Do you have a series that means everything in the entire world to you? A book series that immediately comes to mind when someone asks you, if you could only read one series over and over again for the rest of your life, what would it be? The Locked Tomb series would be it. Despite this though, I could not possibly even try to begin to explain it, you just need to experience it.

Nona the Ninth is the third installment of the series and deals with the aftermath of of Harrow the Ninth, in a way that was both excruciatingly painful and filled my heart with so much love. Nona loves you, and you will love her.

Muir excels at writing and creating her novels that make half the fun, just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and what does this all mean? She interweaves humor, gut-wrenching emotion, and deep-soul searching meaning expertly. One moment you're crying and the next your laughing at a shitty meme 10 years out of date. I've never met a series like it.

I am waiting for the next book with baited breath, and can't wait to do a reread in the meantime.

Thank you so much to Tor and Netgalley or the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ugggggh, I love Nona so much.

Not Nona the book -- and we'll come to that later -- but Nona the character, who is about the sweetest gorram teenager you've ever met in your life. Well, technically a teenager: her body is about nineteen years old but she's only really been alive? resurrected? reborn? for almost six months now. So, ofc, she wants a birthday party, to include her friends at school, several good dogs and the few members of the Blood Of Eden guerilla group whom she's familiar with.

This last group, ofc, is strictly vetoed by her guardian Camilla Hect (yes, that Camilla, yesssssss!) who is taking care of her with the assistance of a grumpy older person named Pyrrha. Our little trio live in The Building, a somewhat scary edifice that houses all sorts of unsavory characters. Nona, no longer being a complete infant, is allowed to go to school, where she's a Teacher's Aide who hangs out with a literal gang of teenagers. These teens are very anti-zombie, which is basically what everyone on their planet calls the necromancers of the Nine Houses and their minions and soldiers. Thus sweet Nona is also anti-z-word, too, even tho she has a sneaking suspicion that her little family might be more involved with necromancy than she wants to think about. But when an honest-to-God Lyctor comes calling, demanding that this planet give up its House renegades in exchange for resettlement somewhere far away from the planet-killing threat looming in the sky, matters come to a head and Nona must finally confront who and what she really is.

Whereas the first book in the Locked Tomb series was Battle Royale meets And Then There Were None, and the second a murderous boarding school mystery in space, this third book is about a true innocent growing up in a dystopia and finding herself far more important than she'd ever imagined. It's a bit Chosen One-ish, but Nona is just so darn likeable that I eagerly read all the chapters of her adolescent adventures with her friends as war and disaster threw long shadows over them. Interspersed with these are chapters from the viewpoint of God a.k.a John, who reveals (mostly) what happened to get him to his exalted position. John is a dick but he is also hilarious, so I spent a lot of time laughing at his jokes and feeling a little bad about it later. His essentially dirtbag POV is a nice contrast to Nona's earnest desire for all her friends to love one another, as she loves them, making the first 75% of the book a quick, compelling read.

Alas that everything should get murky in the final quarter of the tome. After the thing that led to Paul (and LET ME TELL YOU, I was SOBBING when Camilla said "life is too short and love is too long",) the narrative begins to deliberately sacrifice clarity for vibes, to the point that I'm starting to worry about where this series is going. It doesn't help that I had to strongly refresh myself on what happened in Harrow The Ninth (with the help of the wonderful Space Gnomes!) because I somehow managed to forget the biggest plot twists from the final quarter of that book! I'm hardly the dumbest reader -- I figured out whose body Nona was in within the first twenty pages and am pretty certain I understand the deal with Alecto -- but there were parts that were so (I hope deliberately) obscure that I'm still trying to figure them out. The <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/NonaTheNinth">TV Tropes</a> site, btw, is excellent for helping clarify things, if you've already read the book and are looking for answers.

Nona The Ninth was originally written as part of the next book of the series, and it shows. The end isn't so much a payoff as an off-ramp, leading me to spend these past four or five hours frantically combing the internet and consulting with my fellow readers (especially Larisa, shout out!) in my efforts to finally understand what's going on here. Harrow The Ninth had a similar feel, but at least that book explained the many identities of Gideon, and felt like a more solid experience on its own. Which isn't to pan NtN at all, just that it doesn't feel as complete unto itself as the other books did (which is saying A Lot because HtN was very much a Connector Novel.)

Fans of The Locked Tomb series must absolutely read and devour this. Do not attempt if you haven't already read the first two! Shoot, I read them and I was still confused: thank goodness for the Internet and friends with better information retention than me.

Nona The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir was published September 13 2022 and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781250854117">Bookshop!</a>

DNF at 45%. I really do not think that Nona's story needed to be a whole book. Up to this point, nothing is happening. It's just a whole lot of characters talking around in circles, and it's just wasting my time. I think I'm done with this series.

3/5 stars - I'll begin by saying that, as with the rest of the books in the series, this book is unlike the one before, which is unlike the one before. Basically, each book seems to be a new setting, a new focus, and take a lot of learning and patience to pick up where the previous book left off. This book may have been the most difficult for me to get back into so far, as it easily took nearly half of the book to feel like I wanted to keep reading because dang was the first half so so boring! Something kept me going, obviously - I think it was the section headings counting down to the opening of the Locked Tomb. I'm both nervous and anticipating the 4th - nervous for reasons previously stated, but looking forward to some resolution. I just hope the last book will have less of a learning curve/setting adjustment than this one.

Content warning: gore, references to main character deaths, dissociation, vomiting, gun violence, medical experimentation

The third entry of The Locked Tomb trilogy stars a character born literally six months before the beginning of the book, the eponymous Nona. Innocent and bursting with good will and curiosity, she’s a teacher’s aid at a school in a city on the verge of war against “zombies.” A birthday party gets ruined as a certain tomb is about to opened, and it’s a race against time and necromancy to figure out who, exactly, Nona is.

An entry into the quartet most interested in telling a story than stringing together memes and tropes, Nona by far is my favorite, because of the focus on characterization and literal ticking clock pacing. And the dog does not die (you’re welcome).

While Gideon the Ninth felt particularly invested in memes and Harrow being an exercise in the dissociation and disorientation that occurs as a result of trauma, Nona is the most straight forward as far as the plot and set-up go. Despite the uncertainty around Nona’s identity, it’s really easy to follow the plot beats and new character introductions. Nona herself is so endearing, and Muir immediately had me invested in the innocence and bluntness with which she navigates the world. The children in her school are absolute nightmares in the most authentically child-like way. The teens continue to be awful, both interpersonally and larger-scale plot things. The cast is dynamic with their own mini arcs addressing their needs from wanting to survive, wanting swear, and wanting to wreak as much chaos as possible (looking at you, Honesty).

The coolest thing on a sentence-level is how Muir manages to make her characters recognizable to the reader despite being complete strangers to the protagonist. It’s a combination of specific character details, from physical descriptions to nods to past events to present-day quirks in communication and trauma processing. It’s especially effective when characters are switching between entities occupying the same body. The way Muir balances unique characterization and cool necromancy shenanigans is so much fun, and adds much needed levity to the emotional trauma to come. I found myself feeling clever identifying the who’s who of the Dramatis Personae, and I think that’s intentional for the reading experience.

Moreover, there is so much fuckery when it comes to gender within these pages. Gender is a fluid thing among the necromancers and their cavaliers. Characters we knew as boys are in girl bodies, girls are in boy bodies, and there is one later reveal in which something new is created entirely. But it’s never treated as a plot device or a plot driver, and that’s really refreshing to me. The characters exist as they are, regardless their physical forms.

When I finished the final page, I immediately needed to know what’s next. You bet I’m bouncing in my seat for any news regarding the final entry, Alecto.

"What we know is that we don't know anything."

I had some complicated feelings coming out of this book, and while it is still phenomenally hysterical and genius, it's my least favorite of the series so far. That being said—I still gave this a 4/5 star review, so I'm being a bit melodramatic like Nona herself in describing my overhyped feelings leading into this new release.

"Come on, love. Guys as careful as me don't have accidents."

Hands down, Nona is the best part of this book. She has a child-like wonder with the world even amidst the chaos of impending zombies and rebellion drama. She is unlike ANY character that we’ve met before—a breath of fresh air honestly—and you’ll be questioning her and the entire cast for essentially 3/4 of the book. Whose side is anyone actually on? Who is Nona really? And most importantly—where the f**k are Harrow and Gideon?! As always, readers have to read between the lines to comprehend any of The Locked Tomb books. Although, I do think Nona is slightly easier than Harrow when it comes to comprehension. You’ll still be scratching your head and theorizing to the ends of the universe about this installment, so no worries there!

"Poor Ninth... imagine the hopes and fears of the whole universe contained in one dead little red star."

Probably the best part of this novel besides Nona is the level of history and backstory Tamsyn unfurls; it’s not completed by ANY means, but we’re starting to really understand what brought the world to this point. John takes a major role in this story through the Interludes that are sprinkled like breadcrumbs across the board. They were great glimpses into his psyche and past that only Nona herself could bring out into the open. Now this isn't a backstory point to the book, but Nona and entourage even live on a planet/ within a city that we’ve not interacted with before. The first two books center hard on the special individuals from every House or the Lyctor headquarters, so I loved getting to see a larger, regular setting. Basically, we get to see the civilians of this universe and Y'ALL I'm going to pray for their asses every night. This world is not kind to them at all! So, again, I loved the world expansion and history.

"Long time no drown. You're the one who bragged about spading my mum."

Moreover, Nona contains a plethora of surprises. A few times I had to shut the book and look around my space as if to say “did I read that right?” and “NOPE.” At one point, I even had to reread a dialogue sentence multiple times because I couldn't be reading this right; I just couldn't. The third reread of the sentence I almost threw my book against the wall too. Essentially, a lot has changed in this world with only a bit of time between books two and three, so you’ll be quite... aghast by each reveal.

In terms of my comment at the start of this review, Harrow the Ninth is still my favorite of the series (need to reread Gideon to be sure), and a big part of that involved me having issues with Nona the Ninth’s flow and pacing. Even when nothing action packed is going on, Harrow and Gideon’s plots felt fast paced and intense because every conversation meant a step closer to learning a new truth/ reality, very high stakes, but with Nona they’re a few points where the story slows to a lull. That’s not to say Nona’s conversations weren’t important to moving the story along, but the shift from Harrow to Nona is quite jarring in terms of pacing. I marathoned these books over the summer, so it's a unique situation to read them back to back.

"There's no skeleton like a home skeleton."

Overall, The Locked Tomb fans are going to eat this sequel up! It’s a great bridge to Alecto the Ninth, and I’m so upset that the wait begins for the finale. I just know it’s gonna be a heart wrencher!

"Get in line, thou big slut."

Thank you to Tordotcom for the finished copy. All thoughts & opinions are my own.

9/13: What the absolute f**k did I just read. Can I have Alecto the Ninth now please?!

I don't like amnesia books. In this one the main character Nona has amnesia. Nona is also childlike because of her unique beginning. If you've read the previous books in this series, it shouldn't be too hard to figure Nona out, but her limited viewpoint grated on me. There's a lot going on in the background of Nona's life, especially with her caregivers but Nona understands basically none of it and it wore me out trying to get around Nona's obliviousness to what was actually happening in the book.

Nona is CUTE. This is a trait of hers that I also found annoying.

I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth and got through Harrow the Ninth okay. After the first book, the interesting interaction between Gideon, Harrow, and the scions of other houses (which was what I liked the most) almost disappeared. Unfortunately, it does not make a reappearance in this book. The author is working very hard on a lot of tricks, but sadly for me those tricks weren't what I wanted.

There's also a second narrative strand in which the beginnings of the necromancer culture is explained (not entirely satisfactorily IMO, there's some important stuff and characters that don't make an appearance).

The author says she needed to write this book in order to get to Alecto. But I'm not sure I needed to read it in order to move on with the story. Sorry I can't don't hate me (pop culture reference inserted).

Horror and fantasy are genres that run together very well. Both can be done in just about any setting, from small towns to ancient cities to outer space. Nona the Ninth, the third book of Tamsyn Muir’s "The Locked Tomb" series, takes a break from the action established in the first two and brings us to focus upon none other than the new character of Nona: a seemingly ordinary girl who just wants a birthday party.

The only problem is zombies are laying siege to the world and the Emperor Undying is coming. Nona learns there is more to her and her life thanks to strange dreams of a woman with a face painted like a skull. In the world of “Locked Tomb,” readers have learned to expect the unexpected and to keep a close eye on even the most innocuous of beings.

The diversity of each book in the series plays to the strength of both the larger whole and the individual pieces. Nona is a unique voice and compelling character specifically because she is so ordinary with basic goals. Connecting to her is exceptionally simple, and the return of familiar faces that show new sides of themselves near her works strongly to the book’s favor. She is an ordinary girl going through absolute hell and must discover herself and the mysteries of her world if she is to come out through the other side.

Muir retains her talent for snappy dialogue and skilled description, as well as making the reader care about the people undergoing their trials. From Nona to her dog Noodle, the reader finds themselves unable to look away.

The stage is set for book four. Some are alive, some are dead, some are in between and the epic conclusion is dawning for Alecto the Ninth. Nona is a fantastic bridge to the end and a reminder that even the most dangerous in the universe are all too human.

You cannot be tuned-in to contemporary speculative fiction without having heard of Tamsyn Muir and the Locked Tomb series, often touted as “lesbian necromancers in space.” You would have to be under a bigger rock than the one which protects the Locked Tomb. Muir has developed a cult following that nearly rivals the cult of John Gaius, the deity of her books. The first two books in the Locked tomb series made the Hugo Awards short list, and the first, Gideon the Ninth, was a Nebula finalist as well.

The first two Locked Tomb books provoked surprise, hysterics, and more than a little delicious confusion among readers – but that was the point. Muir’s literary universe, full of bones, swords, betrayal, and metaphysical conflict, is a realm of curses, necromancers, and transmigrating consciousnesses where she weaves narratives of byzantine complexity that explore the richness and fluidity of identity and meaning. Her novels have kept readers rapt, and Nona the Ninth, the just-released third volume in the series, will not disappoint them.

Gideon reads like a Gothic novel set in space with a codependent sapphic enemies-to-lovers narrative at its core and a devastating conclusion. Harrow the Ninth stymied readers from its first page. It is written almost entirely in second person (it begins “your room had long ago plunged into near-complete darkness…”) and is dramatically different in tone from the fast-paced and irreverent first installment, plumbing the depths of grief and love in all of the myriad ways in which it can manifest. Nona the Ninth is just as hallucinogenically baffling.

The very existence of the book came as a shock: readers were bracing for a reveal of a pivotal character in the long-promised Alecto the Ninth, and Muir’s fanbase erupted when an e-book copy of one of the previous installments revealed Nona as the third, but not final, book of what was meant to be a trilogy. The teasers were also vague and strange, promising birthday parties and dogs and a lovable main character. But how does a very good dog and a heartwarming protagonist fit into Muir’s dark fantasies?

When Nona opens, the title character does not really know who she is, and neither do her compatriots, Pyrrha Dve, cavalier Camilla Hect, and necromancer Palamedes Sextus, each inhabiting bodies that are not their own. Indeed, it becomes clear early on that Nona herself is in the body of Harrowhark Nonagesimus from the first two novels, and this is just the kind of narrative weirdness that brings such depth and richness to Nona the Ninth.

Nona, Camilla, Palamades, and Pyrrha live in a refugee settlement city on a planet hostile to necromancers, whom they call “zombies,” and, by extension cavaliers, labeled “minions.” This planet is a safehold of the Blood of Eden, a rebel group opposed to necromancers and especially to John Gaius, the necrolord of the Nine Planets. They are well-aware of Nona: they seem to be waiting for her to be their deliverance, and they work begrudgingly with Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes towards this end… but Nona is still growing up.

She seems to be somewhat aware that Camilla and Palamedes are minion and zombie but, with a child’s sense of how to keep home things safe, she does not reveal this knowledge. Also, Nona has an important job watching after the six-legged dog Noodle, who belongs to their science teacher whom they call the Angel, and she loves her gang of misfits.

Nona’s gang is headed by Hot Sauce, a tough teenager covered in mysterious burn scars, who gets into some very shady goings-on. Hot Sauce and the rest of the gang have accepted Nona as one of their own by dint of her sheer stupidity and, after all, she charms everyone she meets.

These nearly pastoral scenes (if reports from a war zone can be called pastoral) are interspersed with Nona’s dreams, where John Gaius, the God-Emperor, speaks to her, not really to her, but to her as Harrow. Keeping up? No, me neither. These chapters are perhaps the most straightforward ones Muir has ever written, offering backstory on how the Houses and the Empire came to be, but providing yet more confusion regarding who Nona could be.

Nona is narrated in the third person from Nona’s somewhat complex perspective, and the book is divided into “Days Until the Tomb Opens.” Given that the fact of the Locked Tomb’s perpetual closure is pivotal to the existence of Muir’s characters – or so they believe – this is already an exciting teaser. And even though Nona inhabits Harrow’s nineteen-year-old body, she has only been conscious in it for about six months at the start of the novel, and there is something pure about her even with veiled references to the “tantrums” she can throw which, it seems, are deadly.

Then, about 75 percent of the way through the novel, comes Muir’s signature plot twist. I won’t spoil it, but I can assure you that this Constant Reader screamed loud enough to disturb her cat. I can say that the last quarter of the book flies by with a constant whiplash between expectations and reaction, and once again leaves readers with more questions than answers.

Readers who loved and missed the cheeky tone of Gideon throughout the mournful Harrow will be satisfied with the style of Nona, which includes ass jokes and enough gallows humor to hurt, and those who appreciated the long-con head-game that Muir played in Harrow will also be pleased with the existential overload of this volume. Nona plays its own role within the series by expanding Muir’s necroverse well beyond the bounds readers thought it contained, and also expounds upon the far-reaching connotations of grief and love not just interpersonally, but within communities.

I went into Nona the Ninth unsure of how it could possibly measure up to the previous two books in the series. Within a page, my reservations were swept away. It will be a long year until the finale, scheduled to be released by Tor in 2023, so it’s a good thing these books have excellent re-read value and payoffs for those who want to go back and revisit what seemed simple because there’s no book hangover like a Tamsyn Muir book hangover, and the only cure is more hair of the six-legged dog.

Nona The Ninth will be incomprehensible to anyone who has not read the preceding volumes of the Locked Tomb series; it will be barely more legible to those who have been devoted followers of Muir’s necroverse and its inhabitants from the start. Readers should not expect to pick this book up and expect to backtrack.

If you would like to join in on these escapades, go to to your nearest local bookstore and prepare to buckle in for a ride while picking up Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, and count yourself lucky that Nona is out for you to immediately follow up the devastating confusion of Harrow with, instead of waiting for ages like the rest of us. Of course, you will have a new agony of waiting for the fourth book – the long-promised Alecto the Ninth – but at least we will all be in this together, one big confused family.

It is, unfortunately, pretty clear that Nona could have been a very solid first third of Alecto the Ninth rather than needing to be its own book. It’s easy to imagine the story of Nona as a brief scene-changing interlude starring a character who—in contrast to Gideon and Harrow—loves unabashedly and broadly, who understands on an instinctual level that love is her reason for existence. It’s quite easy to imagine this hypothetical Nona vignette as a hundred-page digression as we hurtle towards an apocalyptic conclusion wherein Gideon and Harrow will, ostensibly, sort their nonsense out amidst the end of all worlds—and it would have been as bold and as dazzling as Muir’s dedication to telling almost all of Harrow the Ninth in the second person.

Nona as its own book, however, seems more often than not to be spinning its wheels until all the necessary pieces are in place for a grand finale. From the writer of the masterpiece of marrying form and theme that is Harrow the Ninth, I would have appreciated the place setting feeling a lot less obvious. Despite the ticking clock heralded by each section heading—counting down from five days until the Tomb opens—the first few sections feel episodic, downright lackadaisical, with very little bearing on what happens as the story goes on. Nona’s school friends are amusing, as Muir has a facility for sketching out juvenile characters, making as simultaneously wise and as immature as children are in real life—that is, capturing their inherent contradictions with wit and verve. However, the amount of attention given to them—and to Nona’s world—ultimately feels less integral to the plot of Nona as the story continues. The last few sections of Nona the Ninth feel less like organic reveals or the results of adequately-explored consequences than one mad rush to get from each major crowd-pleasing set piece to the next.

Most disappointingly, on a formal level Nona at times suffers from what I guess I could call MCU-ization: the sense that amidst action and intrigue and some very moving speeches, very little of lasting consequence has actually happened. Somehow, in a series where the status quo and agreed-upon reality changes from chapter to chapter, the book ends largely where it began—and, even more unfortunately, in a place not all that different from where Harrow the Ninth ended.

The world of this Catholic-inspired empire of literal death has continued following the attempt on God’s life by one of his Saints; the plot of the series seemingly has moved on in the background and the world has become a bit richer, a bit more filled in. However, the emotional (and life-or-death) repercussions of the events of previous two books—how everything has actually affected Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus—have been seemingly dropped (hopefully to be properly picked up during Alecto the Ninth. Gideon died at the end of Gideon the Ninth; however, her soul’s preservation within Harrow during Harrow the Ninth meant that she eventually did reemerge within the narrative as a subject rather than a memory, and we as readers were graced with her presence, her vivacity, her commentary, her begrudging and devotional love for Harrow. We experienced Harrow’s psyche—her guilt, her endless self-recrimination, her labyrinthine sense of self—in Harrow the Ninth as well. Essentially, we have spent entire books with these characters as they have grown to understand some part of the world around them as well as their places (rightful or otherwise) within it. Barring the kind of resurrections (literal or figurative) that Harrow the Ninth blessed numerous side characters from Gideon the Ninth with, very little that happens to Nona will likely actually matter in Alecto the Ninth. Nona—the girl who is charming and warm and tender, who is as “dumb as a bag of hair,” who loves her family of Camilla and Palamedes and Pyrrha but also every random dog on the street—may be the character equivalent of a filler episode, and that is a shame.

Most of my disappointment with Nona the Ninth is in its execution—in how Muir expresses its themes through story beats as opposed to the necessity of their expression. Nona seems ultimately less important as a character than as a vehicle for the kinds of questions this series wants readers to ponder. “You will love Nona, and Nona loves you.” Nona the book, through Nona the girl, asks us to consider how Gideon and Harrow and the other Locked Tomb series conceive of love, and how they act on it, and ultimately what it means to love at all. If you love someone, what does it mean? What will you give up for them? What won’t you give up for them? What does it mean to be loved completely?

In Nona the Ninth, Nona doesn’t even know who she is, but knows how to love—completely and unselfishly and without ulterior motive, suspicion, or transaction. Nona’s love for Camilla Hect feels instinctive, like breathing air; at one point, she thinks about how meeting Camilla—symbolically and literally—marked the moment of her “birth” as Nona. If Gideon the Ninth is about love as sacrifice, and Harrow the Ninth is about love as perseverance, then Nona the Ninth is about a less earth-shattering and life-ending form of love—the ordinary, everyday love that makes Nona happy to have been alive for all of six months. It’s about loving people as they are—how they move, how they hug you and kiss you and smile for you and teach you and care for you—without needing to know anything else. If Nona the character can teach Gideon and Harrow anything, it’s the importance of that kind of love in a universe that is crumbling. Perhaps we can also learn a lot from Nona.

I am continually astounded by these books. Like, they fit into no rigid categories and exist outside of space and time.

<i>Nona the Ninth</i> is both prequel and sequel - unique as Nona herself. I'm glad Muir decided to give Nona her own book; it would have been hard to understand her whole story as either an interlude or flashback or novella.

I love that this book is a little easier to follow than its predecessors, but there is still SO MUCH to be found between the lines.

Nona is lovable and I instantly fell for her. I can't wait to see her return in <i>Alecto</i>.

Nona the Ninth is hitting end-caps at B&N and Kindles today, and while this review won’t spoil it, I will let the whole world know that I know how it ends already.

And I’m still confused. The Locked Tomb series is infamously hard to unriddle, and Nona doesn’t bother to make that any easier, even while the narrative proves to be the easiest of the series so far.

What Happened Before
Gideon the Ninth was a space-opera enema, straight up your insides without warning and leaving you washed out in the end. Helmed by an incomparable narrator who is the hook, the line and the sinker of the series, the titular Gideon tells the story of a cohort of elite necromancers chosen to riddle out the intricacies of rising to near immortal omnipotence in service of the Prince Undying, the Necrolord Prime, God. What unfolds is a murder mystery on a severe and remote pseudo-planet mansion that guts readers with a truncated love story that ends in sacrifice.

Harrow the Ninth was a liminally-spaced-out, free-bleeding wound of grief that didn’t heal throughout the entire novel and left you feeling weak and wondering if you’d ever recover. The narrator is so unreliable that she cannot be trusted to tell her own story, and first time readers spend the entire book trying to figure out what in the holy hell they are missing. But somewhere in the last act of Harrow, when Harrow herself takes a backseat for a good portion of the good stuff, the picture starts to coalesce into something we can see, something we can touch: an invective of dying rules and rules about dying, with an epilogue and a cliffhanger that you want to murder.

What’s Happening Now

And here we come to Nona. This one is no enema, no open wound; it’s a coma. The novel works as an interlude, a dreamscape where the characters are the same, and never the same, where the story is recognizable but the rules have changed, the footing, slippery. Originally slated to be the first act in the final installment of The Locked Tomb, author Tamsyn Muir decided to give us a whole novel full of Nona, somehow the least decipherable narrator in a sea of unreliable narrators.

Nona is effectively an infant in Harrow’s body who is being taken care of by two-to-three important characters from the earlier novels while they are planet-side in a dirty and downtrodden city. With no recollection of who she is, or who her body is, the fundamental stakes of the book come down to readers figuring out who Nona is. This makes every mundane interaction, every personal quirk, every physical tick of Nona’s a hard fought clue into her identity, and that effort makes the reader grateful that the narrative is so straightforward.

Forget the elaborate world-building of Gideon the Ninth. Toss out the labyrinthine relationships of Harrow. Nona is simple. And there were times reading it where I wanted the complexity. Feeling like I was constantly missing something because I was missing nothing was like being subjected to Jod-level gaslighting. (And don’t even get me started on what his ass is doing in this novel. I see you, John.)

But the simplicity of Nona (the character) IS the greatest riddle of The Locked Tomb. Never before have we had a character so precious, so easy to love, so ingratiating. She bounds through her smallish world with eagerness and curiosity whilst knowing all the while that she might be the only one to unlock something wholly sinister.

Make no mistake. Readers will fall in love with Nona. But I guarantee that when they are done with her, they will desire Alecto all the more.

Nona the Ninth hits shelves TODAY, September 13th.
Go fall in love with her.
Thanks to Tor Publishing for the digital review copy of Nona the Ninth.

Nona woke up one day about six months ago in a stranger’s body. It took her some time, but she’s become almost normal. She has a job at a local school, she lives with Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes, who she considers her family.

But the city she lives in is under siege, and a huge blue sphere hangs over the city, and a faction called the Blood of Eden want Nona to be the one who will save them from the Nine Houses. But Nona just wants to live an ordinary life with those she loves. Of course, this being the world of the Locked Tomb, there are shenanigans to be had!

I loved Nona’s story. Much like my experience with Harrow the Ninth, there was a good portion of this one that I had no idea what was really going on in the grand scheme of things, but like Harrow, this one also came together fantastically as it went to become a fantastic story.

Nona is a great character, vastly different from Gideon and Harrow, but still fun to read about. In many ways, she is like a child, but she still has moments of insight and maturity. It’s very easy to latch onto Nona and want the best for her.

If you loved Gideon and Harrow, you’re almost certain to love Nona too. I can’t wait for the next book. Finding out how this all ends is going to be fantastic.

I, quite honestly, had no idea what was going on through about 92% of this book. I've read Gideon the 9th and thoroughly enjoyed it. I read Harrow the 9th and was confused through most of it, but I had generally figured that was part of the point. So when I started Nona I was expected a little bit of confusion. But it was all confusion. I remember some of these names, but somehow in the time between reading the first two and reading Nona I either forgot some information, or you're just expected to be very confused for the entirety of your reading. A very small number of things were explained further in. And actual events occurring are very well narrated, generally explained and all that. I just don't understand how this book connects with the first two except through the most broad and useless of plot points.

But in the end, it was still absolutely gripping and I wanted to keep reading even if I had no idea what was actually happening through the entire thing, which is surely some kind of magic or something.

Also, Noodle is the absolute best.

The Locked Tomb series has been a masterclass in gradual world building. In Gideon, we come to know the Nine Houses and their inhabitants. In Harrow, we learn about the Mithraeum and God’s Lyctors. In Nona, we delve deeper into the Blood of Eden and learn what life is like outside of the Nine Houses. In keeping with tradition, Nona is a character much unlike the protagonist of the former book. She’s happy, she loves the people around her, and—largely—is clueless to the machinations of the world at large. She goes to school, she has friends, and she’s excited for her birthday party. Any details to the overarching plot of the series are picked up through overheard conversations and simplified explanations from her roommates.

Personally, I loved Nona (the book and the character) with my whole heart, though I believe nothing will ever top the experience of reading Harrow the Ninth for the first time. However, if you struggled with Harrow, you might find Nona more palatable. The book doesn’t gaslight the reader the way Harrow the Ninth does, and overall, it’s an easier read. Like in Harrow, Tamsyn releases the safety brake at the end of the story and you’ve got no option but to hold on for dear life. These characters are at their messiest and most beautiful and I love them all. My only lament is the wait for Alecto feels even longer now. In the meantime, I will continue recommending these books to absolutely everyone I know and making them suffer with me.

A confusing but delightful entry into the series. Am even more excited for the 4th book. Sometimes I get confused with the plots, and who is inside of who after a while. But I love Nona and the sunglasses

I really enjoyed this book, but I couldn’t tell you five things that happened it in. So it gives with Tamsyn Muir—her books are fun and incomprehensible. Nona the Ninth is sweet and endearing where Harrow was twisty and sharp, but if you’ve enjoyed the series so far, you’ll like this one. Just be prepared to turn to the internet for a synopsis to make sense of the wild ride.

Both a sequel and prequel, Nona the Ninth is easily the most entertaining book in this series to date. Nona is such a fun character and she's so easy to fall in love with. The writing in this one is also a lot easier to follow than previous books which I really liked. I completely understand why this book came to be the third book rather than Alecto. Overall, a super solid continuation of the series that fans will adore.

I always marvel at Tamsyn Muir's ability to weave humor, personality, and world-building into each new book she writes. Just like with the other books in the series, as a reader, I felt like I was about six steps behind at all times, but somehow, that just makes me enjoy the series even more. I love Nona.

Woof.

I’d wax poetic about how hard The Locked Tomb series is to review, but I fear that you’re probably tired of hearing that. So, we continue onwards. I had the profound luck to be granted access to an e-ARC of Nona the Ninth — Thank you, Tor.com. I love you forever. I had absolutely no idea what or where we were headed in this book. Way back when, Muir had announced (between Harrow and Nona) that The Locked Tomb was moving from a trilogy to a four book series. No one knew why, but I figured she had her reasons and I trusted her (and still do) to do what she needed to do to make this series as phenomenal as possible.

In terms of the series as a whole, Nona the Ninth is a bit of a side-quest, if you will. The main plot is present in this book, but it’s told in backflashes, dreams, and hinted at in whispers and behind closed doors by side characters. I have to be so careful about what I say as I do not and absolutely refuse to spoil what happens in this book. Muir once again knocks it out of the park with Nona the Ninth. You’ll be confused, but you’ll like it. And you will love Nona herself. She is an enormous cinnamon roll of a sweetheart wrapped up in innocence itself. As for characters from past books — they’re still present here, but a lot of them are presented in new ways. That’s all I can say there.

Nona the Ninth is a lot easier to follow than Harrow, but it’s not simple. Nothing about The Locked Tomb is simple, and I hope it never will be. This is a series you dive into and swim around in for awhile. This is a series that you’ll look up theories for online, and hope that maybe you’ve figured it out. This is a series that you’ll maybe need notes for, or a wiki up on another tab. It’s complicated, delicious, and so satisfying. Yes, you’ll have even more questions at the end of Nona, but oh what questions they’ll be. And, don’t worry, you’ll get answers. So, so many answers for the questions asked in Harrow and Gideon.

The ending of Nona is like if there was a train carrying fireworks going super super fast, and then it crashed in this huge spectacular crash, and absolutely none of the fireworks went off. (You’ll be standing there, watching the burning wreck, wondering shouldn’t they go off? Should I intervene, maybe? Should I call someone?) The ending of Nona will leave you questioning everything. Muir is a genius. A master at her craft. An author that will probably forever be an auto-buy author for me.