As Yet Unsent

The Locked Tomb #2.5

by Tamsyn Muir

Culled from Judith Deuteros’ secret report on Blood of Eden activities.

This story was originally published in the trade paperback edition of Harrow the Ninth but is now available as a published, single story, by Tordotcom.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Horror

24 pages, ebook

First published September 21, 2021

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

[abi · Rating 5 out of 5]

the cohort will get hold of these files and be like Damn This Bitch Is Gay

[robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

tamsyn could write literally five billion short stories in the locked tomb verse with the unique goal of mashing her barbies together in increasingly improbable romantic connections and i would read every single one, eagerly, and rate them all 5 stars on goodreads. excited for the next instalment to reveal the simmering forbidden lust between (spins wheel) mercymorn and (throws dart) aiglamene

[Heather M · Rating 5 out of 5]

just wanna know when will tammy answer for coming out blasting after months of silence and sending us into a spiral about members of the secondary cast, not to mention producing some of the sexiest sentences the series has to offer??? i guess what i'm asking is what throne will i mount if u won't-[i am rendered unconscious by camilla hect]

[bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

the EASE w which judith catapulted into my top five in a very competitive field!!!! there was, in fact, no ease. she is having a very bad time. nuts that we can rate short story bonuses on this thing. lawless

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

yeah i don’t totally know what happened here but it was good and achingly melancholy and i enjoyed every page

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

Read a PDF of this short story in class. The ending of this just genuinely makes me feel soooo crazy I cannot possibly be normal about it. Tamsyn Muir you get it

[D. Pimentel · Rating 5 out of 5]

okay first off, i did not know that i needed corona/judith to be a thing but holy shit those two make quite the pair. i'm going to have to reread gtn and analyze their interactions with new eyes.

loved judith's interactions with camilla! particularly:

«I said, You're obsessed with those bones and they are going to kill you. All for an empty remembrance of someone who should have taught you the danger of obsession,»

damn jody.

also the ENTIRE ending bit? as corona would say: yummy.

«I committed the understandable crime of desire for Lieutenant Marta Dyas, having joined my hand to hers with the best and most pure of intentions. Why would I ever knowingly take Coronabeth Tridentarius's, having desired her already for twelve long, stupid, fruitless years?»

obviously she said no, but the possibilities!!! that this could bring!!! cross house necro-cav bond let's goo!

[jurizprudent · Rating 4 out of 5]

judith really wrote diary entries disguised as a cohort report about her gay yearning for corona and marta and I'M HERE FOR IT I ATE IT UP

[aster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally got hold of the paperback. Some scattered and spoilery thoughts about this (and the rest of the extras):

• AWG-us-tin? What? I'm just going to ignore that and continue to call him Awg-us-TEEN
• The amount of depth this short story gave to Judith and Corona in particular is wonderful
• Always here for more worldbuilding since we don't know too much about the Second. Plus all that lovely BOE intel. It has some very interesting implications for Gideon and Harrow's future
• Oh hell yes @ 'the corpse' refusing to decay
• Mercy!! I gasped in delight when I saw that first double exclamation mark. I recall Muir saying we'll see more of her, but I hope this wasn't the whole thing? I need more gems like "What you've done is accidentally kept it airtight..."
• I'm really glad this exists to fill in some of the gaps, because I'm worried the next book won't cover any events immediately after Harrow

[Fiona Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Their other line of attack is the business contracts. They claim that the services asked of them by the Emperor were set down in lifetime contracts by previous generations, who assumed the contracts would be terminated upon the Emperor’s death. When I pointed out that his primary title is the Emperor Undying and that this was a crime of assumption the princess called me a number of names I will not reproduce here. The main takeaway, that I am a shill and a stoolie, only serves to demonstrate how open she was to this, and from how early on. She didn’t want to be convinced, but to convince me.

I just love this series. As Yet Unsent is a fragment, a part of a story that follows characters considered side characters, but who are made just a little more human in the exploration.
It just might be series re-read time.

[Juan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet mother, I cannot weave

[Linh · Rating 5 out of 5]

le me, old woman yelling at the sky: DAMN YOU, TAMSYN MUIR!!!!! Damn you for making me feel *unintelligible screaming* for freaking JUDITH DEUTEROS, OF ALL PEOPLE!!!!!!

[bri]

I technically read this mid-Nona but marking it now. I HIGHLY recommend reading this one before Nona, it helped SO much with a lot of my world-building questions about the events between Harrow and Nona.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am going insane

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it is hell to entirely understand any other person.

Fine, Tamsyn Muir, fine, I care about Judith now, are you happy? Also, I ship it, with goosebumps all over my body! Oh my John, Muir is so good at building character, but especially relationships that are messy and complicated and hey, a sort of healthy one, with Marta? (That's debatable, in a way, who are we to deny ourselves passion? It feels like Dyas, in setting that boundary with Judith, was perhaps afraid of her own passion, of her own feelings. Who is to say?)

And the Princess... oh yeah, she's really into people who seem utterly unavailable to her!

Also, loved seeing more of Mercymorn, I love that bitch, even if she is a huge bitch, but once again, what a freaking character.

[elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Camilla Camilla CAMILLA! Also Judith's furious, resentful crush on Coronabeth is a thing of beauty to witness

[⋆.˚ Ariana ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀི · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guess I’m not as invested as others to understand the hype in here

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

girls don't want romance girls want forced proximity and bickering (it's me, i'm girls)

[lauraღ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?

REREAD 2023. 4.5 stars, and heck, I'm round up to 5 stars this time. I'm rereading Nona and I remembered that this exists so I wanted to reread it as well before I got to the Judith bits and god. GOD. I don't care, I'm a Judith stan for life. She's a misunderstood woman, and she misunderstands those around her just as much, and I can't help but feel so deeply for her when she's the victim of her own convictions, to a certain extent. The revelations in this STILL make me want to chew off my arm. Also, the pessimistic part of me feels like this, Judith's reflections and her eventual rejection of Corona, are Tamysn Muir's way of signalling that she's not going to write any more necro/cav romances, but that sign won't stop me from shipping!! I can't read!! Griddlehark and CaptainPrincess until I die!!!!

But oh my god, the bit I quoted above, when taken in conjunction with things that happen in Nona... help me. T__T

Really hope this gets an audiobook one day; there are some passages in here that I'd kill to have Moira Quirk narrate.

--

I think it is hell to entirely understand any other person.

4.5 stars. I'm so mad at myself! I thought I'd already read this as an extra in one of the books, but it turns out I hadn't. I very much wish I'd read this before reading Nona; having all this background information would have made it even better. And made me even sadder. My god, but I love Judith. She's prickly and stubborn and misguided but she's also loyal and clever and SO GOOD. The revelations in here weren't set out in the way I'd have expected, but I loved them. So so much. And in general it was really good to fill in that gap between the books.

Now I need to reread all the books with the knowledge that Judith was in love with both Marta and Corona. Sublime!!! Also the last scene, where Corona offers herself... everything I ever wanted; I even talked about it in my Nona review, lol. With the context I completely understand why Judith refused her, but in my heart of hearts, I still want to see them as necromancer and cavalier. Judith would call me an idiot for that. We would argue.

So good.

[Amparo]

Gaaaah, I want to read this, and from skimming the reviews, it seems to be important to the Locked Tomb main story. But I am tired of this kind of marketing crap. I bought the hardcover, but if I want to read this short story, I'm supposed to also buy the paperback or the ebook? In the future, should I always wait for paperbacks just in case they have extra short stories? I'm frustrated because I rarely buy new books, much less the more expensive hardcover volumes, and I thought by buying the hardcovers of GTN and HTN I was doing my best to show support for the author. Having extra, plot-relevant short stories and appendices added to the paperbacks a year later feels like a bait and switch, like I have an incomplete version of the book even though I paid full price. Does anyone else feel like this? :/

Anyway, next time I'm in a bookstore with time to spare, I guess I'll camp out in the sci-fi section and read all these extra bits and pieces. 🙄

[iam · Rating 5 out of 5]

My god I didn't expect it to be like that.
So many nice details about Blood of Eden, and gives some context to events in Harrow the Ninth too.
Loved the insights into Judith Deuteros' mind as well, and her connection to Coronabeth. Not to mention the tidbits about Camilla.

Great short story, and a must read for TLT fans.

[h o l l i s · Rating 3 out of 5]

That last entry though! Aaaaa part of me HOPED for something like this. But oh man is Muir going to let us have it?

3.5 stars

[X · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know what, I started this like “why would I care about this character of all characters” and by the end I still kinda disliked her, kinda didn’t care about her - but *poignantly*.

And Nona is sitting on my coffee table waiting for her moment!

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5

Events occurring with Corona, Judith and Cam at Blood of Eden's mercy, but Judith is a bit boring as a narrator so this felt as a report (which was the intent, but didn't make it entertaining to read).

[Salem ☥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I said, You’re obsessed with those bones and they are going to kill you. All for an empty remembrance of someone who should have taught you the danger of obsession.”

[anđela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sve je super volim Judith i Coronabeth ali Camilla is who I want. That is where my loyalties lie. That is who my priority is.

[wasteland baby · Rating 5 out of 5]

EDIT bcs we have recently been blessed w new Hozier and I beg of you to consider the following lyrics alongside this quote and tell me this is not about Coronabeth Tridentarius:

"What I had left here
I just held it tight
So someone with your eyes
Might come in time
To hold me like water
Or Christ, hold me like a knife."

v.s.

"She said, Jody, if I offered you that sword, wouldn't you take it? I know how to use it. I know what it would mean. Lieutenant Dyas is dead. My own necromancer wouldn't have me. Won't you let me be your cavalier? Here, now, at the end of the world? Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don't bind me down?"

(I mean these lyrics could absolutely also be about any of the other feral lesbians in this series let's be real, Corona was just the first to come to mind bcs this quote genuinely still makes me want to tear my hair out whenever I think of it.)
In conclusion, while the rest of the internet is busy crying over HozierxGood Omens edits, I will sit here peacefully thinking about my terrible traumatized necromancer ladies bcs bitches be YEARNING.

Original review:
Tamsyn Muir you evil genius. Judith Deuteros??? You're making me have feelings about Judith Deuteros?? Absolutely maddening. 6/5 stars.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Won’t you let me be your cavalier? Here, now, at the end of the world? Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?

No, I'm totally fine, why do you ask? It's only raining specifically over my eyes, but I am absolutely okay, thanks.

[Kate (Feathered Turtle Press Reviews) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I accidentally deleted my original review, oops. but this was a gr8 entry to tlt canon.

[Elena Linville-Abdo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This world keeps on giving. It's imaginative and really really different from anything I've read before... I really must find the time to read the actual books instead of getting glimpses of the world through short stories.

I think I will move them to the front of my TBR list.