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Oct. 3rd, 2022 11:24 am
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
I recently reread Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, in part because Nona the Ninth was coming out and in part because I just wanted to see if I could understand them any better. And I did, so that was reassuring — these books really repay close reading. I also realized how cleverly Harrow was put together; some memories are false, some events are hallucinations, some people are lying, and the trick is separating what is real from what never happened. I was ready, I thought; bring on the new book! And then I read it…
And we’re pretty much starting over. There’s a new setting, the planet of the Sixth House. Nona is new as well — or is she? She seems to have become conscious about six months ago, though she appears older than that. She’s being helped, “raised” in a sense, by three people, the necromancer and cavalier of the Sixth House, Palamedes and Camilla Hect, and Pyrrha Dve, the Emperor’s lover. Or there are only two people; Camilla and Palamedes are time-sharing Camilla’s body, though neither one is conscious while the other person is in charge. Muir shows how tragic this is; they have a true necromancer-cavalier bond, each respecting and admiring the other, each with talents the other needs. But they are unable to communicate, and the only way they can connect is by taking turns to record their thoughts or write them down.
In fact Muir expands her range a lot in this book. Nona is nothing like the power-hungry or unhappy people we’ve seen in the earlier books. She’s a child thrilled by the world, excited by everything, in love with everyone. She is wonderfully believable despite the fact that she lives in a kind of hellhole, with slums and food shortages and gangs, and in addition to all of that a blue Resurrection Beast is hovering in the sky, causing some people to go mad.
But who is she? The other inhabitants of the household seem to think she might be Harrow, and they keep a close watch on her and ask her questions about her dreams. Meanwhile everyone has an agenda, and Nona, with only a few months of experience, is unsure who she can trust. Not because she thinks they might harm her, but because she loves all of them.
As with Harrow, there’s a section in second person, where John Gaius, also known as God, tells his story to … someone. I very much liked getting some explanations for a change, instead of more mysteries.
Because I have to admit I didn’t understand parts of this book either. I was pretty sure some of these characters had died in earlier books, and yet here they are, if not alive then managing to hang on in some way, like Camilla and Palamedes. Others are, as Miracle Max says in The Princess Bride, “only mostly dead.” What happened to them? How did they get to that point? Guess I’ll have to reread this one too, probably around when Alecto the Ninth comes out.
And we’re pretty much starting over. There’s a new setting, the planet of the Sixth House. Nona is new as well — or is she? She seems to have become conscious about six months ago, though she appears older than that. She’s being helped, “raised” in a sense, by three people, the necromancer and cavalier of the Sixth House, Palamedes and Camilla Hect, and Pyrrha Dve, the Emperor’s lover. Or there are only two people; Camilla and Palamedes are time-sharing Camilla’s body, though neither one is conscious while the other person is in charge. Muir shows how tragic this is; they have a true necromancer-cavalier bond, each respecting and admiring the other, each with talents the other needs. But they are unable to communicate, and the only way they can connect is by taking turns to record their thoughts or write them down.
In fact Muir expands her range a lot in this book. Nona is nothing like the power-hungry or unhappy people we’ve seen in the earlier books. She’s a child thrilled by the world, excited by everything, in love with everyone. She is wonderfully believable despite the fact that she lives in a kind of hellhole, with slums and food shortages and gangs, and in addition to all of that a blue Resurrection Beast is hovering in the sky, causing some people to go mad.
But who is she? The other inhabitants of the household seem to think she might be Harrow, and they keep a close watch on her and ask her questions about her dreams. Meanwhile everyone has an agenda, and Nona, with only a few months of experience, is unsure who she can trust. Not because she thinks they might harm her, but because she loves all of them.
As with Harrow, there’s a section in second person, where John Gaius, also known as God, tells his story to … someone. I very much liked getting some explanations for a change, instead of more mysteries.
Because I have to admit I didn’t understand parts of this book either. I was pretty sure some of these characters had died in earlier books, and yet here they are, if not alive then managing to hang on in some way, like Camilla and Palamedes. Others are, as Miracle Max says in The Princess Bride, “only mostly dead.” What happened to them? How did they get to that point? Guess I’ll have to reread this one too, probably around when Alecto the Ninth comes out.
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