#Can't wait for Nona

[eaglerayys]

Me after finishing Harrow the Ninth

[cannellaeluce]

one thing that I can’t let go of re: the locked tomb series is the statement I think it makes about identity and permanence and love. Like, I guess we all finished gideon the ninth being in love with gideon’s pov and with harrow as the person she is in relation to gideon. Then we landed in harrow the ninth and we were robbed of both, and I’m sure we all felt like we lost something, and we thought the end goal would be to get to the point where we would go back to having the thing that we lost: gideon’s vibrant voice and harrow’s whole psyche. and then we landed in nona the ninth and... 

I don’t know for ya’ll, but that’s when something in me shifted. phyrra was in the body of her most beloved adept and got to live with her longing for him and for wake redefining her identity; we didn’t care for her in the previous books, but we got to care for her now, and she was worth it. camilla’s body was both hers and palamedes’ and the coronation of their arc wasn’t to go back to how they were when we first learned to love them; it was to let go of both their individualities to become a whole new person, and we readers - just as nona - got to experience the pang at understanding that we were to let go of our concept of camilla and palamedes as individuals, while having to accept that that was the truest form they both could possibly achieve, that they felt no loss whatsoever, that what we perceived as loss was in fact their triumph. gideon - our beloved gideon - came back and she wore another name and we got to love her again, but names matter in this universe, and we had to deal with the pang of knowing that we could love her all the same, but she was - in fact - not the same at all, and when she antagonised our new main characters we found out in surprise that we resented her for it, that our loyalties had partially shifted. and then...

and then there was nona. nona in the body of harrow, who got to be loved as a person separated from harrow because bodies are transient and the soul is what matters. nona who was born to disappear in mere months, something the people around her knew well and which didn’t prevent any of them from getting to know her as a fully fleshed individual and to learn to love her all the same. nona whom we readers too understood at one point that was a character built to fade away. we could have decided not to invest in her, then. we could have decided to be annoyed at not finding harrow in her, at not finding gideon in her. but we didn’t. well, I didn’t. I understood she was born to die, and I chose to love her all the same. because isn’t it how it is? isn’t this how love is? we are mortal things who fall for mortal things knowing full well they won’t last. but we choose to love all the same. the impermanence of things isn’t a flaw ruining what should have been perfect; it is the very essence of things. we got to love nona even though she wouldn’t last. we got to love nona because she wouldn’t last. that’s all fine, in the end, because we got to love someone, and you can’t take loved away.

[kairos-polaris]

Nor had Pyrrha ever looked at her the way she now looked at the dead corpse with red hair—a kind of soft, guarded want; a hunger—a living desire to take the corpse in her arms like Kevin’s wanting desire with his dolls. To own, to squeeze, to cosset and destroy.

okay but this paragraph in Nona? this is making want to write 100500 fics just about their relationship

Pyrrha wants this child to be hers so bad yet she sucks at communicating that and Gideon hates her oh god. the whole last sentence? oooh Pyrrha wants to take care of Gideon so badly. I need more of this in Alecto please

[chrysoprine]

I miss all of them so much aaaaaaaaaaa

[chaoticstabby]

The wildest experience of recommending Gideon the Ninth to someone was my friend who, after reading up to the second trial, casually said "yeah, one of my theories is that the trials are preparing the necromancer to absorb the cavalier's soul". With four people having read the whole series so far in the zoom, the amount of self control it took to keep our faces neutral.......

[mayasaura]

When Alecto woke up, she finished the sentence she'd started when she was put to rest. There's a continuity there, unbroken by her consciousness having moved on or shifted attention in the ten thousand years she was asleep or dead, despite her having been other people and done things in the interim. It reminds me of when Harrow woke up in the dream of Canaan House with her memory restored. It had been nine months, but by her perception she had only lost Gideon three days ago. She had split herself into two selves, but Harrow First and Harrow Secundarius were really all one Harrowhark wearing different clothes.

I think Alecto, Nona, the Body are the same way. They're all one person, separated by what they're wearing and what they can remember.

Alecto remembers everything up to her death, and she's wearing a body built for her as a prison out of her dirt and John's blood and bones.

Nona remembered nothing, and was wearing Harrow.

I think the Body was halfway between them. Her memory was vague, and she had no body. She knew things Harrow appeared not to, and seemed to recognize John, but she was confused when she tried to share information about herself. She was Alecto only half awake, summoned by a kiss from a crying child.

I'm looking forward to seeing how or if these three aspects of Alecto will mesh. The Alecto who woke up in the epilogue of Nona the Ninth didn't remember being Nona. She didn't recognize Harrow, or remember being the Body who followed Harrow for months, talking her through her fears and trying to hold her when she cried herself to sleep. Nona was afraid to become Alecto, because she didn't think she would know how to love anything, but that can't really be true. Every version of Alecto we've seen so far has done nothing but love. She just has to remember.

[hwi-noree]

Nona in some ways getting the childhood that Harrow never had

[aidanchaser]

My jacket for Prince Kiriona Gaia the First is currently delayed in Dubai and I don't think it will arrive in time for my shoot on Saturday meaning I may just have to go topless. Surely it's just what Gideon would have wanted.

[lilliankillthisman]

Her father has made her skin turn away bullets

To keep it real Ianthe fucks her in the chest

[mx-flint]

Just finished rereading Nona the Ninth and. Heartbroken. Again. Lifenis too short and live is too long. You can't take loved away. I will make myself remember.

[thatonecrowguy]

my friend is reading gideon the ninth atm and i am just, so excited to get to talk about this book with her!! i made her promise to either be there with me or call me when she reads the end >:)

[ambiguously-gendered-freak]

Hi yes, I am in fact screaming and crying over The Locked Tomb again for the billionth time in the past two weeks

[mikimeiko]

Books I read in 2023

Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir (2022)

[bipidin]

Watched red white & royal blue with friends today, gotta say it was great

[carriesthewind]

I reread the IA's contemporaneous post justifying their "National Emergency Library", and one of the things that struck me is just how selfish it was.

(It was also full of falsehoods, ranging from exaggeration to outright lies, but that's another matter.)

While 2020 feels like it was several decades in the past, it was actually only a few years ago. And I remember March of 2020! I was there! And oh my god, is this post right in line with every other selfish, demanding asshole determined to make a global pandemic all about themselves!

First of all, there is the language of the post - it is a "tremendous and historic outage" that books are unavailable to patrons because libraries are closed for the pandemic. "Right now, today, there are 650 million books that tax-paying citizens have paid to access that are sitting on shelves in closed libraries, inaccessible to them."

Missing from this outrage is a recognition that, like. Librarians are people. They get sick, and die.

They did get sick, and died.

Libraries were closed not only to protect patrons and the public, but librarians too. Libraries were closed to protect people, human beings. Because generally speaking, even the most enthusiastic supporters of access to books and knowledge, prioritize lives over books.

The AI's post, however, reeks of an entitlement to things that *my* tax dollars paid for. Libraries and library collections aren't a public good. They're something *I* should be able to access anytime I want, damn the context or the consequences.

(Was it also a historic outrage when I had to wait several months to check out Nona the Ninth, because so many other people were checking it out?)

Second, as I said, I remember early 2020. And in spring and summer of 2020, there was more free content on the internet than before or since. So many people and so many institutions were bending over backwards to provide people with books and tv shows and music and podcasts and virtual tours and collections and just about anything that someone could figure out how to digitize. So many people were giving away books for free, or writing/recording new content to give away for free. I can't even remember how many times I heard or read someone telling their readers or listeners just to pay what they could, if they could. So many people and institutions were giving away so much, do so much, to provide access to knowledge and books and entertainment and information.

And in that moment, the IA decided to steal from people. When so many people, so many authors, were acting so selflessly, they decided that it wasn't good enough. And instead of giving away themselves, they decided to steal from authors and pat themselves on the back for "meet[ing] this unprecedented need," when they didn't even actually do anything themselves. Or maybe more accurately, the only thing they did was something irrelevant to the actual needs of the community, something they wanted to do anyway, something to try to use a pandemic as an excuse to advance their agenda.

Because third, there is zero concern for the population of patrons actually most impacted by the closure. The IA cares, to a fault, only about information being digitized.* But many people who use physical libraries, many of the people most impacted by their closure, are people who do not have access to the AI's so-called "open library." And people who could access digital books generally continued to have access to their library's e-book services, and to tons of other free content. The patrons who were actually in the most need are ignored as irrelevant.

*And I want to be clear - they care that information is digitized, not about digital access. "Access" means more than information being digitized and theoretically being able to be read.

It's so clear that IA didn't really care about the patrons of physical libraries. Instead, they saw a real problem, and instead of working toward any solutions, decided to use it as a prop to push their own agenda. (Again, while people were dying.)

It's just all so deeply selfish.

[endtimers]

tlt series uniquely gives me brainrot over every character. every one there isnt a single character in those books who i don't find myself entirely fascinated by