#the locked tomb liveblog

[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

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

John 5:20

That's a different number to the one we had before. Which one was it before?

John's first chapter was 20:8. Are the numbers an indication of time? In which case, it is likely that this chapter refers to events happening even further in the past.

He sat down on a patch of brown grass and laughed a little, and said, “Beloved, it wouldn’t be over—it wouldn’t begin—for a year.” He said: It was the thin end of the wedge. He said that official paperwork claimed they’d decided to pull back and think things through again, but he’d always known they’d reinvested in something else, he just didn’t know what. He said when the leak happened everyone suddenly knew everything, their project was all over the news, everyone had a fucking opinion.

Yeah, in terms of timing, this is before the resurrection, regarding the ending of the project they'd been working on. The one where they tried to get everyone out.

It really sounds like John wasn't the one to kill everyone, rather - he was working on a way to save everyone, but it was the rich fuckers who cut the funding before they managed to save people.

C— was panicking because with the project over she was getting recalled to England and didn’t want to go, she’d got N— and didn’t want to leave her, refused to admit they were dating even though we all knew.

C was Cassiopeia, then, based on this, with N being Nigella, her cavalier. And partner.

He said, It was the last one that was getting to me. I knew all those bodies by name. Funny to say, but they were my mates, you know? I’d worked on them for such a long time, and they’d given us so much, and now they were going to get dumped in some concrete skip because after what we’d done to them they couldn’t be cremated or buried safely. I hated that.

Um

Yikes????

Did John know them when they were alive? Was he working with their bodies only, or with their revenants as well? Clearly he was conducting some kind of necromancy-resurrection research, and it did something to the bodies.

What the fuck did you do to the bodies, John?

Oh no but he felt bad about it and he knew them by name and they were his mates and that means it was ok for him to experiment on their bodies - but not burying or cremating the bodies, now THAT would be going too far.

Fucked up little man.

we had a pet cop, P—. She’d made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD. Knew G— from way back, and G— and I were both hometown boys, so P— kept the heat down for us.

Pyrrha was a cop? Makes sense, I guess. And she'd been friends with Gideon for a really long time.

M— and A— could’ve walked into new jobs in a heartbeat but I was irradiated, I’d never work in the industry again. I sure as hell wouldn’t be allowed to work on anything else to do with you.

The word "irradiated" catches my attention here - metaphorically, the public "needed someone to blame" and John might have been the most high-profile person involved with this project - but, really, I think he's being quite literal here.

His research was quite literally radioactive.

And the last bit here implies that he was working on resurrection only to save Alecto. There was mention of cryotubes before - the other project, the one to save everyone else, wasn't a resurrection project, it was a preservation of life project. Maybe similar methods were used but ultimately for different goals.

Interesting.

but it was like the crisis had been announced all over again. Like you’d sprung this on us out of nowhere, like you’d never said you were sick. [...] It was about giving you breathing room, you know? I knew I wouldn’t live to see you get well, but I wanted to stop you hurting.

Let's backtrack a second here. This here highly implies that the imminent crisis was not just caused by Alecto, but caused - or exacerbated - by Alecto being sick.

That shows everything in a slightly different light, huh? John wasn't just selfishly wanting Alecto to be well because he loved her, and damn everyone else - Alecto's presence, or her sickness, was imminently threatening humanity.

Wow.

Before I started reading this book, I had some theories about who - or what - Alecto was. Let's revisit for a second.

She could have been an alien, or a genetically modified human; this whole thing seems to suggest a volatile, radioactive nature about her, as if she'd been made only from radioactive isotopes of the atoms that make up a human body. The idea creeps me the fuck out. This, here, suggests that her fate was inextricably tied to humanity's as a whole, which suggests more than just a radioactive body.

She was definitely an experimental subject, that one is very clear now.

Augustine calls Alecto a "monster" only after her resurrection. Her pre-rez personality is... honest to a fault, sweet, a little bit stupid.

And that REALLY sounds like someone we've been following in this book so far. Until further notice, we're going with Nona Is Alecto (minus memories) theory. She's dreaming her memories.

Sorry, almost forgot we were still reading a chapter here with all the theorycrafting. This one has been extremely interesting and illuminating so far.

But I wasn’t taking anything. I was sleeping like a baby. I was looking at those guys on the slab and something in me was like, I know you, I know this. He said, Told M— that. Huge mistake. She was like, Oh my God, you’re drinking, aren’t you. You’re on amphetamines. You are on coke. You are on amphetamines and coke. I was all, Yeah … Coke Zero. She didn’t laugh. I laughed. He said, I guess I’ve always thought any pun was automatically funny.

Sorry Mercymorn, but that IS funny.

Mentions of a "canister" and a "mixture". John kept working on the cryo-experiment which was tangled up with the saving-Alecto experiment.

“Most of the bodies got the melt, like we thought they would,” he said. “Damaged beyond repair. Their brains liquefied almost immediately. But, Harrow … all the ones I touched, all the ones I loved … they stayed incorrupti

Aha-!

Another dead-cut off chapter, just like the poem in the prologue.

Another clue.

Interesting that he says their brains liquefied - not their entire bodies; it was an experiment very much focused on the brains. Lends credibility to my brains-as-river theory.

John hadn't done anything special at this point - other than research. And being, ah, irradiated.

Maybe not actually just nuclear radiation. Some kind of necromantic radiation. And touching the bodies, or being near them, somehow spared them from degrading instantly once their power was shut off.

Also - he's clearly talking to Alecto as you here; he's recollecting memories that include Alecto, and yet he addresses her as Harrowhark. And he's telling the story, she's not just reliving memories.

Alecto-as-Nona is super far away from John right now, as far as we know - unless John is emitting the blue light, but his presence doesn't normally hurt necromancers; it's far more likely that the blue light is a Resurrection Beast, or related to one at least. (Mercymorn described the RB attacking the Mithraeum as "Blue like Loveday's eyes"...)

Does he have a psychic connection to Alecto? Does he address her as Harrow because she looks like Harrow? In order to not invoke her name? Is this real? Is it a memory?

All of this is extremely curious, cannot wait to read more.

[evilphrog]

I am forever grateful for the balanced way Harrow’s psychosis is displayed. She is a rational person. She is able to evaluate data as sharply as anyone else. Maybe even more sharply than anyone else. She just isn’t sure if the data she is evaluating is all accurate. She reads as someone who has long since adjusted to this self-doubt about reality, and possibly as someone who’s intelligence was honed specifically by the process of needing to run every observation through rationality checks. It makes her weird, socially, but it also makes her very good at processing and deduction.

[lady-harrowhark]

My friend finished Nona the Ninth 🥰

[interactiveglobe]

can someone who's better at art and/or photoshop than i am add ianthe's skeleton arm in here 😅

[dykenav]

Palamedes internally: “okay well you’re DEFINITELY not harrow then. probably not gideon either considering how obsessed she is with herself.”

[no-wings-no-angel]

And people have the audacity to say romance is dead

[elfieafterdark]

I think the coolest thing about Nona as a book is that we get to see what the other side is like. Imagine for a minute that we didn't have Nona, and instead alecto had come out and it was all already over.

Imagine that we didn't get to see what an ordinary planet looked like, and what life on an ordinary planet in the same universe as the nine houses was like.

If we didn't get to see the constant fear they live in of power beyond their comprehension just being dropped on their heads. You got to burn all the bones, all of them mother fucker. If anyone even looks like a zombie fucker you got to kill them just in case.

We're cut off, we have no backup or supplies. You can either submit to John Gaius and the nine houses or you can fucking die.

I'm halfway through the book, and what it has really cemented for me is how fucking awful the nine houses are. Which is something we already knew implicitly, but now we have it explicitly.

If you want to live differently, you aren't allowed to and you need to die. So that we can use your bones for menial labor. I mean think about it, you and I like necromancy as a fictional concept.

But imagine if some oppressor of yours was literally invincible and couldn't die. Oh shit I guess it's a metaphor for colonialism isn't it?

Like I said, I'm really fucking glad that Nona the Ninth exists as a book. It's got me thinking about things that I didn't think TLT could make me think about.

And that's amazing. Even if it is lacking in griddlehark.

[counting-stars-gayly]

hmmmmm the more i read htn, the more convinced i am that gideon’s narrating…

[machoestofmen]

About to have a go at Harrow the Ninth now; when I was reading Gideon the Ninth, one thing I noticed really helped set the mood for me was to have some of the Legacy of Kain series' soundtracks going, especially from Soul Reaver and Defiance. Some tracks of note:

There are a few others as well, but this should be enough for now. Alright, time to read.

[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

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning. I asked, What is morning? and you said, When everyone who fucked with me is dead. When everyone we loved has gone or fled, That’s morning. Empty’s just another word for clean. Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed. In the appointed hour I’ll pull up your sheets. I’ll kill the light, Lie down beside you; die; and sleep the night. This time will be the time we get it right: Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long; Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true. You held aloft the sword. I still love y

On first glance, it seems kind of obvious that this is from Alecto's perspective, and the person she's speaking to is John.

The words John says appear to be heavy with feelings of guilt, and grief. They seem to imply that John and Alecto's "perfect" Lyctorhood was some kind of grave mistake, that will be rectified by John "dying", sleeping.

"This time will be the time we get it right"...

There's something rather ominous about this. "Our lies less true"... John, when have your lies ever been anywhere near the truth?

Also implying that untruth is something to be desired.

This whole thing seems to be the moment John locked Alecto in the Tomb.

The cut-off line, finally, makes me weep for Alecto, if I'm right about this being her. He sent her to sleep with a confession on her lips, not even allowing her to finish her sentence. Wielding the sword like he was about to kill her.

Which, in fairness, he was. As dead as I could make her.

We'll revisit this later, I'm sure. Let's get to actually reading!

[thechekhov]

Nona Liveblog. (1/5)

Because yes, I recorded it all this time.

Warning: THIS LIVEBLOG WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE BOOK. I have finished reading and am posting these notes after the fact. Therefore, it will also contain blurbs about things I missed on my first read. Please be cautious.

Once again, big thank you to @elexuscal for reading my rants and reacting with frustratingly vague emojis~

Spongebob Announcer Voice: They were not thinking hard enough.

Post-Book Thoughts: The frustrating thing is that the clues were THERE. It was in the last part of Harrow that we were given the clues about how it COULD work. And I still didn't-- sigh.

............all this effort, and there was still a hole in my head through which all the information drained.

This is the end of part one! I think the rest I will try to split up into DAYS, since this is the end of DAY 2. Cheers!

[evilphrog]

The Last Supper: remix edition. The weird surrogate child of god made everyone eat of her flesh and drink of her body, betrayed his right hand man, and then screamed at god for forsaking her.

[lady-harrowhark]

The entire tlt fandom reading @starberry-cupcake’s latest Luly Reacts to TLT posts

[tiny-tortle]

she gideons on my the till i ninth