#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Epilogue

what in the biblical language is this, it’s such a contrast to Nona’s narration. love a good TLT epilogue shift to a completely different perspective and narrative style

Alecto’s first word is ‘You’, which presumably connects to the end of saying ‘i still love y-’ in the poem at the beginning?

HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS is back baby!! my girl is finally in the same room as Gideon for the first time in two books. i cannot wait to see Harrow’s reaction to Kiriona Gaia in AtN

‘I only die in longing for thee’ ok so the language here is definitely coloured by Alecto’s narration style, but i love that Ianthe’s response to Harrow calling her ‘bitch’ is to apparently say something extremely romantic

THEN PERISH

pfff and Alecto just tosses Ianthe aside. the last third of this book has not been great for Ianthe’s ego 

ok so the the attitude of Alecto to Pyrrha here is very interesting to me, specifically the mention of ‘appeasement’ - Alecto says that John ‘laid [her] down’ to appease ‘them’, presumably the Lyctors, which fits with what we know about the situation of Alecto being put in the tomb already. but what stands out as slightly odd here is that Alecto also says ‘he fed you to them as an appeasement to them’ - the Lyctors seemed more upset by the whole ‘consuming the souls of their cavaliers’ thing, rather than ‘appeased’. again i think there’s a lot more to the original ascension than the reader knows yet

‘and now all he has done is teach me how to die’ well that’s ominous. and also horrifically sad that this is clearly something learned as Nona, who had accepted her death, in contrast to Harrow’s assertion in John 5:4 that the only thing that scared Alecto was death

between Ianthe and Alecto Harrow just seems to be extremely kissable 

also Alecto biting Harrow as her understanding of a kiss vs Nona having an innate understanding of body language … its so sad. i miss Nona so much already

‘Get in line thou big slut!’ listen that cannot be anyone other than my girl Gideon!! i have a feeling that Alecto being in service to Harrow is going to cause Tension in the next book

‘At which John awakened and said, Annabel, good morning’ WHAT. what the hell is going on right now

that is one hell of a line to leave the book on, and pretty fitting given that the book has essentially told both of their stories (Alecto as Nona, John via Harrow’s dreams), and ends with them actually being on page together for the first time. also it is just like John to be totally, annoyingly chill about his kinda ex stabbing him in the chest smh

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 25

Pyrrha really is committed to mentioning that she found Gideon’s mother attractive in every conversation that she has with her, i admire the dedication 

haha what the fuck is this. Kiriona Gaia Her Divine Highness

MUMFUCKER PRIME ngl the bad jokes are mostly the only reason i’m pretty sure this is actually Gideon and not some doppelganger. idk whether its all the trauma she’s built up over the last two books or just having to be in the general proximity of Ianthe and John for an extended period of time, but something is up with this gal

'Judith Deuteros for some reason’ i relate to this on a fundamental level given i genuinely didn’t realise that Judith was here until this moment

as much as it pains me that two of my favourite characters immediately Do Not Vibe with eachother, Gid being a dick to Nona makes sense given Nona is currently occupying the body of the person Gideon cares the most about in the world, who is themselves god-only-knows-where rn. props to Tamsyn Muir for making the bold creative choice to have her protagonists all just fucking loathe each other at some point

okay there is no way in hell that Gideon actually wants to go back to the ninth for nostalgia. unless it's nostalgia for dunking on Crux

‘it was not a very friendly smile [...] there was something a little bit hungry about it’ haha what the fuck. really said let’s dial up the ‘came back wrong’ trope to eleven here. what in the Jason Todd is this

well miss ‘I am the Emperor’s construct’ has come a long way since ‘Go to hell Pops’, this was NOT what i meant when i said i wanted more of Gideon and John interacting this book 😭😭

tamsyn muir really said ‘oh you want Gideon back? i’m going to give you what you want in the most painful way possible’ huh. this is uh somehow worse than her dying actually :)

Gideon actually knowing anything about necromancy is the most disturbing part of all of this. what happened Gid i thought you and me were on a team of this ‘necromancy is confusing as all hell’ thing. can’t believe you’d betray me like this smh

also given we last saw Gid finding out she was born as a ‘bomb’ to open the tomb, and how much she hated everything about the Ninth other than Harrow, i am very concerned about why she suddenly wants to come with to open the Tomb

the saddest girl in the whole world is Gideon??? GIDEON?? the presence of Noodle in this book lulled me into a false sense of security so that i forgot just how much this series loves breaking my heart over and over again 

i know everyone already knows from the broadcast (and possibly before if Pyrrha told them) but i do wonder how Corona, and Pal & Cam etc. reacted to finding out Gideon was God’s daughter. imagine having to deal with the revelation that the deity you are becoming increasingly disillusioned with has a kid that spent much of the time you knew her making terrible sex jokes

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 28

‘golden eyes like a dead animal’s’ you are sick and twisted Tamsyn Muir, sick and twisted (affectionate). also that is an interesting description of Kiriona's eyes. of course part of it is that she is quite literally in a dead body, but these are also the eyes that John got after he gained his necromantic powers

ohhhh my god. i don’t think my heart can take Kiriona asking after Harrow. she gave up her life for her, did the best she could to take care of Harrow’s body, and now she doesn’t even know if Harrow’s alive or not

oof both Pyrrha and Nona clearly know that she’s Alecto, but Nona really doesn’t want to remember. i wonder how long exactly Pyrrha knew who Nona was, even if she was hoping she was Gideon, i feel like part of her must have suspected since the beginning

hmm i wonder if there’s something significant about Alecto’s name? not in terms of its Doylist meaning i.e. being named after one of the Furies, but in universe. here Nona doesn’t want Pyrrha to say her name because it will make her remember, John (from what i recall) only ever used nicknames like A.L. and Annabel Lee etc. when talking to Harrow, and both he and the other Lyctors had a remarkably strong reaction to Mercy using it at the end of HtN:

'A ripple of ice over the face. A hardening of the mouth. He said quietly, “Don’t call her-” “Alecto! Alecto! Alecto!” repeated Mercy shrilly. The other Lyctors flinched each time she said it, as though it were an aural stab’

oh wow, Alecto’s consciousness (voice?) rising up to speak from Nona is very disturbing. once again, Alecto doesn’t seem like the nicest person. which makes sense i suppose given she is in actuality a Resurrection Beast herself and seemingly very pissed off about the whole ‘killing humanity and putting her in a human form’ thing

‘astonishingly, Pash, helping an extremely feeble and aged person’ i mean good on Pash for helping the elderly, i guess?

it’s gotta be so strange for Palamedes’ mother and the other people in the Sixth to be dealing with the ‘i’m dead and in Naberius Tern’s also dead body’ thing. it can hardly be what they imagined when he and Camilla went off to the First in GtN. speaking of, i do still wonder how everyone’s family members, the Cohort etc. reacted to the news of basically everyone dying after going off to try and be Lyctors

‘Palamedes was acting as though he were a tiny at show-and-tell’ is that not how Palamedes always acts about everything

Pyrrha Dve queen of ill-advised romantic relationships. poor her, she’s lost basically everyone she cared about before (G1deon, Wake, and now Pal and Cam, Nona is dying) now as a result of Lyctorhood to some degree

oh why does everything they’re saying here feel like a goddamn funeral, i categorically don’t like this

'something white and grey and powdery [...] Camilla [...] - to Nona's horror - ate it' i’m assuming that’s Palamedes’ skull goop making a reappearance. ew

ohhh wow this is a lot worse than i thought it was going to be, they’ve actually just straight up merged themselves into a single person. i suspected the whole Camilla-and-Palamedes thing was going to come back but not like this. it’s not like they had a lot of choices, and i mean i guess it’s better on an emotional level than one of them dying and the other having to live with it, but still, yikes

wdym i am categorically not crying about the fact that Kiriona is apparently totally disinterested in this whole situation, but her first instinct is still to want to hand over her jacket to … Cam/Pal. (Pam?)

listen i get what Palamedes is trying to do here, encouraging Ianthe to accept Lyctorhood as a mutual loss & rebirth rather than a sole sacrifice of the cavalier, but quite frankly i think poor Naberius would like being merged into a single person with Ianthe even less than being murdered

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Review

firstly, i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in and encouraged me in doing these liveblogs! this has been such a fun project to work on, and reading these books for the past nine months or so has been a bright spot in what has otherwise been a relatively tough period of my life. i’ve really enjoyed getting to theorise about all of the lore of these books and make horribly ill-advised emotional attachments to inevitably doomed characters

more fun statistics that no one asked for: this liveblog was the longest, at about 20,000 (!!) words. my GtN liveblog was 12000 words for comparison. i have no excuse other than i like to talk

NtN definitely was an interesting diversion from the other two books so far. it wasn’t exactly a breather, since it was still incredibly heartbreaking and horrifying, but it was fun to see a part of the worldbuilding very different from what we’ve seen before. as much as I missed both Harrow and Gideon, i liked that it gave other characters time to shine outside of interacting with them. it was fun to see more of Palamedes, Camilla, and Pyrrha, and how those characters act in a vastly different environment to the Nine Houses

although NtN was essentially telling two different narratives, John chapters vs Nona’s, it still didn’t feel particularly disjointed - i think it was thematically held together by being a bit more grounded than the other books so far, sci-fi and fantasy elements notwithstanding (contemporary issues like climate change and nuclear war, & John’s world being a setting far closer to our own vs Nona’s domestic life & very real problems of living in a warzone)

i also loved getting John’s perspective in the chapters narrated by Harrow, his point of view and recollections were equal parts funny, terrifying, and fascinating. he’s certainly got a … unique perspective on the world. it was just a slow horrifying journey trying to figure out how the world ended, knowing that it was doomed but not exactly how it happened

Muir really has a talent for endearing you to a protagonist, and Nona was no exception, I absolutely loved her, and just, her whole story and how tragic it was physically hurt me. i also wasn’t expecting to get as attached as i was to Hot Sauce and the school gang - i hope we get just even just a mention of what happens to them in AtN

tldr: 11/10. reading this series is like the emotional equivalent of voluntarily getting stabbed in the heart repeatedly. i have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do with my life now that this is over for the meantime, other than go crazy in a locked room with a red string conspiracy board trying to figure out whats going to happen in Alecto the Ninth

speaking of, obviously its not a pressing issue since to my knowledge there isn’t even a release date yet, but i’m not sure if i’ll do a liveblog for Alecto when it comes out? on one hand the most fun bit about liveblogging has been the reaction from everyone who’s already read the books and we’ll all be in the same boat of not knowing what’s going on when Alecto comes out, so i don’t know how much of a point there is? on the other i would very much enjoy doing it anyway, and i’m a perfectionist so it would be nice to have completed all of the books like that. so i guess it depends on how impatient i am to read the whole book when it comes out lol

[lemon-natalia]

Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Review

my copy announces at the end ‘Gideon will return in Nona the Ninth’ she’d fucking better! i do not think my heart can take thinking Gideon is permanently dead again

wow, you all really survived two years waiting for Nona. question: how? Also more importantly to me, how am i gonna survive waiting for Alecto once I’ve finished Nona

fun statistics nobody asked for: i wrote just over 15,500 words about HtN! so about 3000 words more than GtN, but in general per chapter i just had less to say on this one because i wasn’t trying to figure out the world building or a single central murder mystery like last time

all in all that was certainly … a sequel. if the experience of reading Gideon the Ninth was like being on a rollercoaster, with lots of steady twists and turns, Harrow the Ninth was like being on a steadily faster river boat ride where three quarters of the way you simultaneously fell off a waterfall while a caneering train came out of nowhere and smashed the boat to pieces

it was certainly very intriguing to read, if very hard to tell what exactly was happening at certain points. it also had very different vibes in general? while GtN could probably be summed up plot-wise as ‘murder mystery’ this had much more interpersonal drama. i wasn't quite as shocked every other chapter like i was with GtN, and i did miss that, but i still had a fun time trying to figure out what was going on with the Lyctors & Harrow's mindscape stuff

tldr: i'm just rotating all of the lore of this series inside my mind like a rotisserie chicken. 9/10 i am once again emotionally destroyed but that's kind of tempered this time around with just, absolute confusion

i will say i do think i preferred GtN slightly, solely because of Gideon’s narration style being delightful, but i still very much enjoyed the experience, and i'm more hooked on this series than ever now. i didn’t mention this really before, but there was a point immediately after finishing GtN where i didn’t think i was gonna read HtN because i was genuinely that upset over Gideon’s death at the end, but i’m very glad i did!

i will for sure be doing liveblog posts for Nona if people want me to?

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - John 19:18

message now reads: ‘THE/TOWER/HAS/R’. just speculating here, but the next word could be something like ‘risen’ or ‘returned’. or resurrected 👀

i haven’t been looking too much into the actual biblical passages in the title given that these titles mostly seem to be related to the hidden message rather than referencing specific biblical events, but it feels important to note that John 19:18 is the actual crucifixion

John being scared of bodies floating in the water makes sense, thats gross, but the narrator also specifies that he’s ‘always scared of the water’ which is interesting. i wonder if there’s any connection to the River there 

everything going on, with people going back and forth on evacuation plans, caring more about money than actual practical solutions, feels unfortunately realistic as to how people would actually act in this situation

John being upset about how the people evacuating ‘didn’t give a fuck about trying to save you’ really makes me think the narrator, who i’m pretty sure is connected to Alecto in some way, is the earth?? somehow?? or at the very least there’s a very heavy handed metaphor going on 

the bit towards the end of this chapter about how the narrator doesn’t remember anything that happened, versus how John can’t forget, reminds me so much of the ending of that short story with Palamedes and Camilla as kids where Camilla states ‘Palamedes remembers everything: That was his problem. I always remember him. That’s mine.’ nothing of substance to say here other than these books just tear my heart to pieces at every opportunity

okay so from this chapter it sounds like there was a plan for these ships to escape earth, and if they did then i guess its possible that because they’re not on any of the planets that become the Nine Houses, they wouldn’t be part of the Resurrection. i'm still very intrigued as to how we get from here to the point of everyone on earth apparently dying via nukes, or if that’s even what actually happened

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 26

i get that its because of an aversion to necromancy, but i still find it so funny that absolutely no one wants to go in the truck with Gideon’s ‘dead’ body. what if your corpse just had the absolute worst vibes possible 

ohhh my god i can’t believe this is the first time that Camilla and Palamedes have been able to talk to each other in person at the same time for over a year 

oh shit Honesty’s weird story about the people with white eyes in the Convoy actually turned out to be plot relevant! was not expecting that

okay, but that weird sound not being a missile is nowhere near as reassuring as it initially sounds, because what the hell is it then

oh wow Hot Sauce and Honesty are back, i wasn’t expecting to see them again. also Honesty still caring about and trusting Nona is very heartwarming

welp apparently Hot Sauce named herself that because she just likes hot sauce. peak fourteen year old behaviour. not everything has a tragic backstory i guess

also this went a lot better than i expected, i can’t believe Hot Sauce did actually let her back in the group. We Suffer’s bad life advice about forgiveness somehow worked out? i sort of thought this was going end horribly like my ill-advised emotional attachment to Jeannemary and Isaac, but this is at least a slightly happy outcome. that being said i know she’s dying but i don’t think my heart can take Nona never seeing these guys again. Nona had better live to be on Kevin bathroom duty goddamnit

[lemon-natalia]

Gideon the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 20

i just wanna apologise in advance for how long these posts are getting lol, i have a lot of Thoughts about this book

oh wait nope they are going back to the creepy lab where two people just got murdered. great plan guys

Dulcinea wanting to team up surprised me a little, but it really shouldn't have. she's been paying a lot of attention to the Ninth, and especially Gideon.

'thousands of years after you're gone ... is when you really live' this is such a different, almost warmer, perspective on death and necromancy, and i can see why it appeals to Dulcinea specifically, who's clearly had to come to terms with her mortality pretty early on in life. but its also part of the more disturbing theme that the past never really goes away, and can't help but view this line along the same lines of discovering the ancient study last chapter, and the ancient laboratory, and Canaan House in general, which are only just now having their secrets revealed, and the terrible consequences of those secrets becoming apparent, after thousands of years

'she grasped a railing, leaned over, and proffered her hand' well this is getting very courtly romance

ah yes lets go through the door decorated with a swirl of human teeth, i'm sure there's happy fun times to be had in there. harrow, resident goth interior designer who specialises in bone decor, is probably taking notes as we speak

even after hurting her hand twice, Harrow really just can't resist experimenting even further huh. she's so very reluctant to accept that her existing powers aren't enough by themselves for this

ooohhhh, having to literally suck the life force out of your cavalier to win?? thats so sick and twisted and i love it. these challenges are, again, clearly relying on this intense relationship between the pair, both in trusting them absolutely and in this literal soul-siphoning/melding link thing.

however, it feels like Gideon's really getting the brunt of it in these challenges. Harrow's absolutely putting in an awful lot of effort and power, but it's the cavalier who has to fight the bone amalgamation, the cavalier who has to have their life literally siphoned out. they're about trust and a bond between them, but also seemingly about a willingness to sacrifice your cavalier to achieve that goal, and i have a really bad feeling about where exactly this is going in terms of how exactly one achieves lyctorhood

'under no circumstances will i ever desire your juice' Harrow you may wish to revisit this sentiment when you guys (to my limited knowledge) eventually become girlfriends

'none of this is worth it, at all [...] i'm sorry. We take so much' i'm like 90% sure the voice talking to Gideon throughout all this was Dulcinea, largely because it doesn't really make sense for it to be anyone else, but there were certain lines, specifically these ones, that made me suspicious at first it might be some(one? thing?) else. but it also feels fitting that its Dulcinea coaching her through this.

wow, just wow, i'm really impressed with the writing in this chapter, and how the pain Gideon is feeling is expressed. its such an abstract experience/feeling to describe, but i think its done incredibly well

'Ha-ha, said Gideon, first time you didn't call me Griddle, and died' ok i know she didn't but THANKS for giving me an absolute heart attack with that sentence Tamsyn Muir

Harrow i get understand u are protective of Gideon but let Dulcinea comfort her plz

'you can't just ask someone why they want to be a Lyctor'. ahh the duality of Gideon the Ninth. this just evocative prose about how it feels to be on the brink of death, and then immediately afterwards hits you in the face with a mean girls reference. beautiful, iconic, effervescent.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Guest List

no longer a Dramatis Personae but a guest list for a birthday party! quite a shift in tone. the Dramatis Personae bit has been crossed out just like ‘the Ninth’ on the book list, wonder if there’s any significance to that?

also Camilla is now spending her time transcribing a list of dogs to invite to a birthday party? that’s a very different activity from everything else she’s been through in these books

in my humble opinion, ‘Stop that’ is absolutely the number 1 best name for a dog, with ‘Noodle’ coming in a close second. i am taking Noodle being ‘king of dogs’ as a an admission of total fact that Noodle is secretly the power at the centre of the universe, i don’t make the rules.

speaking of dogs, i'm also very scared for the fate of the dog on the front cover 

and we do have a list of BoE members here! so they are gonna feature a bit more prominently here 

what kind of name is Hot Sauce? Born in the Morning sounds a bit more reminiscent of the Blood of Eden names, but ‘Hot Sauce’ or just ‘Kevin’ are strange for this universe so far

one of the teachers being called the ‘Angel’ is quite ominous what with all the religious imagery in this series 

[lemon-natalia]

The Locked Tomb Reaction - The Unwanted Guest

it’s taken a while, but finally I’ve been able to get around to liveblogging this! my understanding is that The Unwanted Guest takes place in that period of time where Palamedes is ousting Ianthe from Naberius’s body? so i’m intrigued to see what actually happens, as well as how Muir writes in a new theatre-play format

‘kissing or feeding; we can’t be sure’ haha what the fuck. we’re really going in right off the bat with the surrealist horror here. i had a feeling that Ianthe’s mindscape might be a disturbing place, and apparently i was right

ok so i’m willing to suspend my disbelief that this is just a description for the reader to understand the concept but … does either Palamedes or Ianthe’s subconscious know what a 20th century English butler is?

ohhh my god Ianthe’s in a French maid costume, is this because Palamedes considers it sexy. this is so cursed. once again suspension of disbelief, but do either of these characters know what France is?

i am very much enjoying the dynamic between the two of them here, especially how unimpressed Palamedes is with, well, everything Ianthe 

oooh okay thats intriguing, there’s another person’s voice here. my first instinct is that it’s Camilla, given Palamedes is currently in her body

wow Palamedes’ immediate response to a game of essentially 20 questions is to immediately get philosophical and start a debate about whether the soul can be changed. he sounds like the kind of person who would be absolute hell to play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit against 

what they’re talking about here is very interesting though. i like the little glimpses we get, primarily through the Sixth and the Fifth, about what academia and science looks like in a world with necromancy. whether the soul can be changed is kind of a big hypothetical in the real world, but in TLT where you can literally summon or ‘consume’ a person’s soul it would be much more directly relevant 

also a very interesting point (at least what I think he’s saying?) from Palamedes here that just because the Lyctors lived for 10,000 years doesn’t necessarily mean that the thanergy powering them is perpetual, it could just be declining very very slowly

okay so the Voice just started talking about ‘Camilla’s idea’, so presumably not her unless she’s talking about herself in third person? it could theoretically just be Palamedes debating with himself? 

Palamedes briefly trying to play bad cop/Ace Attorney and intimidate Ianthe is hilarious 

Ianthe’s insistence that she didn’t murder Naberius because it was his job to die for her anyway is an … interesting perspective

‘she and I both understand that the goal is always worth the cost’ ngl i think Harrow herself would have something to say about that, given she literally gave herself a Claire’s lobotomy in the hope of saving Gideon. it wasn’t so much Harrow who decided that Lyctorhood was worth defeating Cytherea, but Gideon deciding for her 

once again i feel horribly bad for Naberius Tern, whose worst crime was pretty much just being an asshole

hah has Palamedes picked up a cigarette habit from Pyrrha. i’m enjoying the insight into his thought process here given that he generally comes off as knowing more than other people all the time, so it’s nice to see him actually in the process of figuring stuff out 

‘She wandered around like she was the protagonist’ HAH Ianthe i have bad news for you 

aww it’s sweet to get Pal’s view on Gideon here, namely that he thinks she’s smarter than even she gives herself credit for and that he was initially jealous of her dynamic with ‘Dulcinea’ but came to like her anyways

‘My problem was reminding myself you were a child’ ohhh my god the mysterious voice is Dulcinea! i can’t believe this is literally the only time we’ve seen Pal and Dulcinea actually interact. and isn't this possibly the first time that they've had an 'in person' (so to speak) interaction since most of their relationship was sending letters to each other?? oh i am not okay

okayy i’m interested in what Dulcinea’s saying here about how she seems to have died again and ‘something awful’ happened to her soul … it doesn’t seem to totally line up with what happened at the end of HtN, especially with her mention that there are two shores on the River. again everything seems to point to the nature of the River playing a big part in AtN 

woooh Magnus Quinn reference, my beloved 

oooh i love the contrast between Ianthe’s descriptions of her relationships with Corona and Babs - despite Babs being the one who was actually the cavalier, the kind of co-dependent relationship she has with Corona is much closer to the relationship between the other cavaliers and their necromancers. which is why the fact that she’s apparently the only Lyctor to outright murder their cavalier vs her admission that she wouldn’t have used Corona is very interesting to me

‘Coronabeth herself is part of your goal’ i’m very interested in the long-term goal of Ianthe in general. obviously one part was becoming a Lyctor, but i do wonder if she has something else planned, i doubt she’s content to just sort of do what John wants her to do forever

‘Jeannemary Chatur regaled me with the story at breakfast’ woooh Jeannemary reference. also this is such a cute detail

ooooh Palamedes's newfound cigarette habit is from Ianthe not Pyrrha, that's very fun

and Palamedes’ final point here that the soul is permeable is not just very satisfying against Ianthe’s general smugness, but has very interesting implications for all of the Lyctor characters, especially the fact that their titles are named after their cavaliers. for example, how much of Mercy’s devotion originally came from her versus the fact that Christabel pre-Res was a literal nun. and what does it mean for John and Alecto exactly - how much of the same person, or even human, is he after literally eating the soul of a planet

ok this isn’t to do with the Unwanted Guest exactly but i am very concerned by the notice at the very end that ‘Hell Will Break Loose’ in AtN. it already sounds ominous enough without considering that the previous notice, ‘Gideon will return’ at the end of HtN was done in the most painful way possible 

overall i really enjoyed this! what i really like about the additional short stories Muir writes for TLT is that you get to see little character moments and explore bits of the lore that would have dragged the main story down a bit, so it was very fun to see Palamedes and Ianthe interact one-on-one and debate a bit

and now i really have run out of stuff to liveblog about these books rip my sanity

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 24

ok so i’ve not been paying too much attention to the specific skulls appearing in each chapter header BUT i recently rearranged my bookshelf and so noticed that this chapter skull is the same one on the GtN book spine 👀👀

ok i don’t think bandages alone are gonna do much good for being shish kebabed with a rapier

i can’t blame Camilla here, your closest loved one being in the body of Naberius Tern is a nightmare scenario quite frankly

i feel like Nona comparing Corona to Noodle is the highest compliment Nona could have bestowed upon her

Ianthe clearly took ‘Necromantic Interior Decorating 101’ from Harrow sometime last book, covering the hallway with an inventive ‘blood filigree’. how charming 

hah I would kill for Ianthe to be around to hear Pyrrha say that her work was a shit version of Mercymorn’s

i'm Very intrigued by Pyrrha’s comment that she apparently tried to trick Wake into loving her somehow, i do wonder if we’ll ever get a more in-depth look at how exactly their whole fling started

oh poor Nona, she’s really beating herself up just for wanting the only body that she has to actually belong to her

GIDEON NAV THE LOVE OF MY LIFE IS BACK! or at least her corpse is but i’m taking what i can get here okay

Nona’s mild disgust for redheads and being so critical of Gideon’s appearance is so very funny, it reminds me of how Gid described Harrow for a good chunk of GtN

'her face had that half-past-a-dream expression’ i’m probably reading wayy too into this, but amajor theme throughout this book has been dreams - the John chapters being dreams, Nona’s dreams of Gideon, so i’m curious if there’s anything significant about this description in regards to where Gid’s soul is

this has become very Sleeping Beauty suddenly with the unconscious kiss. or more accurately given Gid’s actually dead, Snow White. with the glass coffin containing the Sleeper in Harrow’s mindscape, that’s an interesting parallel between Gideon and Wake

umm i’m sorry what the fuck do you mean her eyes opened. and now she’s totally dead again?? is Nona’s hallucinating or what?? these books solidly going into mindfuck territory once again

an awful chunk of this book is made up of characters with very strange feelings about the corpse of Gideon Nav huh

MILITARY WING OF DISCO 🕺🪩🕺🪩

'imagine the hopes and fears of the whole universe contained in one dead little red star’ close enough, welcome back Ortus Ninegad’s unfairly hated poetry

oh jeez Gideon’s wounds are intense. i thought she just got impaled once right down the middle but nope she also has a neck wound as well. Nasty

christ please leave Bab’s and Gideon’s dead bodies alone. they keep getting possessed and tossed in rivers left and right

GIDEON NAV THE LOVE OF MY LIFE IS BACK!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ somehow idk what’s going on i’m not questioning it at all, i’m just happy about it

evil cougar is a very apt description of Cytherea. also from what i recall this the first time Pal and Gideon have actually interacted since he literally blew himself up over a year ago, which is wild

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 30

shuttles seem to be the main form of transport on the Houses so have any of these people ever actually driven before?? like maybe Corona since she might have learned with BoE, but she’s not helping with the driving at all here lol. like it’s just wild to me that the first time Paul is driving anywhere is literally through a weird ghost dimension

Corona calling Judith ‘Jody’ and trying to comfort her but with no response … listen i haven’t been too focused on their dynamic but truly this is killing me

Pyrrha calling Nona ‘Kiddie’ and Gideon ‘Kid’, like Pyrrha clearly wants some kind of connection with Gideon but it’s seemingly way too late for that now, while Nona is quite literally dying in front of her eyes. actually everybody in this book is killing me, every relationship dynamic is so goddamn tragic 

also i can’t imagine Kiriona is particularly happy about Pyrrha calling her ‘kid’. i mean they’ve got a very complicated relationship even outside of Gideon being in her ‘teen angst’ phase right now

‘the pupil that was cool grey-brown’ listen i am no medical professional but. i don’t think that’s how pupils work? i'm wayy overthinking a fictional world here, and Paul is a Lyctor so i doubt normal laws of physics apply to their body, but like. pupils are holes in ur eyes no, so i don't think they can be the colour of irises?

okayy so some more weird stuff to do with the Tower here, namely ‘He left them too long - you left them too long’ i wonder if this has something to do with the problem in the River Abigail mentioned during HtN ... so possibly the Tower is the result of something to do with the Resurrection? or connected to the Tomb?? at least it’s somehow John’s fault, even indirectly. although tbf ‘John’s fault, even indirectly’ could describe practically everything that happens in this series 

‘the hole, the hole, the hole’ that’s what she said

oh i love Nona so much, her constant dissociation throughout the chapter, and the struggles here both with her autonomy and with all of the things she’s been through, and how she literally only wants to die properly as Nona, is so heartbreaking. this is cool this is fine i’m not crying wdym

NOODLE!!! ohhh my god, Nona only decides to go on because Noodle is in the backseat!! i guess taking the dog along was a good idea after all

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 27

holy shit Pash is Wake’s niece?? and thus Gideon’s cousin?? this family tree (and honestly everyone in it) is unhinged. having a cousin who is both undead and also the kid of a guy she absolutely hates feels like it’s Pash’s worst nightmare coming true. this is probably the world’s second shittiest family reunion, bar the murder tea party at the end of HtN

Wake’s whole photo with Pash shows that she had a sentimental side beyond what she had going on with G1deon/Pyrrha i guess. rip Pyrrha, the only person she can reminisce with about the woman she loved is Pash, who just completely hates Pyrrha’s guts. fun!

the whole thing with young!Pash smiling while holding a gun is a little sweet that Wake seems to have cared an awful lot about her family, but also a pretty disturbing look at what it would be like to grow up in BoE, and why exactly Pash is so militaristic and dedicated to BoE’s cause

oh shit is the truck getting bombed? which reminds me we haven’t had a John chapter in quite a while

oh no, its worse than a bomb its Heralds from the RB. given Gideon was only really able to fight them at the end of HtN because she was in Harrow’s body and thus functionally immortal and kept regenerating, pretty much only Nona and Pyrrha stand any chance here 

okayy interesting tidbit of information from Pyrrha’s small speech here, which is that she seems to know/remember Gideon’s first name, from pre the Resurrection? makes me wonder that if she does remember stuff from before, if she’s going to ever give an account of events that contradicts the stuff John’s been saying in his chapters. Pyrrha Dve woman of mystery, the more i learn about her past the wilder it gets

i just adore that Nona’s first response to the RB here is to yell at the top of her lungs ‘you said you wouldn’t do anything weird!’ truly channelling Isaac and Jeannemary’s teenage embarrassment to new levels

i love that Nona’s copying what Cam says to her to try and calm down the RB. top 10 tips on how to negotiate with the vengeful ghost of a dead planet: use Camilla Hect’s emotional advice 

oh some very interesting stuff being said by the RB through Judith here. specifically that ‘the danger is upon you, and you do not even know … they are coming out of their tower, salt thing’. towers have been mentioned a couple times now, with Gideon and Ianthe being named the Tower Princes (probably by John) - with the turret image being on Chapter 16, where they first appeared on the broadcast - and the tower in the hidden message. all in all it doesn’t seem to spell anything good

also Nona in this chapter is just wonderful. i mean Nona’s always wonderful, but i especially love this moment where she grabs the sword despite not knowing how to use it, and her determination to confront the RB

given Nona’s declaration that she knows full well she’s not Harrowhark, and that the RB addresses Nona as the ‘Green-and-breathing thing’ and asks what a mysterious ‘he’ did to her, i feel very sure at this point that she’s Alecto’s soul. though you never know with this series, i’ve been blindsided too often by reveals to be certain of anything 

[lemon-natalia]

Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 46

oh Gideon’s died three times from these freaking Heralds?? even with Lyctor level healing powers i feel like thats traumatising. 

ahhh i love how the whole ‘cavalier controls the body while the Lyctor is in the River’ thing was mentioned so many times but i still never saw this coming 

also i was too busy freaking out over Gideon being back last chapter to note this, but i love the narration choices made here!! the combining of 2nd & first person and how Gideon is actually the one narrating Harrow’s perspective is a really creative way of showing what it would be like to be in someone else’s body

‘had a hunger only thumbs could satisfy’ Carl, is that you? 

‘I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date’ these guys went immediately to something like seventh base, and skipped the first six

awww the way that Gideon is trying so hard to take care of Harrow’s body. not just in not dying/being injured, but trying not to do anything that she knows would make Harrow uncomfortable 

LEMON-MOUTH PRIME. what better description of Mercy could exist

and Mercy was very very scared of Gideon-in-Harrow (hah), thinking she was someone else who ‘never could act human’, before realising she wasn’t. i have a feeling she’s referring to the Locked Tomb body, she’s been described as a ‘monster’ before after all

Mercy stabbed Harrow?? as a form of, well, mercy i suppose 

‘What the fuck are you talking about’ oh this being from Gideon’s perspective is so fucking funny, she is absolutely clueless and has no idea of any of the Lyctor soap opera drama that might help make sense of any of this

gideon: okay jesus christ, i don’t know what’s going on here 

ok, now Mercymorn’s talking about … Someone called the commander, who og!Gideon was having an affair with, and then immediately moves onto talking about Gideon Nav’s mother. is og!Gid Gideon’s dad then, i was fucking joking when i said it was ironic he had red hair?! but he was also sent to kill said Commander (possibly Gid’s mother)?? like i said, Lyctor soap opera

and Cytherea’s body, being possessed by Someone apparently, has a gun rn and shot Mercy ok!!! and then didn’t shoot Gid for some reason?? ‘what the fuck is going on’ you and me both Gideon

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 31

quick note first of all, would anyone be interested in me also doing a liveblog for 'The Unwanted Guest' as well as these remaining chapters?

and after three books we’re back on the Ninth where this all started. Kiriona’s putting on a bit of a show with the ‘Home sweet home’ thing, but it really can’t be pleasant returning to somewhere she spent an absolutely horrible childhood trying to escape, and without Harrow no less

this might genuinely be the first time there has ever been a dog on the Ninth, i don’t really see the cult of goth priests being big on pets

‘then again, i’m not sure of John period’ yeah me neither, quite frankly even after a book which spends half its page time detailing his backstory i’m still unsure about what exactly his plans and powers are

‘a string of fairy lights wouldn’t have gone amiss’ honestly given Harrow’s general penchant for interior bone design, i think she could be persuaded if the fairy lights were made out of actual bone somehow

ohh holy shit there was a good moment while reading that description of Gideon surrounded by corpses with blood on her sword that i fully thought that she’d come back to the Ninth on some weird revenge mission and just straight up murdered Crux

‘My lady, you have come home to us … at last’ why is this making me feel things for Crux of all people. like he has no idea about Nona, or that Harrow’s lost in the River, or anything she’s been through at all. all he knows is that she left for the First, became a Lyctor, and never communicated or came home again

oh great we’re returning to possibly the creepiest part of GtN with the weird ‘devil’ things. between the duel of the Third and Sixth and possession of Colum Asht, the second half of that book is suddenly becoming very relevant again. while Nona’s been living in a combination slice-of-life/war drama, Kiriona’s life seems to have taken a sharp turn into zombie apocalypse novel. fun!

i’m very intrigued about the little pieces of John and Gideon’s relationship that we get here, notably i think (if i remember correctly) that this is the first time she’s mentioned him as ‘Dad’, seemingly completely sincerely, unlike calling him ‘Pops’ at the end of HtN. and apparently he falsely reassured her that the devils were confined to Antioch, but Kiriona seems to have fully believed him and sounds genuinely upset that he apparently lied about it

wow Crux literally cannot stop hating on Gideon even when he’s actively fucking dying. on one level i can admire the commitment but dude, this level of beef with a literal teenager is ridiculous

‘there was a figure there - dark robes with a pale face’ okay i really can’t figure out what is with the weird stalker figure here. is it Nona having a hallucination of Harrow? just a strange description of one of the nuns?

Pyrrha apparently painted a mint green nursery here a long time ago, i assume for Anastasia’s kid, which would explain the weird remark about helping deliver a baby back in chapter 10. also this implies a version of the Ninth which was at one point not quite so dedicated to the doom-and-gloom-bones-and-death aesthetic, which feels inconceivable to me

well hello Aiglamene long time no see, this is a slightly more welcome return than Crux at least. ngl i really wasn’t expecting to see all these characters from the beginning of GtN again, but it’s interesting to catch up and see how little has really changed there despite all the events of the series

ohhh my god. this is not how i expected a reunion between Aiglamene and Gideon to go. Aiglamene seems so genuinely shaken by the fact that she’s dead, and the fact that she’s apparently very angry at Harrow on Gideon’s behalf, like !! she definitely seems to care about Gideon a lot more than she ever actually let on to her

‘Nona was deeply horrified to see actual walk-around skeletons’ i think Harrow would be mortally offended that anyone in her body could find skeletons horrifying

actually yknow what i take back what i said in GtN about Palamedes, Paul should absolutely not be a therapist with this bedside manner

‘You can’t take loved away’ uh, excuse me for a minute i need to sit in a corner and cry my heart out for a moment. this moment really feels like a summary of a lot of themes in the whole series

ok the final nail in the coffin for my emotional wellbeing at the end of this chapter is that Pyrrha did actually get a birthday present, one that she’ll never be able to give her. here i am completely distraught over cheap moustache rides what have you done to me Tamsyn Muir

istg at least some part of Nona needs to live on. like c’mon Gideon died at the end of the first book and she’s still kicking, Nona can do it too. once again it is nearly the end of a Locked Tomb book and i am in severe denial about probably permanent character death

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - John 15:23

the imagery of the numbered days, specifically three days, seems very biblical to me, and John’s discovery of necromancy and eventual resurrection of the Nine Houses seems to tie in a lot to how the Gospel of John features the resurrection of Lazarus, and Jesus’s death & resurrection. i also find it very interesting that it was A— who was the first to believe him apparently 

and his eyes have now changed to that yellow colour that will eventually be Alecto’s. characters really weren’t just being dramatic when they said Gideon or Alecto’s eyes were golden, they really are some weird unearthly shade. 

listen objectively I knew that this is set sometime in our (present-day) future, but C— describing Twilight as an old movie is something else

and he and the narrator (Harrow? Alecto? Halecto??) are hiking through some kind of destruction, cars and other man-made objects being submerged in water, presumably caused by the apocalypse. where exactly are they headed hmm

poor C—, some random lawyer whose ended up getting involved in all these crazy scientists weird experiments on non-rotting dead bodies

‘I only wanted to be with my bodies’ haha John what the fuck

ooh and the way John describes these newfound powers and having heightened senses of sound and people and animals is very similar to the way Harrow experienced Lyctorhood, being able to sense everyone on the Erebos’s hearts. i also find it intriguing that the other similarity to gaining Lyctorhood here is the previously mentioned eye colour change … not entirely certain what it could mean, its not exactly the same as they haven’t changed colours completely. but there has definitely been some kind of change to his soul 

okay, Ulysses and Titania were the later names of some of the other Lyctors - I’m guessing John renamed everyone after the Resurrection, and just kept those? also he named Ulysses after a dog? poor Ulysses. also also apparently dogs are a running theme in this book as well??

and oh shit he finally has properly discovered necromancy. not just the ability to preserve dead bodies, but to puppet them around, just like Harrow later does with her parents. also John is very casual about it here, but the imagery of him just uncontrollably laughing while remotely moving around dead bodies is … disturbing. no wonder M— threw up. 

And so far the coded message reads: ‘THE/TOW’. i suppose it could be ‘the to [word beginning with w]’ but i don’t think that would make much grammatical sense? unless its something very abstract