perfectly fitting continuation of the series. I loved every minute of the body hopping gender fuckery and I can't wait for Alecto. Have fun, y'all!

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

I feel like I need to cry a lot



At first I thought I wouldn’t like the book (and of course I can’t explain it or understand all of it like most books) but I loved it!! I’m invested in all of the characters 😫



Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

[Lottie from book club · Rating 5 out of 5]

buck FUCKING wild

[Spencer Orey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand that this book sprang out of (and is meant to mostly set up) the next book, Alecto the Ninth. I still had mega high hopes for this one. What we get instead is pretty good but uneven.

Gideon and Harrow were such amazing PoV characters, but Nona generally provides more of a warm but blank presence in rooms of very tough active people. She’s kind and leads us to cool things. But she also drops out of many scenes. It's more like she's along for the ride.

The first half of the book is kinda meandering. The second half has a lot of gripping fireworks (and kept me reading!), but those fireworks didn’t feel particularly set up by the first half. So all the things I hoped might be careful building blocks were just fun but empty details. Related, a lot of interesting things happen near the end, but many of them seem to happen kind of at random (sudden inventions, sudden developments, sudden arrivals and changes).

So again, all of it felt like a big set up for Alecto.

Maybe I'll appreciate things more after a re-read? Harrow, for instance, made a lot more sense the second time around and deepened my appreciation. My sense though is that there simply isn't as much going on in this one.

As such, it's all a bit disappointing to me, after the brilliance of the first two books and how tight they felt in terms of dazzling storytelling.

I will say though that the interlude sections feature John and made for super interesting cli-fi! More of that story, please.

Anyway, assuming all the pieces are set up now, Alecto should be explosive and awesome. I hope the storytelling there can reach the same heights as the first two books.

(Moira Quirk continues to be the absolute perfect choice for the audiobook. She’s phenomenal here.)

[Fiona Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading this after recently finishing the rest of the series really was completely worth it. Sadly the wait for Alecto continues, but in the meantime it's time to reread via audiobook (Moira Quirk absolutely nails these books, highly recommend if you haven't tried them yet).

Bad news: Alecto the Ninth has been pushed back to 2023.

Good, amazing, brilliant, superlative news: We get an entire extra book in the series in 2022 instead!

Now to somehow figure out how to hibernate until Fall 2022...

...and we're here!

My review, which originally appeared at mysteryandsuspense.com, is below. But first, a little bit of raving - this book is phenomenal. Each entry in the series has been pretty different so far, and that holds true for Nona; and Nona herself is just brilliant. I'm glad this was expanded into its own novel, and to say I'm looking forward to Alecto is underselling just how much I can't wait to see where that book goes. To the review!

Nona the Ninth, the much-anticipated third in the Locked Tomb series, is a quietly brilliant book.

Originally part of the third and final novel in the series, Alecto the Ninth, Nona was expanded to a novel in its own right after Tamsyn Muir found the story growing more than she’d planned – and seeing the results, it’s clear she did the right thing. Readers already familiar with the series will be thrilled, while new readers will find themselves drawn into a world of necromancy, mystery, and characters to love – or love to hate.

This is a series where the reader does need to have read through the previous books to fully understand what’s taking place, because the overall story has been built so beautifully that to miss out on the context of the early books would be a true shame. With that said, though, each novel has been entirely different, and Muir wastes no time in establishing Nona’s unique voice.

While the action in Nona moves the story along at a good pace, it feels like a quieter book than the murder mystery of Gideon, or the intensity of Harrow. The character of Nona is the definition of innocence, but is never tipped over into naivete. The world from her perspective at first seems like a simpler place, until the author uses her extraordinary abilities to imply much more than she says outright; the reader is allowed to make connections much sooner than Nona.

There’s a significant portion of this series that involves reading between the lines, and though this book is certainly easier to follow than the last, readers do need to be ready to take an active part in piecing together the story. But importantly, it’s such a fun book, and Nona really is an incredibly appealing character, one I found it very easy to connect to and root for.

Nona the Ninth is an impressive entry in a bold, powerful series, a series that’s proving a playground for Tamsyn Muir’s remarkable imagination. It’s made big waves, and this novel keeps the momentum going while adding a whole new dimension to an already compelling story. I’m more interested than ever to see where Muir will take us, but regardless of the destination I’m loving the journey to get there.

[aster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sad, I knew this would happen. Pulling out the first half of the final book and padding it out into a whole new book doesn't make for a fulfilling extra instalment in the series. It was nice to see these secondary characters again and hear more backstory, but it's weak compared to the other Locked Tomb books.

The first half of Nona is fairly inconsequential to the main plot of this series. Its content was added to pad out the length, and it's obvious where the ‘real’ book starts - where Alecto the Ninth was supposed to start. In NtN we finally get to see the other side of the empire’s conflict, but I felt Muir didn't give us enough. If she now wants us to care about those who oppose the empire and necromancy, they need to be fleshed out better than this. Nona isn’t the right medium for us to discover the rebels. I didn't learn much about them, and I still only care about the characters from the first two books.

This is because Nona has literally no fucking idea what's going on at any given moment. She is lovely though. I was concerned Nona would become tedious to read, but she remained adorable throughout. Another testament to Tamsyn’s writing. There was so much love in this book between Nona and her companions. It made quite a change from the previous books.

I just wish this was tighter. I got bored occasionally during scenes with Nona and her school friends. The kids aren't nearly as captivating as the other characters from the series, and I can't tell how to visualise them. The same goes for the setting, especially the school.

In the second half, the plot kicks in and more familiar faces turn up. I found the humour style of this series made a full return at this point. I was less enamoured by the writing in NtN. Harrow and Gideon were full of beautiful and hilarious quotes. But here it's more…functional, I guess? It's focused on weaving this intricate web of confusion around Nona and the plot, keeping her (and us) from understanding the full context of what's happening.

Anyway yeah, in the second half there's sooo much wild shit. I was like thank fucking Christ, we're back.

Has Gideon finally realised she's obsessed with Harrow? She got particularly wild over seeing her body possessed by another. God it's so sad seeing her this bitter and broken. For a minute I wasn't even convinced it was her in her body. I thought John had stuffed someone else in there to keep up the act. There's going to be a lot to resolve emotionally in the final book. I am quite concerned that the first two books set up this amazing, complicated relationship between Gideon and Harrow, but now it's been sidelined. I’m losing track of what the themes of this series are. Is it still about them, or is it now about John and Alecto and what happened to the planet? The last book is Alecto’s book, so will we see a real resolution for our disaster lesbians? We shall see.

I adored the weird Ianthe/Corona interactions, especially more hilarious gems from Ianthe. “Honey, stop telling people things are going to be fine. Things are, I promise you, not going to be fine. Things are, frankly, going to be antonyms of fine.” me @ Tamsyn re: the last book ;_; Can't believe I'm saying this, but I missed Ianthe. The way Tamsyn writes her unique awfulness and sense of humour is masterful. I genuinely hope she survives the series, since my other terrible fave (Mercy) is permadead.

Speaking of. Yes, finally some Resurrection backstory! I always found the Lyctors and their relationships with John fascinating. One of my favourite tropes is ‘tight knit group slowly falls into tragedy and everything gets fucked up’. Seeing it all turn to shit á la Don't Look Up was great.

And it was what was predicted. I'm glad there's no weird twists in this one. I had ideas about why the world ended, and who Nona was, and whose body she was inhabiting, where Harrow’s soul ended up. It was good to see it all come to light.

And what an ending! Our saltwater beast is finally here. I really hope the last book starts with that scene from a better angle. Like Harrow’s POV. I need to know what she's feeling. I miss her so much :( It's such a huge gap of 3 years without hearing from one of the main characters.

While I was sad there was hardly any Gideon and basically no Harrow (therefore minimal gay yearning), Nona’s relationships make up for it a bit though. Love this found family of her, Cam, Pal and Pyrrha. God, the Sixth were always my second favourite House, after the Ninth of course. The striking emotions of their scenes: not being able to talk to each other, desperately scribbling notes, Pal trying his best not to consume Cam’s soul, them merging into Paul?! "I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.” Just wow. That reminded me of Gideon and Harrow at Canaan House. Paul is cool I guess, but I'm going to miss them dearly. Especially their sense of humour. Pash was fucking hilarious as well, she probably got the loudest laughs from me.

I'm not going to pretend I'm not disappointed that this book is a side quest, and that Harrow only appears for like, a minute. It was a glorious minute. But y’know, going from the utter perfection of HtN to this was jarring. There’s a lot of souls and bodies flying around in this book, without any real explanation of why it has to be like this. It's so bizarrely complicated. Surely there was a tighter way to move the story along from the end of HtN to the opening of the tomb? I still don’t understand why Nona even exists (along with a million other questions).

Listen, I do love a book that makes me work. The exercise of deciphering the clues is a fun brain activity. But we had a lot of that in the first two books. And they were executed perfectly. But this book didn't do so well at that. At this late stage in the series, we need more answers than mystery. More development for the main characters and their relationships. Even when important stuff is happening, Muir writes it in a way that's intentionally confusing. Nona being so out of the loop means we're missing so much context in this book, and it got frustrating considering we're so close to the end. And that ending, presumably, will be from another new POV.

It's structurally weak and obvious where things have been added to pad it out. It doesn't move the main plot or our characters’ development along enough, so I'm concerned about the sheer amount that needs to happen in the last book. I'm sorry Nona, but you should have been a side novella that was released before Alecto. 3.5 stars.

02.10.22:
I love this series to death, so I'm still agonising over this book...it's just too self indulgent! Muir doesn't seem like she has anyone to tell her to reign it in a bit (an editor perhaps?). She's going out of her way to be intentionally confusing and seem clever. It totally worked before, but it's getting a bit much. She's written these amazing characters and done a great job of making us care about them, so I want to see resolution for them now. And I don’t think that’s too much to expect. I know it’s not a new thing for authors to mess with the characters they love, but does Harrow’s body need to go through this much torment? It's getting weird. I appreciate her skill and daring, but at some point, you have to keep it on course. Otherwise what was the point of all this? NtN has really muddled the themes and plotlines of this series.
Well, I really, really hope to be proven wrong and I can look back on this review in a year’s time, like o ye of little faith…

[milo in the woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

milo’s insane pre-read rant (c.dec 2021): everybody talking abt “don’t pull a george rr martin on us” shut up. pay attention. shut tf up. ur so annoying.

ok that sounds a bit harsh but basically:

1. having an extra book in a series seems like a good thing to me! i don’t wanna discourage tm from writing more obvs
2. seems rude but george rr martin has really only gotten away with this because of his vast fan base and incredible success so far, which muir hasn’t achieved the levels of yet (his first book was published in 1996 and hers’ in 2019)
3. she’s only written two books! chill out and give her the time she needs
4. it literally has a publisher confirmed release date? issues with pushing back the date of this book have been bc of printing issues not her lack of writing
5. george rr martin could never work another day in his life and still have enough of a fortune to pass on to his great grandkids. writing is muir’s day job, she’s not involved in tv shows, train lines or aqua zorbing
6. it’s literally only been a year since the last book in the series was published

fr when people say this it seems really rude and patronising to me. so you can just not say it! it also seems rude to martin who has explicitly stated that he’s working on the sixth book but has suffered health issues and the loss of many close friends in the last three years.

moral of the story, don’t critique authors by comparing them to other authors and don’t get annoyed that there’s been a couple years in between the books in a series bc it’s really not that deep.

january 2023: it is interesting to read about necromancy from the perspective of a character who is not interested or even used to it as a concept.

this was, broadly, confusing. i agree with other reviewers critiques that nona struggled as a main character and in many scenes faded into the background as an tool to introduce/develop other characters rather standing out as gideon and harrow did in their respective novels.

nona did, however, develop a very distinct voice and when she was an active character rather than passive, she was remarkably funny and interesting to read about. like i mentioned, it was really interesting to be introduced to an entirely new character who was meeting the beloved cast of gtn and htn for the first time and forming original and different opinions.

the kind of shit thing about this was, though, that i just don't really get it? i dont know what happened at the end and i still dont understand what was going on with nona, harrow and gideon. i don't even really understand what was going on with kiriona gaia/gideon nav being dead but also aliveish. i liked the world building and backstory in the biblical style interludes but i don't really understand how harrow was involved in that or jhow it links to the other storylines going on in nona.

i don't know if i was supposed to understand everything. having read harrow the ninth a second time, i imagine probably not. however, this doesn't feel like i'm going to understand a great deal more upon reread like i did with harrow, and it would have been nice to understand maybe some of the last 100 pages (especially since it sort of feels lik they were the only pages of true consequence).

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need a minute.

If you love The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, this book is for you. If GtN and HtN means the world to you, this book was written for you. This book was written solely for TLT fans and members of the community. The Bone Heads.

Tamsyn Muir continues be one of the most profound writers in the genre while still breaking all the rules and making her own in the process. She is a master of the craft, of storytelling and character development, of voice and tone, and with weaving multiple themes through her narrative. And thats just her baseline. In Nona the Ninth, Taz thrusts her hand into your chest, breaks through the ribcage, and holds your heart in her hands from start to finish. Wether she squeezes or massages or treats it delicately, or does a bit of it all, you’ll have to wait until September to find out. Know this… I have never trusted another author with my heart the way I do Tamsyn Muir. After finishing Harrow the Ninth, i’ve kept my ribcage cracked open just for her and would continue to do so having now finished Nona.

The most frequent thing i’ve been asked after finishing my first read of Nona is, how would you rank the three books now? And my answer remains the same each time: It doesn’t work that way anymore. Taz changed the game… again. These three books are part of the larger whole. Parts of a larger picture than will not be completed until Alecto the Ninth is released. One cannot exist without the other and each title compliments and supports the other. A few weeks ago, I would have said Harrow the Ninth is my favorite book of all time and now… now I can say I have three favorite books that share the number one spot.

Look— I’ll admit i’d fully expected to enjoy Nona the Ninth. But honestly, I did not expect to love it as much, if not more than, as I do it’s predecessors. Muir wrote this book for the Bone Heads. But also, this book was for ME. This book was for the kid that stayed up too late watching anime in the early 90s on Toonami and Adult Swim on his weird GX TV. Who misses VHS rentals and his walkman. Who read books at night under the blue light of the moon. Who played with toys and rode bikes with his friends for longer than they should have. For the kid who longs for those halcyon days of long drives back from the beach at night when its humid out and the salt water is still cool and drying on his skin and clothes with the window down and music on low. Who looked at the stars and thought of stories. For the after partying and crashing with friends until the sun splits the horizon. For the kid that found solace by being near the ocean and still does. This book is for him. For me.

This book was like a warm embrace, then a harsh and sudden slap across the face before being kissed deeply… while on acid. Incidentally, I also think Nona the Ninth is perfect for fans of The Fifth Element, The Goonies, Coheed & Cambria and of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Last of Us, and Death Stranding!

[Laura (crofteereader) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I had to think on this one. When the book ended, I was unsatisfied and left with no answers to any of the questions I had at the end of Harrow - and with a shiny collection of brand new questions that weren’t answered. Again, we have a new setting, a new POV, and a “new” main cast of characters - and our POV character is, once again, thrust into a situation she doesn’t entirely understand.

Nona is an endearing character, but this book was straight filler. Nothing particularly plot relevant happens in the entire first half, all the returning side characters are so different from how they were when we met them with no discernible trajectory of growth or change, and we have no idea how the end of Harrow connects with the beginning of Nona.

All this is explained away by Nona’s fragile and child-like persona. So instead of doing actual worldbuilding, everything is explained away as the adults waving her off or relying on her implicit trust or simply talking over her. This could have been a novella. It probably should have been a novella. Honestly, we could have skipped this whole book and just put the last scene in the beginning of Alecto and it would have been fine.

I am, in a word, disappointed.

[Krysta ꕤ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ☆

”We were children - playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water... Thinking it was space.”

my favorite entry in the locked tomb series, hands down. Nona has the most endearing personality and innocence to her, even though most of the book is spent with her day to day life, i loved every moment. we’re trying to figure out her identity along with her and there’s sections from John Gaius interwoven throughout the book too. the characters in this series are just so complex.. the villains, the world, the plot, literally everything has layers and while it continues to be confusing (won’t lie about that), the pay off when it all clicks into place is like no other. the reveals at the end were insane, I had my suspicions obviously but now i’m in distress cause i need book 4 ASAP!! i love these characters and the humor is always a highlight ofc.

[idiomatic · Rating 3 out of 5]

i am of the firm belief that an author with an established body of work should be graded against their own capabilities rather than that of their peers; therefore, regardless of the fact that tamsyn muir can write a better sentence and more compelling character than anyone else currently published in sff, this book is a humiliating failure of editorial guidance - it is sloppy and it wastes your time. it fails wholly to justify its own existence and should never have been permitted release as a novel, which it only barely is. it is only faintly a functional locked tomb book and the author's comparable lack of investment in its new settings and new elements compared to her priors is stark: as a book and specifically as a series installment, it wastes your time with a bunch of things that DON'T matter and don't even seem like they were much fun to write. it would be forgivable if muir was breaking new ground with her own work, but the tricks beneath the words are not new and in fact are so familiar that they demeans tricks of craft (specifically the mystery inherent in a hard-limited pov) done much more delicately and deliberately in the preceding books. tone and context spoiler only: it is also an extremely homestuck book, i regret to say, and i say as someone who generally thinks "tamsyn started out as a homestuck" is only ever brought up to degrade her work - in this case, there is unfortunately nothing more homestuck than hitting a climax in a setting that you care about and going "okay! time to reset to a new location, surrounded by new middle schoolers!"

but also it catharted an emotional experience that i have only ever seen other works of the genre handle cheaply/didactically, and in the process told several good jokes. i have read it four times.

[Brandon Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nona has my heart 😭

Nona awakens in a body that is not her own, has no knowledge of the world around her, and is basically a pawn in a game she doesn’t know the rules to, but she’s vibing!! 😂 she loves dogs, her friends, the beach, meeting new people and going new places, hates eating- she’s basically written as a toddler in a woman’s body.

Overall this is definitely my least favorite in the series so far (it’s still a 5 ⭐️ and phenomenal), but I LOVE how whimsical and funny it is, while answering some questions from the previous books, deepening the world building, and teasing future mysteries. It makes me just want to start the series over again, which I will probably do soon.

This is hard to talk about without spoilers, but I really hope we see more of the “hell” space (can’t remember the word), see more of the devils, and get more Harrow + Gideon banter in Alecto.

I loved everything about it, but this had one had like two brief action sequences, and the John chapters, although entertaining and enlightening, really bogged me down at times. I understand the fading to black/dreams, but I wish we saw more action. One of my fav parts of this series is the absolutely insane bodily horrific mind boggling fight scenes. But again, I still loved it and love Nona.

Now, if you need me, I’ll be flooding Tor’s inbox begging for an arc of Alecto.





——————————-

None of you told me I would cry 😭


Now to reread the first three while impatiently wait for Alecto 🕺

(FRTC

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This is for saying boobs, and for being boobs yourselves.”

(The Locked Tomb is a serious series about necromancy, lesbianism, and most importantly the inherent intimacy of sharing your body with another person.)

HERE ARE MY NONA THE NINTH PROS:
Nona is absolutely one of the best of the three so far in terms of general content. I loved that this got to be a book which wasn’t really about Gideon and Harrow at all; Nona felt so much more ensemble cast than even book one, which I loved. Nona is special to me, with a voice that feels extremely well-developed and managed to charm. Pyrrha is well developed; side characters such as We Suffer were an enjoyable addition; the Hot Sauce plot was also really sweet.

The Camilla and Palamedes content particularly made me absolutely crazy. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Cam and Palamedes can merge their bodies but it hurts them like crazy. Something about this made me super emotional. Camilla’s “I don’t let go. It’s my one thing.” line truly killed me.

On a spoilery level, there was some really wonderful content going on here: I was SO happy to get more of John and Alecto’s story and the planet colonization especially, and the John backstory is insanely well done. And Ianthe’s parts in here were absolutely incredible:

“Prince Ianthe Naberius. Can you not fucking smoke in here?”
“It’s a filthy habit. I didn’t think you cared though.”
“I don’t, but there’s like a million smoke detectors.”

In general, I felt like this novel created a more well-built full world, rather than just putting a focus on the lyctors.

Generally, I had very few quibbles with the book as a whole, probably enjoying the reading experience the most of any book and definitely more than Harrow. Through the book, what’s going on made consistent sense, even when so much felt like a mystery — as my friend Bankston pointed out, the third act twists in Harrow and to some degree Gideon rely on G and H not realizing information that on some level they should be noticing (in her book, Harrow must be literally lobomitzed to not notice). I really enjoyed actually understanding most of what was going on, and that Nona has such a clear reason to not fully understand.

“Classic Blood of Eden move. Fucking insane, surprisingly effective, relies on a lot of soldiers pissing in a lot of fucking bottles.”

HERE ARE MY NONA THE NINTH CONS:
I know Nona the Ninth was originally the first third of a book. But here is the thing. When Muir split the books, they didn’t really go “okay, time to put more of the finale plot points into here.” They just kind of split it in half and made that work. My question is… why? Why not pull forth a few of the ending complexities ready to come in Alecto, and give them space in Nona?

Generally, I thought the ending was underwhelming. Here are three reasons why:
I texted a friend while I was reading this simply the phrase “why does Ianthe have Gideon Nav’s body am I dumb?” I was not dumb. Muir just never explains this, or even comments on the fact that it’s never explained (thus building it as a mystery). I think doing neither is a straight-up bad writing decision.
I additionally really didn’t love what happened with Gideon and especially with Gideon and Ianthe. If a character is going to change so much between books, I’m going to need one tiny iota of context.
I wanted the paul stuff to get a Bit more, it's so compelling and makes me crazy, but it kind of felt like 'read the next book for more' and I was like okay no I want just a tad more in this book actually. it wasn't a cliffhanger but also wasn't fully developed which sort of bothered me.
Also, I thought there should've been more Corona and Judith content. The only reason they made me so crazy was the short story and I really, really feel like we should've gotten more of that in the actual book. No, this is not just because I am invested in them, I am also right.

The conflict of Nona is allegedly simple: Who is she? My disappointment with the ending was possibly added to by the fact that for some reason I was completely confident as to what the answer was. Here was my logic: Her identity was the right choice on Muir’s part. If she’d been one of the other options, it would’ve been borderline lazy and not nearly as interesting.

This is the ending of the first third of a book. It’s not quite a cliffhanger, but it’s not quite satisfying either. I am bored.

HERE ARE MY NOTES FOR THE NOVEL:
The Cohort (with the white eyes), also known as the Nine Houses Army, is still fighting up against Blood of Eden.
Surviving Characters: Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus, in the same body and now going by “Paul”; Coronabeth Tridentarius; Judith Dueteros; Pyrrha Dve (in the body of Gideon (?), deceased); Prince Ianthe Tridentarius (at time shares with Naberius); We Suffer; Our Lady of the Passion aka Pash; and Nona/Alecto in Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s body.

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[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously five million stars.

[nikki | ཐི༏ཋྀ​​݁ ₊ ݁ . · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We are one flesh.”
“I am your end.”

you guys... i seriously cannot believe how fucking good this series is. it's taken over my mind.

(spoilers for gideon the ninth and harrow the ninth for my review, just fyi)

picking up a few months after HtN, we follow nona, who is assumably in harrow's body... but who is she?

nona is a loveable, wonderful protagonist and for a good portion of the book it's a bit of a relief from the high tension of GtN and HtN, instead focusing on nona's day to day on a strange, pre- (or maybe mid?) apocalyptic refugee planet, which is experiencing political unrest and turmoil from both blood of eden and the emperor's reign.

Sounds like the start of a joke, right? Two scientists, an engineer, a detective, a lawyer, and an artist walk into a bar to help me become God.

interspersed between nona's day to day are scenes with john gaia as we slowly uncover the final days before the great resurrection 10,000 years prior which has lead to the current circumstances. john gaia is delightfully complicated as a villain, as is ianthe i found in this book. i wasn't expecting that from her from (what i at least thought was) fan worship, but maybe that's also the appeal. and of course, we still get to enjoy muir's excellent humor:

He sighed and said, “We had the internet. We decided to stream.”
She said, “What is this internet?”
And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.”

“What if I don’t like me?” she said.
But Pyrrha didn’t seem to understand. “Well, you’ll probably start visiting clubs and trying to hit on the dancers, and going from relationship to relationship not really being able to commit.”

“What does it mean to love God?”
“Decent dinner and a bottle of average rosé. Maybe a movie. I’m not picky,” he said.

as with HtN, the curtain is pulled back more and we're able to piece together more information about this complicated universe muir has written for us. there were some excellent twists, turns, and revelations, but muir would never leave us off without more questions and a cliffhanger ending.

We didn’t even do it right … we were children—playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water … thinking it was space.”

other random thoughts without context to avoid spoiling: ianthe when i catch you ianthe... noodle ily... PAUL 😭... john u son of a bitch ... i'ma miss the gang... [redacted]!!! .... big slut lmfao

at this point so far, this could end up possibly being my all-time favorite series depending on how the last book(s) go. here's to hoping alecto doesn't let us down!

[Claude's Bookzone · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the brilliance continues.

A significant change in pace and tone in this book and I missed the potty mouth humour. However, I found the sweet innocence of Nona to be a charming counterbalance to books 1 and 2. I actually understood what was happening on first read in this one which was a refreshing change! Such a brilliant cast of characters and I loved it. 2023 feels so very far away.

[Nicholas Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

He said, From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you'd find some way to escape before I was done. I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy...I made you look like a Renaissance angel...I made you Adam and Eve...Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein's monster with long yellow hair.
--Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

'I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy
--Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Dear God....this book...

It's been a year since end of Harrow the Ninth, when Harrowhark "Harrow" Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav (residing in Harrow's body), and Pyrrha Dve, piloting her long dead friend and necromancer's body, were swallowed by the River. Now, Pyrrha along with Camilla Hect, sharing her body with Palamedes Sextus, are living in a city caught between the Blood of Eden and John Gaius' empire. Oh, and there's a strange blue thing in the sky driving everyone nuts. In Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes' care is a young girl with long black hair and golden eyes--her name is Nona, and she's a sweet as can be. A lovely girl who is physically nineteen-years-old, but has the mind of an innocent six-year-old. She goes to work at a school, plays with kids there, and does exercises with Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes. Nona keeps having dreams of being under water and seeing a skull-faced girl, but she doesn't know who the girl is. Or who she is herself either. We're pretty sure she is Harrow. Or is she?

This book. This fucking book. Oh my God!

Whereas Gideon the Ninth was your, mostly, straightforward Gothic science fantasy with a murder mystery aspect, and Harrow the Ninth was an absolute Gothic soul-crushing mindfuck, Nona the Ninth is a mixture of its predecessors. It may not seem like that at first, but it all comes together. Heck, it may not even seem Gothic at first, but as you read along, you'll know. Admittedly, the book can be pretty slow-paced for a while as we navigate Nona's life on the planet and try to decipher her dreams and who is she exactly. Don't worry if you're frustrated with that mystery, because Nona's three caretakes and everyone else in the Blood of Eden isn't sure either. In between some of the chapters are some scenes between John Gaius and someone he calls "Harrow," but who might not be her either. These scenes, headed with specific chapter and verse numbers from the Gospel of John, are John revealing how he came to be, how he met all his original Lyctors, and what caused the Resurrection. However, how much is truthful and how fully true it all is, is questionable. John's section contains references to many Biblical and Catholic imageries as per the course with this series, but it also continues its references and imagery of classical Gothic literature. Without giving too much away, I will say my quotes above from both the book and Frankenstein basically embody the feelings portrayed in these sections. From John's guilt (however much guilty he feels) and sorrow to his sole audience member's confused memories and emotions, everything feels real, disorientating, and like a knife to our own hearts.

"She said, 'I still love you.'
And he laughed and said, 'That was a good one.' Then he wept again."

There's actually a quiet message about love in this book that finally speaks up towards the end. What's God's love? Who do you for soever love that you would give yourself or someone else to save them and love them more?

Primarily, Nona is more than an observer than a doer in this book. She's innocent and unaware about certain things going on in the world, and the denizens of the city, who don't fully understand necromancy or the empire's inner machinations, are just as much. Nona often overhears many conversations explaining what's going on with her, other people, or how to take down John. If you've read the previous two books and remember certain people, then some of the answers will be known. Mostly, Nona isn't too pressed to deal with all this though. She just wants to play with her friends and go to school. The children at school she befriends are all weird and cute and delightful. Hardened kids, led by Hot Sauce (yes, that's her name), they try to survive, act cool, and navigate their changing city. And there's Noodle, a six-legged dog who becomes the center of Nona's entire universe when she's at school. The entire cast has old and new faces, as one would expect, and they're all delightful and interesting and mysterious. To paraphrase Alix E. harrow's blurb on the front of the book, you will love them, and they will love you. These character interactions and mysteries definitely make the slower-paced portion of the book much more enjoyable. Just keep your eyes peeled for information.

Where the book really takes off is when more information gets revealed in John's sections. We see how, thousands of years ago, the world first reacted to the first displays of necromancy and the following he acquired. We also see when and how he first met Alecto, his death that lies in the tomb on the Ninth House. I won't spoil it, but I will say I wasn't expecting who it was eventually revealed to be. Nona's portion of the story takes off after her and Hot Sauce watch a video displaying two new, yet also somehow very familiar characters who aren't quite as we remember and begs more questions. One of these new characters is Kiriona Gaia, one of the Princes of the Towers. Now, despite the title of "prince" used, and the different genders of her two names, Kiriona is a girl. Nona the Ninth plays with gender much more than its predecessors, which was nice to see. And you will see just how playfully contorted gender gets through this book--you can already see it in the beginning with Pyrrha still being in Gideon the First's body (affectionally known as G1deon) and Camilla and Palamedes sharing a body.

Anyway, after Nona first sees Kiriona and the other prince, the pacing starts to pick up, but more mysteries and revelations come to the forefront simultaneously. Things escalate between Blood of Eden and the empire's forces. And then something starts happening to Nona. Her body starts dying. Her body, which is confirmed to be Harrow's body, is rejecting the soul. Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes are worried for her, but also because they still don't know whose soul it is. And we still don't know at that point. As I said, this portion is faster in pace, but not too fast that it speeds by. Information, mysteries, revelations, and contradictions are never spoon-fed to you, but you're able to work out what the characters are saying or implying and can draw certain conclusions. However, that typical Tamsyn Muir mindfuckery starts coming towards the end of the book where you aren't sure what just happened, what has happened, what will happen, and who is who. This is when the Gothic themes and tone return to the surface of the text. As Nona's body continues to die and whoever's soul tries to leave, in her perspective we see her questioning the point of living (spoilers the pint is Noodle!), wondering what it's like to finally leave this world, and remnants of the past come to surface. At this point, certain characters from the previous books are back and things are heading toward a mystifying, unsettling, and dissociative ending (I hope that makes sense). It is these ending bits and confrontations, and especially Nona's unhinged perspective, that really shine the most for me. The beginning part of the book is not bad at all and obviously Muir had to leave appropriately sized breadcrumbs to continue her mystery and develop the plot, but comparison towards the later parts of the book they definitely aren't the meatiest part of the book.

The conclusion of Nona the Ninth brought me confusion, hope, and dread, all in one. I have answered questions, but also unanswered questions. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm chuckling with both joviality and madness, and I feel winded and crushed like Muir's story ripped something from out of my chest and refused to return it. I am burned, but in a good way. I am excited. I cannot wait for Alecto the Ninth, the final conclusion to all of this.

The follow is major spoilers. Do not read if you haven't read yourself. It is something that I must get off my chest.
After Nona's body starts dying, everyone has a confrontation with the two princes. Kiriona is revealed to be Gideon back in her body, resurrected by John, but with eldritch holes in it. Prince Ianthe Naberius is Naberius' body piloted by Ianthe Tridentarius. After a battle, during which Nona uses her powers, causing her to die faster, Palamedes leaves Camilla's body and takes over Naberius'. It's so sweet and beautiful! Gideon is back with them, but she doesn't trust Nona because she knows she's not really Harrow. The blue thing in the sky is revealed to be a Resurrection Beast and it starts attacking the city. At Judith's urging, who is possessed by something or someone, Nona tries to quell the RB but then falls unconscious. When she wakes up her dying is getting worse and faster. In a strange ritual, Palamedes goes back in Camilla's body who then immolates. After the fire dies down, Palamedes and Camilla are now a new person, a non-binary character named Paul. They try to reason with Ianthe (back in Naberius' body) but she rejects them and leaves the body for dead. Everyone boards a truck that Nona takes over and drives into the River, contemplating death in the process.

They soon arrive on the Ninth House which is being attacked by that weird tongue body snatching thing that killed the Eighth House back in the first book after their battle with Ianthe. Nona's dying is getting even worse. They descend to the tomb. THE TOMB! Ianthe's awaiting them, but after a brief fight they get into the tomb by Gideon killing Crux.

Here's where it gets good and strange. Throughout this, Nona remembers entering the tomb with John thousands of years before. As her body decays, she makes her way to Alecto's body. At this point, *I think* Nona's true soul is either that of Alecto or of Anastasia, the founder of the Ninth House. She remembers laying in the coffin and remembers seeing Anastasia running in screaming before she slumbered in ice. But then it's revealed that Anastasia's skeleton remained in the tomb, closing its entrance after anyone entered. After Nona touches Alecto's body, the latter wakes up with her soul in place. I don't know who is in Nona's body at this point, but she dedicates herself to Alecto then and there and Alecto apologizes about Samael (still Anastasia, I guess?). At the end, Alecto finds John and stabs her. He tells her good morning.

It was all so wild and weird. I think it was Anastasia and Alecto piloting Harrow's body. I think. Still, the ending was strange and soul-crushing.

[Amy Imogene Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I..... well, alright.

I'm starting to think that readers of this series should have some sort of button that states 'I survived the Locked Tomb reading experience' or something because, wow, my brain continues to tumble head over heels in overload for Nona the Ninth. It's done that for each of the books, to be fair, but this one was extra special given how spectacularly different it felt from the first two books in the series.

Plot/Pacing: ★★★★★
Concept: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ugh bury me with these books

If you're seeing this review somehow with zero prior knowledge of Gideon the Ninth or Harrow the Ninth, please immediately stop reading this review and check out those two books or reviews of those books first. This review will sound like absolute insanity on a good day and just utter nonsense if you're new to the fandom. My reviews for Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, respectively.

Are they gone???

....

PEOPLE. People. What did we just read, why is it so well done despite of/due to its status as meme trash, and are you also ready to die for Nona. Because I am feeling all of those things.

I will not be explaining the plot or what happens in this book because I'll either sound like an idiot or I'll try and regurgitate the entire series so far in order to do so.

Suffice to say, I continue to be impressed by Tamsyn's ability to turn this series' arc around over and over while maintaining its integrity and intelligence in the writing and plot. I have such sky-high expectations for Alecto the Ninth now that frankly, it's scary. I hope Muir sticks the landing with a mic-drop atom bomb.

Nona the Ninth's brilliance for me came from the choice to make our one point-of-view that of the person with the least knowledge of what's going on. How fun. How frustrating. How titillating.

Seeing our favorite characters with (no) context... nice. Guessing who is who, who is where, who is why, and the underlying meaning of it all??? So fun.

BRING ME THE NEXT ONE

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[Heather M · Rating 4 out of 5]

is nona the ninth a "good" "book"? not really. pains me to say. we all know it started as the first act of alecto and it hasn't done what it needed to do to justify its existence as a standalone, so instead it should've been pared back and not been allowed to turn into this. that's what an editor is for. tamsyn has the biggest brain in SFF, that's in full effect in this entry, but i really believe that editors should do their jobs, and like. maybe be fired if they don't? if that's a thing. i don't know, i don't write and can barely read.

a large chunk of what was used to expand this into a 480 page novel (namely the school stuff, the kids, and the rebel faction that taz palpably doesn't care about as much as necros and cavs) could have been cut without impacting anything, these are things that could've been left in the notes or more of her delightfully punchy short stories. they are texture, backstory. so that's unfortunate.

the rest of it though. i had a great time. it does matter that this book doesn't work structurally or as a follow up to harrow (you COULD call it a slap in the face pacingwise, directly after harrow but let me not). but there's still so much to chew on. nona for me, as a character and voice, is a triumph and a delight. it is genuinely funny, not to mention an absolute rush to return to the tits out horniness of the first book. it's full of lyctor lore. the twins are there. like, it's JUICY. it pays off emotionally. and the epilogue goes extremely hard. the facts are what they are but i can't exactly be mad when i'm this entertained. i'm gonna love this series forever.

I'm starting a reread in audio format today and I suspect there are things i'm gonna want to talk about when it comes to the sixth of it all. let's get into it later. pyrrha call me on thursday when i am free. wear the mesh vest.

[bri · Rating 5 out of 5]

and now I join the ranks of dykes waiting, kneeling with their palms open, begging to be bestowed the grace of alecto the ninth (godspeed to the tor publicity team fighting off the hordes of lesbians. ill definitely be among the lesbian army, but still, sending strength🫡)

I went into this book with multiple ‘reveals’ having been spoiled for me/previously figured out and confirmed by friends, and yet felt no more like I knew where this book was going or what was happening (obscenely complimentary). this series is so incredibly smart and meticulous, accomplishing some of the greatest feats of narrative complexity i’ve ever seen while firmly keeping its feet planted in witty dialogue, compelling characters (genuinely some of the best character work of all time, I was talking on the phone to a friend of mine about a 6-syllable line of dialogue that is heard right at the end of this book that is not only easily assignable to one of the 7+ possible characters in the room but indirectly gives us so much information about their emotional/mental/physical state that I screamed.), and gut-wrenchingly good relationship dynamics.

and nona is no different. I think this book has perhaps the best found family i’ve ever read in my life. I screamed. I laughed. I sobbed for a solid ten minutes (I have photo evidence). as a lesbian, as a homestuck kid, as a fantasy book lover, let me just say: fuck yeah.

(also very few memes in this one which made me sad (never thought I would say that i actually miss the memes) but the ones that were here were maybe my favorite so far in the series.)

[h o l l i s · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, listen. The transition from GIDEON THE NINTH to HARROW THE NINTH was rough, right? We ended on such a heartwrenching note, after running around amok for hundreds of pages, only to be dropped into pure chaotic confusion with the sequel. Meaning I wasn’t really worried when NONA THE NINTH also switched gears and we ended up in a whole new setting, facing familiar faces but new dynamics, and trying to understand things all over again. But knowing that Nona wasn’t supposed to exist but just got a little out of hand in the writing of the original third book, ALECTO THE NINTH, well.. it does sort of feel and read like that.

But maybe it'll all fit together in hindsight, once the series is done, and on a reread. But as of now? There were some really delightful moments in the first half, and I was really into the interludes (so! much! explained! so! much! worldbuilding! wow), but on the whole? It really doesn't feel like the series-part of the story starts until like.. 60%, if not more, into the book.

While book two had an adjustment in tone and voice, there still maintained some Locked Tomb-ness of the vibe and I don't think we had that until right before the end in this third instalment. And yeah, it makes sense, but it also makes this book feel very much other from the rest.. and we already had an other book to content with. But at least that bore some similarity to the first. Equally, I didn't find the writing as captivating, certainly not as funny, because everything was once again so different.

Yet, having said that, those delightful bits? The familial dynamic that we get to explore? Camilla fucking Hect? Chefs kiss. Really lovely. But, ultimately, this seems (at this stage) like a lot of filler and distraction and build-up; only to kick us in the pants for that big cliffhanger ending.

So, yes, I'm having f e e l i n g s about my most anticipated read of the last two years not being a standout but.. I have to trust the system, I have to trust Muir, and maybe next time I read this I'll be slapping it with five stars because I will understand how much of this was needed for the end. But that day is not today, I'm afraid.

Please note, though, that none of this, none of it!, dims my excitement for the final instalment though. I need Alecto even more than I did before.

3.5 stars

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This review can also be found at A Take From Two Cities.

[Tzurky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t expect this to be a disappointment… but it was. Worse, it started out as just “meh” but the last 50 pages soured me completely on it. Because they were awesome. Every single second of the ending was interesting, engaging and emotionally fraught. Unlike the rest of the 400 or so pages (Kindle sucks at counting). The contrast was so stark I actually re-evaluated my feelings about the whole rest of the book.

My issues are two-fold:
1. Nona as type of character really grinds my gears. She’s the kind of wide-eyed ingenue type that I can barely stomach in general and having the entire book told from her first-person viewpoint meant that I suffered through her incredibly grating ‘voice’. It was like nails on a blackboard. More on that later, though. Obviously, this is a completely personal thing so ymmw.

2. This book should really have stayed a chapter. It is completely bloated with not only unnecessary scenes but boring and bland unnecessary scenes at the expense of actually important character development and world-building. I’ll start off with the second point as it’s likely to be of the most interest to people, though Nona’s perspective is tied into the reasons why the scenes are so horribly pointless.

Obviously, Tamsyn being Tamsyn she doesn’t follow through from where the narrative stopped in the last book. Instead we get a complete narrative break and a change of scenery, the cast is scrambled around and some pieces are completely missing, fate unknown. Instead we get Nona - blank slate extraordinaire, a completely clean lens through which to view the world anew. Which is a wonderful opportunity because in this book we get to see the world outside the 9 houses for the first time. The setting is a refugee planet on the brink of complete ecological collapse.

So what does the author make of this? Does she use the opportunity to investigate the power structures outside the houses? The mentality of the people, towards one another and towards the houses? Cultural differences even because of the huge distances between planets and language drift leading to new languages? Ah, nope. We spend the day in school with preteens. See, cause Nona is a teacher’s assistant and she plays with the kids all the time. Ah, you say, but that is a wonderful opportunity to explore the effects of this society and the ravages of war and displacement and cosmic horror on children, right? Well, it is but that opportunity is also left by the wayside.

In favor of what you ask? Oh, lots and lots of completely unrelated dialogue between preteens and explanations of clique hierarchy and many scenes with a six-legged dog (those I was all there for). It’s so bad I still don’t even have a sense of the personalities of all the children. Like, what’s with Ruby except she (he?) is pretty? The most awful part of all of this is that it could really have been worked in very neatly. The leader of the little group, Hot Sauce, obviously has a pretty gruesome past to look back on but that’s never explored because…

Because Nona is the worst kind of exactly-right dimwit. She’s the type of character that’s naive enough not to understand anything about the world around her (like absolutely nothing, not even the most basic things), except when it suits the author for her to do so (she can speak every language and dialect). It gets really ridiculous with the reading bones and muscle movements thing (she’s uniquely attuned to physical cues), because she can recognize masked people and see through long-standing veterans pretending to be someone else but she can’t for instance tell how scared to shit and tense everyone is all the time. Like how isn’t the whole book a series of “X was even more on edge this morning then the last, which I recognized from the set of her shoulders). You see, she’s perfect at reading emotions and body language but she doesn’t use it on her group of friends, for instance, or in any useful situations.

And she’s very childlike… except in doing the one thing children are famous for, i.e. asking everyone all the questions about everything. Because this would have actually been an opportunity for extensive world-building, you know. Like asking her friends about their past and their families and stuff? But no, she doesn’t do that because she’s a shy, weird introverted adult at the same time as she’s a naive child. She’s imbibed all social cues and secrecy requirements surrounding identities and intimate facts… except when she babbles important secret information to just about anyone. Because the plot actually needs her to do that. You see why this is grinding my gears?

Childlike attraction to pretty people? Check. Childlike testing out of sexuality by actually following through on that attraction? Nope, because why would we? Would have been uncomfortable to write I guess. But then why point her in that direction in the first place?

It’s a mess is what it is and it’s not an innocent mess because it comes at the expense of actually putting in the work for an accurate description of how society functions outside the houses. Which was the whole point of this. But all we get are some vague references to various rebel groups at cross-purposes, a failed government and so on. And while yes, this series has been very vague on the details the whole time, this just doesn’t work anymore. For instance, we hear at almost the end of the story that the water plant was blown up by someone when the whole trouble started so the houses wouldn’t get access to vital infrastructure. But water bottles are bought and distributed and while scarcity is implied, Nona always has enough to drink. So where’s it all coming from? Who is growing the food and where on this desert planet that’s irradiated to hell and back? Why even is it that way? What’s with the 5 different factions of rebels whose motives are never clearly explained? Sure, we get an inside look at one rebel group and their internecine fights but those aren’t clearly outlined either. They seem to be about whether you should take House help in killing other houses or just get blown out of the sky by the other houses on your own. As you may be able to tell, the second position is so suicidally nonsensical that I can’t do anything with it. And then there’s another group of rebels that thinks these guys are too soft on the Houses or something.

The worst part is we get a complete reset again by the end of the book so it’s all even more pointless than it seemed at first. Now, I know I know. This is all set-up for that one emotional scene for Nona where she suddenly remembers her old preteen friends and is moved by that and all. But there’s absolutely no need for 400 pages of that.

And it’s not just unnecessary padding. No, it’s losing out on the most crucial moments of character development we do get. Imagine if we could have seen Crown through the eyes of a character that actually grasped their struggles somewhat. Imagine if we wouldn’t have blacked out at the most essential scenes in the end of the book but gotten a full, inside view of what was going on in the head of the character whose most intimate formative experiences were being called up and relived there. Imagine that. Wouldn’t that have been awesome?

But no, instead we get wet blanket Nona. Manic pixie dream child Nona who made me hate children all over again even though I’m fixing to have them cause children don’t actually behave like this. They’re much more thoughtful, mature and insightful, actually. See a child wouldn’t have had any problems grasping the full extent of everyone’s feelings and what they mean for them. Because children by the age they’re as verbal as Nona have imbibed a lot of social cues. But not Nona. She’s learned none of the important ones.

If you’re wondering how I finished it so fast by this point: I was hoping it would get better. It’s also padded with enough scenes of characters I love (but not character development, mind you, just fan service in the form of pining) that I was able to get through it. Oh, and John of course. John explains how he blew up the universe. It’s nice. I hate John’s guts and wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire as the saying goes but I love reading about him. So you could imo just read the John parts and the last 50 pages and not lose out on anything essential (meaning skip the entirety of Nona - if you’ve already read it you’ll know just how absolutely I mean that).

On the upside: there’s no way I’m not going to be enthused about the next one! We’re back to deranged adults as narrative voices, please and thank you.