Review: Nona the Ninth

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Expanding the trilogy to four Locked Tomb novels?

We've been officially Red Queen-ed.



So...Nona. She's a pretty interesting little character, introduced at the very end of Harrow the Ninth with all the mystery as we suddenly ported over from the apocalyptic futura gothica of the series so far and into what could almost pass for the present day.

Except the present day is a little closer to the flashbacks that finally explain exactly how John Gaius of New Zealand became God and started laying waste to life the more complex he got in an increasingly screwed-up world.

At least this book is much more straightforward than its predecessor, and has much more likable characters to follow besides. While few of them come anywhere close to matching the awesomeness level of the great Gideon Nav herself (let's be honest, Gideon's razor sharp wit is what really gives Book 1 its immense reread value, whereas Book 2 is a slog with Harrow's depressive nature, general lack of agency, and the sheer Mind Screw.) Book 3 strikes more of a middle balance between the two. Nona, like Harrow, is amnesiac, so there's a bit of that same Mind Screw, but it's significantly toned down (no more of that second-person POV this time), but she's much better adjusted as a person than Harrow is. Not Gideon's style of freewheeling, but carefree and sweet even as the world goes all to hell in a handbasket or ten. And pretty clearly neurodivergent too, which makes sense given that I'm pretty sure Muir herself is some flavor of neurodivergent as well.

Overall, it's a little easy to tell that this book wasn't meant to be a single volume, until Muir got carried away extending the planned first act of Alecto to 140k words and she and her editor agreed to release a whole new book before the Grand Finale. It's a bit overextended, taking its sweet-ass time to truly reconnect to the world we remember, acting as Prolonged Prologue to Alecto.

It'll appeal to the superfans for sure, though.

But for those of us who vibe with Gideon most of all...well, there's one more volume to go, and damn right I'll be auto-buying it.

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