#also nona is terrifying

[artiswhatartdoes]

Anyone else rereading the entire locked tomb trilogy for angst fun? No? Cool, me neither……….

[familyabolisher]

i mean the thing about the locked tomb is, That, it is literally about lolita by vladimir nabokov

[winepresswrath]

so if john is running around the galaxy ripping the fingers from his very hands (sacrificing lyctors to the resurrection beasts) and if that only works because he loves them, really truly loves them, and if he also loves Gideon, tries to do his best by her, show up for her, and if God is looking for something that will satisfying them, and if God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son/prince/daughter how bad is the martyring gonna get.

[maypearlss]

every addition i make to the plot just makes duke sadder and also so much worse.

[notvaleri]

favourite underrated part of the locked tomb is how in gideon, everyone fights w swords and magic, so we the audience are just like, okay this is how things are in this universe, there are no guns, it’s all swords and magic, neat! and then in harrow, wake has a gun, but every non-lyctor who sees wake’s gun considers it a weird and ancient weapon, so we the audience are like, okay so there used to be guns in this universe. and the characters are vaguely aware of what they are, but they’ve become pretty much obsolete, which gives wake’s ghost this terrifying old-school vibe, cool!... 

and then we come to nona, and everyone and also their mother has a gun, and we the audience are like, oh. we’ve been seeing all this through the aristocratic space catholic sword-and-magic cultists who are only a small and also kind of brainwashed part of what’s going on in this universe, and there’s been a whole gritty, grounded space dystopia going on this entire time with absolutely fascinating worldbuilding, political, and urban warfare elements, neat! but the whole time nona is only interested in patting everyone’s dogs. 

[talaricula]

I'm seeing lots of speculation in the wake of the unwanted guest about whether absorbing Loveday's soul is what made Cytherea snap and sure, I see the theory, but personally as a cancer survivor I have never ever questioned why Cytherea snapped

Cancer is an existentially terrifying, often debilitatingly painful and/or exhausting illness, that, if not cured, takes over your body bit by bit, gets into the highly essential bits which increases the suffering and/or fundamentally changes you as a person, makes you extremely vulnerable and dependent on others, and almost inevitably kills you unless you get it when you're old enough and die of old age first instead. Its treatment is often just as painful and exhausting as the illness, or even more so, and doesn't always work. When you have cancer, there are two ways out: being cured (preferable) or, when that is not an option, deciding for yourself when you have reached the point where the suffering is so bad and the outlook so non existent that you would rather die now rather than later after even more and worse suffering.

And John took both of those options away from Cytherea and from her entire line of descendants. When he had the option to cure them all all along. Idk about y'all but the revelation in Nona that John could cure cancer was the number one earth shattering realisation for me. He did this to her, and to the entire Seventh House, on purpose.

This is the first giant betrayal to me. For generation after generation, for TEN THOUSAND YEARS, this man let the heirs of the Seventh House be sick for functionally their entire lives, likely starting in childhood, go through an incalculable amount of painful and exhausting experimental treatments bc he didn't even bring modern medicine into his New Order, and die in their twenties or thirties at best, when he could have STOPPED THIS ALL ALONG with little more effort than snapping his fingers.

Second big betrayal is towards Cytherea herself, but basically the same point : he could have cured her at any time. Before she became Lyctor, possibly, since we're not sure how static Lyctor bodies are, but Mercy's powers, Harrow's lobotomy and Ianthe's arm suggest that it would have been an option afterwards too. And he didn't. He let her have cancer for TEN THOUSAND years without curing her. And he calls himself her friend. Absolutely fuck that bastard.

Third big betrayal is the same betrayal that he inflicts on all the other Lyctors, but imo worse bc of Cytherea's illness. It seems from the books that Lyctors are, if obv not functionally immortal, at least Very Difficult to kill. Consequently, John demands Cytherea's loyalty not only in the form of killing the person she loves the most in the world, but in the very same act, in the form of cutting off the One escape route she has left out of the suffering he's purposefully keeping her in. In short, he takes the one person away from her who she perhaps doesn't resent depending on and, in the same act, makes it A Lot more difficult for her to choose euthanasia. (There's meta in this about the deeply realistic and also Terrifying ableism of John "admits openly that he'll pay any price so the people he loves can't leave him" making his sick friend dependent on him by keeping her sick, taking away her (arguable) main caretaker and cutting her off from the option of leaving him by dying.)

And at the same time that the other Lyctors realise John's betrayal re: their cavaliers, Cytherea potentially realises ALL OF THIS. TEN THOUSAND years of suffering, of seeing her House suffer, on top of losing the person she cares about the most, and ALL OF IT was avoidable, and not just avoidable but EASY TO AVOID? Is it any wonder she went on a rampage to bring down John and everything he cared about and had worked towards, and that she didn't care about dying at the end (or, perhaps, was even counting on that outcome)? I had cancer (as an aware adult) for a year in the best imaginable circumstances and am still fucked up about almost a decade later. After TEN THOUSAND YEARS and learning there had been another option all along, I'd have done WAY WORSE than Cytherea. I really don't think she needed to absorb anyone's soul to get there. It is, in my opinion, a deeply understandable and realistic reaction.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Review

firstly, i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in and encouraged me in doing these liveblogs! this has been such a fun project to work on, and reading these books for the past nine months or so has been a bright spot in what has otherwise been a relatively tough period of my life. i’ve really enjoyed getting to theorise about all of the lore of these books and make horribly ill-advised emotional attachments to inevitably doomed characters

more fun statistics that no one asked for: this liveblog was the longest, at about 20,000 (!!) words. my GtN liveblog was 12000 words for comparison. i have no excuse other than i like to talk

NtN definitely was an interesting diversion from the other two books so far. it wasn’t exactly a breather, since it was still incredibly heartbreaking and horrifying, but it was fun to see a part of the worldbuilding very different from what we’ve seen before. as much as I missed both Harrow and Gideon, i liked that it gave other characters time to shine outside of interacting with them. it was fun to see more of Palamedes, Camilla, and Pyrrha, and how those characters act in a vastly different environment to the Nine Houses

although NtN was essentially telling two different narratives, John chapters vs Nona’s, it still didn’t feel particularly disjointed - i think it was thematically held together by being a bit more grounded than the other books so far, sci-fi and fantasy elements notwithstanding (contemporary issues like climate change and nuclear war, & John’s world being a setting far closer to our own vs Nona’s domestic life & very real problems of living in a warzone)

i also loved getting John’s perspective in the chapters narrated by Harrow, his point of view and recollections were equal parts funny, terrifying, and fascinating. he’s certainly got a … unique perspective on the world. it was just a slow horrifying journey trying to figure out how the world ended, knowing that it was doomed but not exactly how it happened

Muir really has a talent for endearing you to a protagonist, and Nona was no exception, I absolutely loved her, and just, her whole story and how tragic it was physically hurt me. i also wasn’t expecting to get as attached as i was to Hot Sauce and the school gang - i hope we get just even just a mention of what happens to them in AtN

tldr: 11/10. reading this series is like the emotional equivalent of voluntarily getting stabbed in the heart repeatedly. i have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do with my life now that this is over for the meantime, other than go crazy in a locked room with a red string conspiracy board trying to figure out whats going to happen in Alecto the Ninth

speaking of, obviously its not a pressing issue since to my knowledge there isn’t even a release date yet, but i’m not sure if i’ll do a liveblog for Alecto when it comes out? on one hand the most fun bit about liveblogging has been the reaction from everyone who’s already read the books and we’ll all be in the same boat of not knowing what’s going on when Alecto comes out, so i don’t know how much of a point there is? on the other i would very much enjoy doing it anyway, and i’m a perfectionist so it would be nice to have completed all of the books like that. so i guess it depends on how impatient i am to read the whole book when it comes out lol

[nonas-third-tantrum]

I’m trying to figure out when exactly Pyrrha realized that Nona was Alecto. I had been thinking that it was after Kiriona woke up, because at that point Pyrrha would have understood that Nona’s eyes came from Alecto, not Gideon, but I think it may have actually been a bit earlier…

After the fight between Ianthe and Cam, when Pyrrha and Nona go off to find the corpse, Nona tells Pyrrha that she’s dying, and Pyrrha says, “‘Course you are…the soul longs for the body, Nona. Even a fucked up soul…even a soul that’s been changed forever. It takes a lot to acclimate a soul to a body it wasn’t born in, if that original body’s around for it to miss.”

Now, she could still be talking about Gideon. BUT something about the way she phrases this, with the “fucked up soul that’s been changed forever” …feel free to disagree but to me that sounds a heck of a lot like Alecto. I think it’s possible that Pyrrha has even worked out Alecto’s true nature, so when she refers to the ‘original body’ she could be talking about the planet earth itself.

Pyrrha goes on to say, “Kiddie, when you were yelling…” but she trails off and doesn’t get to finish her sentence. We know that Nona “screamed like the captain had screamed.” We also know that when the captain screams, Nona hears her speaking in varun’s voice, and it’s interesting that Pyrrha describes it as yelling, not screaming, which to mean indicates that Nona may have said something. Something that alerts Pyrrha to the fact that Nona is not who they’ve all been thinking she is.

Yes - Pyrrha does say within the next couple of pages that Gideon’s body “might be you, kiddie.” But I don’t think that necessarily means she doesn’t at least suspect that Nona is someone else. I know the rest of that scene heavily implies that Pyrrha still thinks Nona is Gideon…but I’m suspicious. I think what she wants to believe and what she knows to be true might not match up.

This post is getting away from me but I just have to add that after the roof incident, both Nona and Pyrrha know who she is, and Nona is desperate to keep herself in the dark. Pyrrha starts to call Nona “A…” but Nona stops her and begs her not to make her remember. And then Nona slips into her Alecto self, and mocks Pyrrha for playing house with her (hello, more doll references), and that must absolutely break Pyrrha’s heart, but she lets it go.

So when Pyrrha finally says her “what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?” speech, she’s reckoning with her feelings towards both Nona and Alecto, has probably been wrestling with those feelings for a while, and it’s just. So devastating. Pyrrha loved Nona. Nona loved and was loved by Palamedes, Camilla, and Pyrrha.

But Alecto? Nona is terrified that when she realizes who she is, she won’t love anything. We know that John loved Alecto, and I think we can infer that Anastasia did too, and Alecto loved them back. But then Pyrrha tells us that she and Gideon liked Alecto, and for some reason that feels even more significant to me—maybe because there are all kinds of twisted love in these books and to like someone, while less intense, is more…mundane. There aren’t a lot of instances in these books where people just like each other, plain and simple. And I think that the love everyone has for Nona is a lot less complicated than the other types of love we’re shown. Truly a like that’s been invited indoors.

[quantumcartography]

Daniel and The Uninvited Guest

PALAMEDES     (As if reciting) “And her body was like the chrysolite, and her face as the appearance of lightning, and her eyes as a burning lamp: and her arms, and all downward even to the feet, like in appearance to glittering brass.”

I was writing about something else entirely when I dug into the context of this quote and it rocked my whole socks. Context for those who don’t remember it: in this scene, the Voice that Palamedes has been talking to finally reveals herself as Dulcinea. After admitting his love for her and promising to find her on the shores of the River, he asks to see her “for the first time and the last.” He then has a light shone on him and he recites this quote from Daniel 10:6. After that, she asks if she was cute and Pal responds “You’re perfect.”

I am, needless to say, obsessed with this scene.

Now, the book of Daniel is one of apocalyptic prophecy (apocalypse here meaning a truth being revealed to a person by way of a divine source.) At this point in the Bible, the Jews have been captured from Israel by the Babylonians and have been displaced into Babylonian territory. The book recounts the visions of prophet Daniel that allude to the eventual restoration of the Jewish people to their homelands under the reign of Cyrus the Great. In Daniel 10 specifically, Daniel is mourning for Israel by fasting for three weeks when he is visited by an angel who tells him that he is fighting to return him and his people to their homeland. Daniel 10:6 is a description of this angel, who in the passage isn’t called an angel but vaguely referred to as a “certain man.” Only Daniel can see this certain man but all the men around him are gripped by fear and run away and even Daniel was terrified throwing himself face down and trembling at the sight of this certain man.

As a quick aside, I learned something from the magnificent Dan McClellan, a biblical scholar who is very active on TikTok and YouTube, about angels in the Old Testament. He recently posted a video discussing this in detail but I will try and do it justice. The theory among biblical scholars is that many instances where angels are present in the Old Testament were originally instances of God themself appearing before a person. That’s why these excerpts have people seemingly talking directly to God and why these angels inspire such fear because it’s assumed the only time a person would see God is when they die.

So this quote in this context, is when Palamedes is stuck inside the body of Naberius Tern and fighting against Ianthe’s soul for control. The reason why he’s doing this is to hopefully find a safe place for the Sixth House after spending months being held by Blood of Eden as political captives. While in this fight with Ianthe, he’s helped and supported by the soul of Dulcinea who he describes looking like an angel. Not an angel in terms of beauty or grace, but as unassailably powerful, perfect and righteous as dawn's first light, a face made of precious gems that cannot be cut and a body made of brass like the finest armor. This is a form untouchable by flaw or fault.

The two narratives have clear parallels. They are stories about a people's restoration and salvation. And since this takes place in the middle of Nona the Ninth, the connotation is clear that he will live to see his people saved and returned home. And he does, he becomes Paul and they guide their people back to the Dominicus system. But this also underscores just how much he loves her. He loves Dulcinea like an angel. He loves her like a homecoming. He loves her like a vision of rapture in the wasted desert of his enemy. He loves her like the promised end of death itself. He loves her like the indelible weight that love brings on one's soul.

[llovelyclouds]

notes on alecto

hii!! so a few months ago i did a full reread of the locked tomb and took note of anything i thought seemed particularly relevant. I want to share what I have but I'm not sure exactly how i want to format everything quite yet- but im just gonna go for it so bear with me if its a little disorganized!

throughout the process i've started coming up with some of my own theories, but i thought it would be cool to post everything i've compiled, so people could use that to make their own conclusions as well :D

I have sections for anything that seemed important about all the original lyctors & their cavaliers, so I'm going to start off with all my information gathered about alecto! buckle in, folks, there's a lot :-)

you can find links to the other posts in the project here!

(also ofc spoilers for the up to the end of nona ahead!)

ALECTO

titles:

Also referred to as “A.L.”, “Annabel Lee,”or “Annie Laurie”  John’s cavalier, the soul of the Earth. (And of course, nona <;3)

Annabel Lee poem  (mentioned htn. pg. 196)

Annie Laurie poem (mentioned htn. pg. 345)

notes from harrow the ninth:

Harrow's psychosis seems to begin after seeing Alecto for the first time (htn. pg. 51)

Augustine describes her as "more lucid" than Mercy as an insult to Mercy (htn. pg 168)

"'God, who did you bury?' [...] 'I buried a monster,' he said." (htn. pg. 195)

(depending on how much of The Body is real) Agrees that Harrow should kill G1dieon (htn. pg. 226)

“Augustine said, ‘To sisters, and to the women we‘ve left behind.’ God’s mouth was cheerful as ever, but his eyes were not when he said, 'Do I have to drink to that?’ For the first time, you were witness to the Saint of Patience discombobulated. ‘Apologies, John. Wasn’t meant as a jab.’ ‘It doesn’t hurt anymore- most of the time,’ said God, and he was still smiling.” (htn. Pg. 277)

"Even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck… and the disciples were scared! I cannot blame them! I was terrified! But when the work was done- when I was finished, and so were they, and the new Lyctors found out the price- they bade him kill the saltwater creature before she could do them harm… Oh, but it is a tragedy, to be put in a box and laid to wait for the rest of time." - Teacher (htn. pg. 328)

Says she has to go away for a while immediately after Varun appears (htn. pg. 334)

John says that G1deon doesn’t talk about her, but Augustine and Mercy still feel guilty about what happened (htn. pg. 345)

“When I first met her I just called her First, One. She had a real name, but I buried it with her, and nobody says it anymore.” - John (htn. Pg. 345)

“Annabel Lee was my- what do I call her? Guide? Friend? I’d hope so… [...] She was the first Resurrection. She was my Adam. As the dust settled and I beheld what was left and what was gone, I was entirely alone. The world had been ended, Harrowhark. One moment I was a man, and the next moment I was the Necrolord Prime, the first necromancer, and more importantly, a landlord with no tenants. [...] I was dazed… I was bewildered… and she was my defender and my sole companion, and my colleague in the scholarship of learning how to live again. It was bloody difficult. I had never been God. [...] She lived to see what happened at Canaan House. Not that she took much interest. My first Resurrection was not a normal human being, Harrow, and she struggled to pretend. Anger was her besetting sin. We had that in common. And when the cost of Lyctorhood was paid, when the emotions were at their peak… we found out the price for our sin. The monstrous retribution. To be chased for our crime to the ends of the universe, to have our deed stain our very faces and follow after us like a foul smell. She died after that first terrible assault.” - John (htn. pg. 346)

"That freak would have gone for me already… she could never act human." -Mercymorn (htn. pg. 408)

the lyctors knew some amount of truth about Alecto's resurrection, likely that shes essentially a resurrection beast (htn. pg. 478)

"'A monster, John!' Augustine barked. "She was a bloody monster in a human suit! She was a monster the moment you resurrected her, and then you went and made her worse!'" - Augustine (htn. pg. 478)

Gideon & Pyrrha liked Alecto despite the fact that the other lyctors (at least Mercy and Augustine) didn't (htn. pg. 479)

One of the reasons the lyctors wanted her dead was because the RBs were partially coming for her (htn. pg. 479)

Appears to claim Harrow's body after Gideon "dies" in the river (htn. pg. 500)

notes from nona the ninth

"Sometimes, [...] I don't like when you do- the necromancy word- [...] -but it feels nice at the same time. It's mixed up. It's like when you do that, it makes me sad- not sad that you did it, but sad that you can do it." - Nona, to Palamades (ntn. pg. 65) 

"Nona loved the blue sphere as much as she loved everything else. She, and nobody else, could hear it sing." (ntn. pg. 125)

"'And I'm not scared of dying. Really truly, Cam, I'm not…' 'Why not?' said Camilla. Nona thought about it. 'Because I like letting go of the pull-up bars and falling off,' she said. 'I don't like the part just before you let go and I don't like the part where you hit the floor, but I like the letting go.'"- Nona and Cam (ntn. pg. 125)

"Dust of my dust- such similar star salt- what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill- we see you still- we seek you still- we murdered- we who murder- you inadvertent tool- you misused green thing- come back to us- take vengeance for us- we saw you- we see you- I see you." - Judith, (as Varun) to Nona (ntn. pg. 164)

Nona likes Gideon's (originally Pyrrhas?? maybe?) sunglasses, but only so long as nobody wore them (ntn. pg. 165)

"then she told herself sternly, Stop it! If she was going to do it, she thought, she might as well do it. She had some vague notion that when you committed to a thing you had to do it all the way. Who had said that to her? Who had taught her that? Once you've stepped in, said the voice in the back of her head, you're in. This isn't the Hokey Pokey. She had remembered something- she had finally remembered something! Only she didn't have anyone to tell." (ntn. pg. 203)

"Nona had thrown exactly two tantrums in her entire life. She couldn't remember anything about the first one, but Pyrrha had told her about it. Pyrrha had been laughing with her mouth, but not with her eyes: her eyes had been very brown and distant and uneasy, as though this tantrum had reminded Pyrrha of something her brain didn't want to bring back." (ntn. pg. 275)

"'But you see, Palamades, I don't mind dying,' said Nona, trying to make him understand. 'I've been doing it for ages. I'm not scared.'" (ntn. pg. 289)

"'I am glad you did not tell us this. We had no idea there was any recourse from Varun the Eater's effects, nor any beast.' 'Its pure theory,' Camilla said curtly. "Something's being transmitted through the light spectrum. Absorption through the eyes is worse for the brain.' This made Nona think of something. It tugged at the edges of her memory and stayed there, nagging.'" - We Suffer & Cam (ntn. pg. 322) 

Nona says that she never liked her hands (ntn. pg. 357)

"She wanted to shout. She wanted to be listened to. She wished the barrier had taken her hands. She wished she had thrust herself into it- become that big seething mass of flesh and meat and tendrils- ruined her body, just melted it; come back messed up, so that nobody could want her body but her, so that it would be hers and nobody else's. This was a horrible thing to think. Nona hated herself immediately and fervently." (ntn. pg. 358)

She hates having just two feet (ntn. pg. 390)

“You were the noise that was everywhere. It was like trying to talk to someone down a phone line with someone screaming through a megaphone in the same room. You drowned everything out. You were so huge and so complicated, and you were screaming, You wouldn’t stop screaming, You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad.” (ntn. pg. 405)

“You were screaming. I wanted you to stop, I wanted… I wanted you. I wanted you like a caveman wants a wildfire… or the sun. I thought you were going to take me, somehow. Purge me. Use me as an instrument. But you didn’t say anything…I was babbling, Show me. Come on. I’m ready. You kept screaming and screaming… like a baby in pain. So I tried to hurt you- I did hurt you. I reached out for you, and it hurt you… but I wasn’t strong enough. The caveman. The wildfire. The Neolithic priest staggering in front of the falling star.” (ntn. pg. 407)

“I wanted to make you the most beautiful body I could think of. He paused and said: “But I was stressed, okay? I was insane. Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left…a handful of things that made me me… a couple scraps of id. It’s not fair to judge me, right? I didn’t do this thinking… I didn’t do it like art. When I was seven, you know, all Nana had to play with in her house was some of Mum’s old toys. And my favourite out of all of them…” He gave a long, shuddering sigh. “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures. [...]” He said, from my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done. I made you look like a Christmas tree fairy… I made you look like a Renaissance angel… I made you Adam and Eve… Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstien’s monster with long yellow hair. He said, As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you… I hid you in me. And when we were together… once the shaman had claimed the sun… I became God.”- John (ntn. pg. 408)

“Do you remember what you said to me once I had done it? When we stood here together?” She looked at him and she said, “Yes.” He said- “You said, ‘I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me?’” She said- “What else did I say?” He said: “You said, ‘What have you done to me? I am a hideousness.’” She said- “What else did I say?” He said, “Where did you put the people? Where did they go?” She said, “I still love you.” He said, "You said that too.” - John & Alecto/Harrow (ntn. Pg. 410)                                                

Nona has some kind of blackout on top of the truck and something happens in that time that convinces Pyrrha of her true identity (ntn. pg. 413)

Also based on Nona’s reaction at that point, maybe Alecto didn’t like Pyrrha even though Pyrrha liked Alecto (ntn. pg. 413)

“She’s scared to die. You’re afraid of so many things, but she’s only afraid to die. Then when the disciples come to you and say the word Lyctor, she does not understand that they want the thing you did to her- she watches as you watch… watch them misunderstand the process.” - Harrow, to John, (ntn. pg. 434)

“In [Aiglemene’s] hands was a huge black-metal pike about the same height as her, with an edge that gleamed in the light. Nona couldn’t stop herself looking at that edge: for some reason it made her palms sweat, and the back of her neck itch again.” (ntn. pg. 454)

“I might not help you when.. I'm back," she said, not quite understanding I. “I'll be different. I'll remember everything. I'll remember the thing I'm trying to forget. And Palamedes-  I won't love him. I won't love Camilla, or Pyrrha, or Hot Sauce, or even Noodle. I won't love anything… I won't know how. I won't be me at all, or.. I'll be the me who knows the thing, and knowing the thing means I'm not Nona- I'm someone else." (ntn. pg. 460)

she recognizes the tower, and the devils (ntn. pg. 440, and 447, respectively)

“You let that monster out of its box," said Ianthe, "and you start us down a path nobody can save us from. If God truly wants her out… if Teacher set this all up… if he wants her…"  “Wants her? He told me to kill her. He said Make it quick, but kill her, said me with my blood could do it- said me with my blood, I was the only one… " [...] “He loves her! " Ianthe howled. “John loves Alecto - John needs Alecto! Without that piece of Goddamn fridge meat, he's nothing- and we need to keep him that way!” - Ianthe & Kiriona, accidentally prompting nona to remember everything (ntn. pg. 470)

“She had been taken down this corridor: she had squeezed through this crack in the rock- not a passageway, not at that point. John had told her he had something to show her. He had said, It's very pretty. You'll like it. [...] John loved her. She was John's cavalier. She loved John. For she so loved the world that she had given them John. For the world so loved John that she had been given. For John had so loved her that he had made her she. for John had loved the world. [...] She hadn't come on purpose; the scrap of black-eyed meat had asked for it- the chain of a kiss: the ice that burnt the flesh of the mouth that had stuck to the mouth that was frozen.The teardrop on the hand. The hand that John had fashioned. [...] John had said, It's so beautiful. Come and look. She had said, There are almost no beautiful things left. where is Anastasia? Let me talk to Anastasia. [...] Glowworms, she had told John. Technically beetles, said John, but I always loved them. Narrow beetles with long strands hanging off them- a carpet of shifting, dead, winking lights at the top of the grave. Greenish, orangish, yellowish, moving over one another silently with those long filaments hanging down. [...] And the water- the huge pool of real salt water, where she had knelt and drank- [...] John and she had swum to the centre hummock rising out of the pool. Not an island, not really. An outcropping. With the marble pillars, and the marble top, and the long low marble table. He said he thought it was a nice place to be. To lie down. She had liked hard things to lie down on. It was hard to endure having a spine.” (ntn. starting page 471)

“There she was; John had made her so ugly, so unbearably ugly. The terrible face, with the terrible arms and legs and the terrible middle part, and the terrible hair, and the terrible ears: the nose too short, the ears too brief. But there she was- and within her the child, asleep, with the strange sword. The sword- her sword- her own edge had been pushed out, her swinging edge, her toy. Her plain bladed sword. And her body was chained up…” (ntn. pg. 474)

“Then Alecto remembered the vow, and turned back upon the altar to face the second child and raised the sword with wrath in her heart, for they meant to bring destruction upon her. But when the black-eyed infant showed her countenance to Alecto, Alecto recalled her, for it was a face one dreamed in Alecto's dream. and Alecto stayed the sword.” (ntn. pg. 476)

“And Alecto said, Pyrrha, he laid me down as an appeasement to them; he fed you to them as an appeasement to them; but he has never appeased me, and now all he has done was teach me how to die." (ntn. Pg. 476) 

"Alecto said, I am very sorry about Samael. The child made no answer. Alecto said, I remember my vows. As I swore to Anastasia I swear to you. I am in your service until you bid me the favour, and whatsoever you appoint I shall perform, and consider the vow rendered. This is what I promised, until such a time as you deal with me as you see fit.” (ntn. pg. 477)

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 25 of Nona the Ninth

So this chapter has a broken Gideon skull, which in this book seems to mean people being deceitful, and something is definitely up because Gideon is like 2-3 times as much Gideon as she normally is in this chapter, and I don't think that's an impression I only have because I've recently been through 3/4 of book full of Nona POV

Throughout this chapter, Gideon is referred to as "the corpse" or "the corpse prince" frequently, and I just feel like I should point out that we've gotten to the point where there are actually two different walking and talking corpses in this scene and both of them could plausibly be referred to as a prince. Even though Naberius's body is not currently being controlled by Ianthe, Naberius himself was a prince before he died

Hmm

That's all the definitions, I think Gideon just made this one up. Also, it's not a good day when you learn a new ethnic slur from the dictionary

Pyrrha acts like Gideon said "yes" here, but she didn't. That's like, a combination of "yes" and "nope"

It's hilarious, and I think actually accurate, that she's still terrified of the needle even though she is literally immune to needles now

"Judith Deuteros for some reason" really just sums up Judith's whole role in this story, doesn't it? It also would make a great blog title for a Judith fanblog, someone should get on that

Poor Judith! It's been a hot minute since Judith actually said something in a language that someone other than Nona can understand, so I really do hope it still is Judith in her body, and not someone or something else in there now

Right, so this could potentially mean:

The whole time since she impaled herself on the fence (unlikely since Gideon was stealth-narrating the entirety of Harrow the Ninth)

The whole time since Pyrrha and Nona met up with BOE at the end of Harrow the Ninth (since BOE had Gideon's body at that point, I think it's entirely possible that Gideon's soul transferred back into it from Harrow's body when she came into its proximity)

The whole time since John reacquired Gideon's body and made his modifications to it, and possibly also brought Gideon's soul back to it at that point

She could also just mean "the whole time I've been in New Rho" or "the whole time you've been in the barracks" but obviously she's been awake for longer than that since she was around to receive medals and stuff from John

Wiktionary says a "rusk" is a "weaning food for children" but doesn't give any kind of information on what specific food it is, or if it's just a general word for that kind of food

So Ianthe can "shut her off" somehow. I'm not sure if I buy that it was Gideon's idea to come here. I don't think she likes Ianthe, I don't think she would have thought New Rho would be a fun place to be, and even if she actually wanted to go to Ninth House like she says later I don't think she could have predicted that she'd be in a position for that to happen here and there are much easier and more straightforward ways for her to get to the Ninth House if she'd stayed with John

An interesting question is whether or not she would have won a fight with Ianthe's entropy field. I tend to think not, because a literal bar of metal didn't survive the entropy field, and even though she has some, like, I guess artificial preservation from being John's daughter she wasn't immune to direct physical damage because of that and even John himself wasn't immune to being taken apart into bits by Mercy, and since Mercy made the OG entropy field I'm sure it probably works using the same principle as whatever she did to John. Gideon may still survive the entropy field somehow, but if the entropy field was still functional it would actually be a great way for Palamedes to get a blood sample from her for Tomb-opening purposes, and so I think John would be extremely against having any such thing anywhere near Gideon's body. So I'm sticking with my theory that this was Ianthe's idea. She intentionally showed Gideon's body during the broadcast, she did that on purpose, although I guess if Gideon was "turned off" during that time she might not know that

Man, thanks for nothing, Gideon

Significant things that happened in the River at the end of the last book:

G1deon and a bunch of ghosts scared Number Seven off and it went to New Rho

Augustine was eaten by the Stoma

Harrow's and Palamedes' River bubbles ceased to exist

The Mithraeum was submerged in the River and sank very far down, unknown currently if John and Ianthe managed to save it

I can't think of why any of these things would make it safe for non-Lyctors to travel safely through the River. The ghosts all make themselves scarce around resurrection beasts, but I'm sure Ianthe and Gideon's journey didn't start out in the presence of a resurrection beast and I don't think the ghosts are the reason why River travel is dangerous for non-Lyctors

Blatant lies, lmao

She's so bad at lying, she starts off with "I don't want anything anymore" and finishes with "I want to go to the Ninth House because I have unfinished business there", and I suspect both of those things are at least partly lies. But I think she's right that John would probably give her a medal for killing this collection of people at this point, including Corona I think

But I suspect that she is the one who wants to go back to the Ninth House, for some undisclosed reason, and she's not acting on John or Ianthe's wishes here. If John wanted her to go back to the Ninth House she would already be there yesterday. If Ianthe wanted her to go there, I don't think she would have put up that entropy field, and she might even have tried to do some deal with BOE where she exchanged Gideon for the Sixth House. Also, I don't think Ianthe actually gives a shit about the Ninth House or anything that happened there. And there's no one else left in John's circuit at this point

Man, when Pyrrha said she was heavy, I just thought it was because she was tall and full of muscle. How damn strong is Pyrrha, exactly?

No, hold on, let me math this

A normal adult human has 11 kg of bones. Cortical bone makes up 80% of bone mass and has an average density of 1908 kg/m3, and cancellus bone makes up 20% and has an average density of 1178 kg/m3, so that is an average density of 1762 kg/m3 over all. There are 1,000,000 cm3 in 1 m3, so 11 kg / 1762 kg/m3 * 1,000,000 cm3/m3 is 6,242.9 cm3 of bone. Titanium has a density of 4.506 g/cm3. 6,242.9 cm3 * 4.506 g/cm3 is 28,130.5 g or a little over 28 kg. Since bones usually weigh 11 kg, that's only 17 extra kg of bone, so she only actually weighs about 37 and a half more pounds than usual. She says "titanium plex", which is not a real thing, but I can't imagine that titanium plex would actually be more dense than titanium, so I think it checks out that she would just be somewhat heavier than expected and not ridiculously heavy or something like that

That's a great question that I'd love to see answered. Is the fence also going to turn out to be some kind of holy object infused with a power even higher than John?

Speaking of holes, I remember back a long time ago I reblogged that one poll that mentioned stigmata sex, and people assured me that while the stigmata were actually in the book, the stigmata sex was not. Are Gideon's holes the stigmata? Does that count as stigmata? I think it's in the wrong place, isn't it?

So, thanergy is cell death, but it seems like dead bodies radiate thanergy even if no cell death is occurring, because John's cryo bodies were generating thanergy for him even after he'd completely stopped them from rotting. So Gideon's body is somehow preserved due to being related to John, but in a way that doesn't involve being infused with thalergy as she suggests for the blood sample, because as we know from the last chapter, body + soul + thalergy = living person, and Gideon isn't a living person, so she must be missing one of those, and it's not her body or her soul. The preservation only applies to the bounds of her body, and her body is still radiating thanergy, apparently enough that it would kill the blood sample?

She got her whole childhood fantasy of a famous and powerful parent who gave her everything she wanted, but that person turned out to be John, and now she's stuck with him and Ianthe and being used as figurehead for John's military, and he spent just enough effort on her to make sure that her body can't be used against him but didn't fix the gaping holes in her chest, and the person she sacrificed herself for is missing and possibly dead, and someone else is in her body instead

I mean, Ianthe was keeping her locked up behind the entropy field. I wonder if she's had a lot of that from John, too

[grey-ves]

im losing my mind right now over the ocean connection. @/totopopopo pointing out thalergy comes from the greek word for ocean rather than life. colum’s possession ending in brakish water. the mouth of hell at the bottom of the river. the pool scene. the water in the tomb. nona and saltwater. the animal she draws possibly being a tiktaalik. who here read the deepwater bride? the woman in the hill? the ocean IS where life on earth started, and life down there IS pretty terrifying. oh also gideon foreshadowing without her realizing:

hell at the bottom of the sea at the bottom of space

it’s not the other bank of the river. it’s the ocean.

and it’s teeming with LIFE

[liesmyth]

I mean Nona and Alecto might be the same and act the same (though I doubt it), but Nona was influenced by Gideon and Harrows love for each other, by Palamedes and Camilas love for each other, by Pyrrha feeling free for the first time and livening someone new, by the way Camila, Palamedes and Pyrrha raised Nona. Yes, Pyrrha recognizes her as Alecto in the end but so what?

Alecto was influenced by the apocalypse. Like. No, the og lyctors were not afraid of Alecto because she was “too human”, she was the earth scorched and dead and resurrected (only NZ btw… like… Johns nationalism hurt her and crippled her), while Nona is the humanity’s very best: love and care. They do represent the exact opposite things narratively.

Also Alecto is scary as ever loving FUCK. Why are you not apppeased?? Is this not how meat loves meat????? Hello????? She was NOT “too human” for Augustine and Mercymorn, who are very comfortable with their feelings and humanity, lmao

Yeah, I think Nona's tantrums are the moments when Pyrrha really saw Alecto in her, and tried very hard not to. You're right that the way Alecto came into existence was terrifying, but even before then... she was the Earth! "We wanted to save you, you were so sick" Not only the apocalypse, but before that the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, and before that millions of years of life and death and earthquakes and evolutions.

I think Nona was as human as she was not only because she was surrounded by the New Rho gang and very much loved. I think also that her being in Harrow's body acted as a sort of 'buffer' and filtered / dampened a part of her, to some extent. For a while there, Nona was closer to human than Alecto had ever been, not only because she was surrounded by human love but also because she experienced life through a human body and human senses. There's a reason Harrow's body couldn't have contained her - to quote John, she's too big, in all ways

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

9

And we're back to Nona, who's just waking up from a midday nap. Hence the dream.

Sixth skull - more Cam/Pal content? I hope so.

Anyway, they're not here to record what Nona remembers of her dream. Is she going to tell them when she gets home?

(It occurs to me, belatedly, that what Nona tells them is very different to what we're reading in John chapters. I assume there's a good reason for that.)

“What happened? When I talked on the radio?” Hot Sauce hesitated, then said: “The watcher took off.” “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Right?” “I need to investigate.”

The watcher heard what Nona was saying, without reading her lips, or reading her lips only in the few words before she covered her mouth; the most they could have gotten from this was Crown.

Someone from Blood of Eden seems likely. In which case, they're almost definitely watching Nona.

Unfortunately, these days if she said, “Cam, can’t we go swimming?” Cam would say, “Remember what happened the last time,” and won every argument that way. That was because what happened the last time was that Camilla had got sick, and less important, Nona had got shot.

Hey, that's not not important!

I assume the water's poisonous or radioactive which is why it's safe for Nona to swim but not Cam.

And that someone shot her because they don't want people in the water?

and her jandals, and then after masks were tied and hats put on they walked to the beach in the low dusk.

Jandals?

Jean sandals?

Lmao.

That was why Nona had always swum at dusk, because Cam said the jellyfish sting killed most people within minutes.

Ohhh, that's why - it's not the water that's poisonous.

Salt water had always relieved her: salt water made her feel as though, if there was someone in there with her, she would suddenly know the words to tell them everything.

Throwback to Harrow only being told secrets in salt water - the pool scene of GtN. Nona's dreams of being in water. Was Harrow's family tradition of only speaking secrets in water an Alecto thing? I'm so curious.

Anyway, I feel Nona here, I also love being in the water.

Camilla was crouched down, wiping her knives on one of their jackets. When she looked up, Nona was electrified. One of her eyes was a pale, pearlescent grey; the other one of her eyes was a deep, cool stone colour. Nona understood in a sudden shiver what she was looking at. “Stay calm,” said Camilla-and-Palamedes. “Five breaths, if you need it.”

So this is why Camilla had gotten sick; Pyrrha aluded to it in the conversation a few chapters ago. They can both be present at the same time, but not without a cost.

That was a tense little moment there!

The worst part was that the blood was coming from everywhere, with no wounds, or bullet holes, or stab marks. It was coming out of her skin.

Camilla-and-Palamedes did necromancy to incapacitate the people who cornered them, and Cam's body isn't designed to take that kind of strain. Terrifying.

“Hect, you’re not listening. It’s killing him too—” “It was good,” said Camilla, and her eyes closed. “It was good. We were happy.”

For just a moment, they were together again. Oh, this pains me.

“Here’s to Camilla Hect, yet another of devotion’s casualties,” and knocked back the glass. Then she said to the light, quite gently, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.”

Pyrrha is talking to the blue light as if it's a person...

I can't make much sense of what she's saying, though.

[gffa]

I feel like this explains so much about both John and Alecto--they’re both so fucking angry and so deeply, deeply fucked up. I mean, this is where shit hits the fan and John’s already wearing himself down to almost fumes, he’s doing like sixty things at once, he’s trying to figure out the soul, he’s trying to stop the trillionaires from leaving, he’s trying to get people to see what the fuck is going on, he’s trying to save the planet, all while he’s so fucking angry how fucked up all of this is and everyone seems to just turn a blind eye to it and keep doing the same shit they’ve always done. And then his friend kills herself in front of him, a nun who believes in God and that John will save them all, she just shoots herself in the head so he can sense her soul and use it to get them out of this mess, and how is John not supposed to be fucked up by all this?  He’s already hiding in his room because the stress of the situation is too much, he’s ready to snap, and then she shoots herself in front of him, saying she believes he can save them all. And that’s when he realizes he’s been hearing the screaming of the Earth for who knows how long, he’s been connected to it for who knows how long, and the thing is, necromancy doesn’t give John sudden new mental or emotional fortitudes to deal with that kind of power.  He’s still just John, he’s still Just Some Guy, having to deal with all of this. Like, yeah???  No wonder he’s fucked up???  It’s just trauma piled on top of rage piled on top of depression piled on top of absolute terror piled on top of trauma, all while connected to the Earth screaming, all while thinking all his friends were going to die, all while thinking the planet was going to die. John loves so intensely, but he also rages just as intensely.  So does Alecto, we see how intensely she loves in Nona the Ninth, but we also see her terrifying rage when she has a “tantrum”. And no fucking wonder she’s traumatized and angry and terrified!  Look at what people have been doing to the planet for centuries!  Pollution, destroying the ozone layer, melting the polar caps, absolutely wrecking any kind of balance or ecosystem the planet has, constantly ripping into it and tearing it apart.  No wonder its soul is so fucking furious and in so much pain! No wonder she chose him, no wonder they connected, no wonder they’re both deeply fucked up after all the trauma that’s been laid on them both.

[kittttycakes]

Thanks for reblogging my prompts!! Underappreciated character?

They’re such good prompts!

Underappreciated character:

I don’t post a lot about it on this blog, but I am absolutely obsessed with The Locked Tomb book series, and as much as I love Harrow, Gideon, Nona, etc, I think Abigail Pent is SO fascinating, and I don’t see a ton of analysis about her.

She works with spirits, she acts as Harrow’s psychopomp, she protected the terrible teens as much as she could, but she’s also terrifying in the River bubble. I think it’s too easy to over simplify her as “the mom” in Canaan House simply because she’s the oldest woman there, but she’s doing some of the most dangerous necromancy that you can do, and she’s doing it in the most dangerous location: in the River itself, offering up anything and everything, in exchange at a really crucial moment. And it’s something that won’t even impact her physically; by that point, her life is forfeit, she won’t feel the consequences (I could talk more about the soul but I don’t think she’s thinking about that at that point), but she’s offering up…a lot that isn’t on her to give. She fascinates me. Who were you before Canaan House, Abigail? She’s a world of possibility.