Nona the Ninth Review

The world has ended before, but it could always end again…. The first two books of the Locked Tomb series (Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth) were two of my favorite books from the last few years, and now Tamsyn Muir is back with the third installment! Nona the Ninth, the penultimate book in this projected quartet, came out earlier this fall and continues to prove that Muir is one of the most creative minds in today’s science-fiction and fantasy scene.

As with each book in the Locked Tomb series so far, Nona the Ninth is told through the perspective of a new narrator … sort of. Nona woke up in this body almost six months ago, but has no memory of her life or identity before that moment. Her only hints are the strange dreams she has each night of a red-haired girl with a skull-painted face. But though her caretakers—Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha—note down all her dreams, behaviors, and off-hand comments in an attempt to suss out her true identity, Nona doesn’t want to remember who she used to be. She just wants to live her life now, with the people she loves. Living in a city of refugees outside of the control of the Nine Houses, Nona takes a job as a teacher’s aide and joins a gang of children led by a scrappy teen named Hot Sauce. She loves her gang, but would they still love her if they knew that she was a “zombie”—someone from the necromancy-worshiping Nine Houses? Indeed, Nona has the preternatural healing abilities of a Lyctor, though doesn’t seem to know how to consciously wield necromancy magic. And yet, this lack of power doesn’t stop the rebel group Blood of Eden from viewing Nona as the key to finally defeating the Undying Emperor. Nona wants to experience as much of a normal life as she can, but time is ticking: a glowing blue sphere in the sky forebodes some mysterious doom; meanwhile, the Emperor’s forces are on their way to put down the rebellion; and the heading at the start of each chapter is counting down the days until “the tomb opens.”

I continue to be blown away by how Tamsyn Muir manages to drastically shift to a new tone and genre with each book of this series. Gideon the Ninth was essentially a haunted house novel with a cocky, potty-mouthed narrator, while Harrow the Ninth leaned into the science fiction angle with travel across space and dimensions as Harrowhark’s analytical mind struggled to parse a complex web of crossed timelines and self-deception. In Nona the Ninth, Muir pairs the grimmest genre tropes with a contrastingly bubbly narrative voice. Nona has a very childlike demeanor, which often manifests as joy in simple pleasures, an earnest desire to please the authority figures in her life, and ebullient expressions of affection. Though her body is nearly nineteen years old, Nona’s consciousness has existed for less than six months, and she needed to be taught from scratch how to do things like speak or wash and dress herself. During this time, she formed deep bonds with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, who act as parents toward her. Nona even views herself like a child, and relates more strongly to the younger students in her classroom than to the adults she encounters. This childlike innocence is a refreshing reprieve after being inside the troubled and guarded mind of Harrow, but innocence cannot last forever. The backdrop of this novel plays with the post-apocalyptic genre. The city Nona inhabits is essentially a post-disaster society built by refugees from catastrophic wars with the Nine Houses who have moved from settlement to settlement in their attempt to find peace and stability. The streets are run by gangs and rebel groups, while teens and children—many of whom are traumatized and orphaned—are left to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, Nona’s chapters are interspersed with passages from a dream in which John describes the events that led up to the original apocalypse and how he became the God Undying. These apocalyptic themes fit surprisingly well with this “new beginning” for the story’s narrator, though the cyclical nature of such events adds to the growing sense that this brief moment of respite for Nona and her companions is about to come to an end.

One of the things I found most fascinating about this book was the way it explores identity—including gender identity—as being separate from the body. The unique relationship between a necromancer and cavalier who got far enough on the path to lyctorhood can create potentially confusing situations with multiple people inhabiting one body or someone taking over a body that was not originally their own. This book smoothly and seamlessly depicts these complicated relationships between the soul and the body. Camilla and Palamedes, for example, trade off piloting the body that once exclusively belonged to Camilla. Nona is able to instantly recognize (through posture, body language, and way of speaking) which one is present and refers to them with the proper names and pronouns, though often still refers to the body as Camilla’s (e.g “Palamedes lifted Camilla’s hand”). Then there’s Pyrrha, a woman inhabiting the body of her (male) deceased necromancer, who is referred to exclusively with she/her pronouns. Later in the story, some of the characters manage to puppet or jump into different bodies. With her astute observational skills, Nona (as the narrator) adapts easily to changes in bodies or identities and makes these complex and ever-shifting relationships between body and soul feel like the most natural thing in the world. 

If you’re ready to continue your saga to the Locked Tomb, you can find Nona the Ninth on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or order a copy online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this bookshop.org affiliate link. Have you already read Nona? Let me know your thoughts in the comments (though please try to avoid spoilers).