#carys-the-ninth

[starberry-cupcake]

You are 100% completely correct about the tagline not being an effective summary of the first book and flattening the scope of the series. I think that's a pretty common opinion in the fandom! I guess they thought "Genre-defying work of literary genius (but it's also very fun)" wouldn't sell and went for content instead. But I think the mismatch of the tagline and the thematic nature of the books is part of why TLT fans evangelize so hard. Lesbian necromancers in space BUT WAIT IT'S SO MUCH MORE! COME BACK!! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE CLASSICS PARALLELS!!!

Anyway I'm truly enjoying your reactions and I look forward to your Harrow journey <3

You're giving me an excuse to talk about editing things, so I apologize in advance for the long response :') This is all my personal opinion as someone who's new to this (the books, not the editing part), so I'm sorry if I say something incorrect 🙏

The ebook doesn't have the back blurb, so I don't know what they did with that (maybe it's amazing!), but this book is imo an ideal candidate for the "quote from the book and absolutely nothing else" back cover blurb choice. Which is a risky move to some but has worked for best sellers in the past.

I think that because:

the very subjective third person the first book uses is just as good as a first person to provide the reader with an idea of the narrative perspective (maybe even more so, because the subjective third is a very contemporary thing)

the book works better without the reader being introduced to anything at all, not even the context of space, even if you're wondering what thanergy is and crying about it halfway, it enriches the Gideon perspective and encourages you to think outside the box

the author (in my ignorant opinion as a new reader) seems to be at peace with this and has a very high amount of trust in the book working without hand-holding the reader at any given time, and that the knowledge will come to those who care to continue trusting in it, which I think deserves just the same amount of trust from the editing choices

With the font choice for the title and the cover illustration, a quote in the back blurb would make this book absolutely good to go imo. Especially because Gideon is book 1 and Gideon wears sunglasses and the juxtaposition of her look with the sunglasses, plus her tone in a well chosen quote, is a good indicator of a lot of things.

ANYWAY, I hope that makes sense and explains a bit more of what I was thinking about when writing those comments. I'm a bit intimidated with giving opinions at this point, since I don't know much but here we are. Thank you for reading my silly ramblings and for being interested enough to keep reading them ♥

[liesmyth]

The Locked Tomb 🧡 🖤

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

Perfect Lyctorhood! I don't think it's possible, Anastasia didn't discover it (but maybe she believed she had) and Mercy wanted really badly to believe it was true. But I don't think there's a way to achieve immortality that doesn't involve a bigger sacrifice.

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think?

Cassiopeia. The fact that she made the Sixth House with a secession button doesn't mean she didn't eagerly partake in the planetkilling Empirebuilding activities. EYE believe that her corporate lawyer self was the one behind the "lifetime contracts" between John and the colony planets

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Rachel Berenson (of course)

OKAY HERE WE GO

How I feel about this character

Best. Breaks my heart.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Tobias, Cassie to an extent but only if Tobias is out of the picture (I love mutual pining with them no matter what though!).

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I love her relationship with Jake, because they are on the same wavelength in the absolute worst ways; they have the kind of understanding and tacit trust you normally expect from characters who don't send each other to their deaths.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Rachel/Marco is actively offputting to me.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

The writing in the later Rachel books is infamously a bit shaky, although I think they're conceptually sounder than most people seem to. I wish that was otherwise.

GIVE ME A CHARACTER;

[tiktaalic]

You're my favorite destiel blogger btw. An innovator in the genre with a poet's soul

This is such a kind way to describe Posting. Thank you.

[theygender]

Instead of saying you wanted to give pathetic women so many orgasms, it autocorrected to organisms.... just picturing you dumping a bucket of crabs on a sopping wet woman....

@ pathetic women: pspsps come here and let me make you cum 10 times dump a bucket of crabs on you

[eclecticelectriceccentric]

Beloved people are coming to me with the "Harrow just sucks" takes TODAY

NO !!!! HARROW IS LITERALLY A BABYGIRL !!! I won’t STAND for this!!! *gets up to fight and immediately collapses*

[steveyockey]

alaska has 2 timezones: one for the majority of the state, one for the far western aleutians islands (hawaii time). we should have four or five, only the southeastern panhandle is properly aligned with solar noon

yes yes and you USED to have four I did my research

[irl]

The Locked Tomb is as-yet-unfinished quadrology of novels that crib from sci-fi, fantasy, horror and jrpgs. It starts with a locked room murder mystery about two codependent teenage girls that grew up in a necromantic bone cult and are recruited to attempt to become the God-Emperor's new supersoldiers. They are beautifully written, very funny, tragic, grotesque, and insanely, deeply, intrinsically queer. But yeah for sure we can kiss

😳😳😳🫢🫢🫢 woa…… bro…. staring deeply n2 ur eyes….

but for real ! that sounds so cool i think ill have to check it out sometime

[maydaymadier]

...........Please let me know how you're feeling when you're done.

Will do, I'm abt halfway through Act 4 atm

[wifegideonnav]

have YOU been personally victimized by tamsyn muir? come to my new spa where we will gently wash and massage your brain to undo the damage that comes from reading the hit sff series the locked tomb. call now and we’ll add a free thought detangling session. our waiting room doubles as a support group. 1-800-FUCKJOD

[theriverbeyond]

Assumption that you aren't a picky eater

i am picky but GETTING BETTER ‼️ just started eating meat again after not doing that for almost 20 yrs and am slowly exploring. also I learned how to cook back in undergrad which made me realize that I was not really that picky wrt vggies.... my parents were just Bad At Cooking 😭 like i think i still qualify as kind of picky by most metrics esp considering how Cautious i am trying new meats but compared to how i was as a child and teenager (rice/tofu/pasta) I am thriving

askbox assumptions game

[for-the-breath-of-the-ninth]

Hey I know we've gotten an entire book since then but I have a bit of Harrow posting to do LMAO. So I've seen lots of theories about Harrow in Harrow the Ninth and the two-hander.

We, the readers, know now that Wake was living in there, and when Harrow seemingly sleepwalking stabs Cytherea with it Wake jumps ship to use the free body. I do not think Harrow ever knew that. Why then, have a note to herself about keeping the sword on her at all times and bathing it in arterial blood? I think she was making a home for Gideon. That sword, as far as she's concerned, is Gideon's. Now, even if the whole lobotomy thing works, it's incredibly experimental and Harrow (past) has no way of knowing it will work, nor if it will continue working. She does know (and WE know from book one, Tamsyn Muir is very careful about giving us just enough information that we could connect some dots so I'm banking on this) that to summon a ghost, you have to make offerings, frequently fresh blood. And we also know that revenants tend to come back to something they knew or was important to them in life. I think Harrow was trying to make a place for Gideon's soul to go in the event of the lobotomy failing, Harrow dying, or the lobotomy working so well Gideon manages to separate out.

She just didn't know the house she was carefully constructing was already occupied.

[liesmyth]

I'm curious that you think that the existing lyctoral necro-cav pairs shows that John can't choose at will who is a necromancer & who is not, because to me it's the opposite! The fact that both scientists & the lawyer (of intellectual occupations) all end up as necromancers and theis companions as cavaliers strongly suggests a guiding hand. Who do you think he would array differently if he had the power?

A few different reasons! All of them boil down to #vibes. My thoughts on this are all over, and I think it IS possible he chose them. I just think it’s slightly more likely he didn’t.

tldr: if he chose who got to be an adept, I think it was more intuitive / subconscious / accidental than a planned out choice with forethought behind it.

Assuming that he absolutely wanted to create matched pairs (why though? more thoughts below) I AM a bit puzzled over the criteria. It's not just intellectuals, they all were—“a cop and six different kinds of nerd.” Anyway, here are my thoughts, one by one.

Augustine, Mercy, and G1deon: these are obvious. They were his long-time friends, unflinchingly loyal, total enablers. If he did pick and choose, they were always going to be an automatic in.

Nigella: that’s easy also; she seems to be the member of the gang John was the least close to, brought into the gang by someone who was mildly critical of him. She IS a pass.

Alfred: second to least fave, though he was the one who figured out the dirt of the FTL fleet by following the money. (He IS a nerd, and more STEM-adjacent than Cassy. Finance runs on probability theory) I can see why he’d have been left out, though; John doesn't think much of him.

Cristabel: this is harder to justify! John had a very high opinion of Cristabel. He called her ‘sister,’ he saw her as a guide, and near the end they worked closely together trying to find the soul. Maybe he resented her for the way she forced him to ascend, but I didn’t get that impression from the flashbacks + John loves having people around who have their own failings, so he can feel better about himself. If he could bestow necromancy, I don’t get why he wouldn’t have picked Cristabel.

Pyrrha and Cassiopeia: these are the ones that leave me the most perplexed. They’re both strong-willed women who weren’t afraid to stand up to John. But Pyrrha was the one who betrayed her cop friends to warn him, who stood by him even after he killed her former colleagues, who encouraged him to be a “bad wizard” — she absolutely enabled him every step of the way. Cassiopeia, by contrast, was by his side in the early stages and ditched her bosses for him, but she seems to have stuck around just as much for Nigella as for “the cause,” if not more. She drops under the radar a third into the flashback narration when things get weird, and only makes herself heard again near the end to call out John; the only one who did. I really don’t get why he’d have picked Cassiopeia. Likewise, I don’t see why he didn’t pick Pyrrha; it’s true that Gideon was always close to her and “never knew who to pick,” but when it counted Pyrrha never went against John, and also, you know. He did wipe their memory. I don't think he saw Pyrrha as a threat.

Ulysses and Titania: ????? They were science projects. He had no attachment to either of them. Why not make more of his original friends into necromancers and give them Ulysses or Titania as “companions” if he was that attached to that model? The only scenario I can see in which they were included would be if John brought them back before anyone else to serve as a test case, but I don’t get why he’d have kept them around. I can, however, see John keeping them around if they randomly came back as an adept/non-adept matched pair and he was like, oh how nostalgic, control group yet again.

More broadly—regardless of who was picked, I don't think he planned out matched adept/companion sets.

One: Lyctorhood wasn't John's initial plan. He didn't bring them back thinking “I’m going to make my besties my immortal warriors and they’ll need a loyal companion.” He brought them back planning to keep them near him, and possibly to make them immortal. He accomplished that, successfully, for hundreds of years—but their immortality was conditional on their physical proximity to him. (John being John, this would be a feature, not a bug!) and didn’t come with huge necromantic powers. They were still killable. That only became a drawback once they were “on the clock for the resurrection beasts,” when it was imperative that his friends should also be his trusted lieutenants, able to carry out missions all over the universe. “God should be able to touch all of creation,” but he can’t do that if his fingers have to stay by his side. That’s why everyone ascended at the same time and the cavaliers went to their death. Before that, though? There was no point. I doubt he knew of the RBs until after the resurrection was complete.

Two: why the necro/cav pairs? I just... don't see why he'd split his friends into matched couples. I think it’s way more likely that the concept of “death wizard and death wizard’s fighting sworn companion” as social roles and as a tradition, is something that evolved because the original disciples made it a custom, rather than because John designed it to be that way. And, if he could bestow necromancy at will, why not give it to everyone who’d stood by him? Why did it have to be an even number split in couples, everyone with their companion? Like, I don’t think it’s out of character for John to go on a godly power trip and decide who gets to have powers. But I also don’t see why he would create a divide within the group. (Later, after 200 years, I absolutely get why he’d want to be THE most important person in all his Lyctors’ lives. But I don’t get that same vibe from immediately post-apocalypse, based on the flashbacks)

Basically, it's both some of the choices in who ended up a necromancer, and just... the forethought that this decision implies. John isn't a great schemer IMO, and I doubt he was especially lucid in the time right before the resurrection; I don't think he sat down and started worldbuilding his new social order and space empire. (Yes, he very much did build the Houses like a DM worldbuilding for an RPG campaign, but that happened more gradually and his friends had a lot of influence. I don't think the beforehand had much planning involved.)

Also: a lot of what John does, power-wise, is vibes. His soul merging with Alecto was done totally on the fly. Figuring out you can bestow necromancy, figuring out how necromancy is bestowed, doing some trial and error until you know how it works, and only then resurrecting your buddies—IDK, that’s a lot of planning.

Anyway. This is why I think that if he MADE a choice, it was subconscious. That's why more in line with how John does things.

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Book asks: 9, 35, 39

9. Favorite detective novel(s).

Back when I read a lot of detective fiction I remember really really liking The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers.

35. Least favorite trope in your most favorite book genre.

I don't really know what is and isn't a trope these days, now that people are using the word as if it's an aesthetic term rather than a critical one.

39. Do you read reviews before picking up a book?

Usually I only read reviews after I've already read something.

Ask Game for us Self-proclaimed BOOK WORMS 📖🐛

[nonasbirthday]

I just saw ur post about ppl hating on Gideon and now I'm sad I know shes not real but like... I love her. She's not a burden to read through and get to know before you get to the other books she's a delight and I want to hold her idc if they dont like puns!

SHE'S A DELIGHT!! i think of this post from @carys-the-ninth: If you don't love me at my comicbook-loving jock goofball butch book you don't deserve me at my schizophrenic self-destructive reality-warping nun book

[gideonisms]

Favorite ships I have discovered tonight thanks to tumblr user carys-the-ninth:

ianthe/pelleamena-- ultimate power move fucking your crush's mother once she rejects you

coronabeth/abigail pent--abigail could not fix her but Coronabeth would find her gentle but firm demeanor captivating. she could never truly win abigail's affection because Abigail's heart belongs to Magnus. this turns coronabeth on

Aiglamene/wake--listen sometimes you fall to the ninth almost die then get nursed back to health in secret by a grouchy milf who wants to take care of you and your kid/human sacrifice. ships that would have either fixed gideon nav or given her new problems

Gideon nav/Juno zeta--ships that would have made gideon nav worse! as well as camilla, palamedes, any combination thereof, harrow, pyrrha,

Pyrrha/we suffer--pretty much guaranteed to go canon next book I mean come on you can't say they never did

cytherea/pash--girl who speaks in cursive x girl who speaks like karkat. they understand every third word the other says and hate each other on sight. Fortunately, they're not doing a lot of speaking when they meet up,

Judith/ianthe--steal her girl!!

aiglamene/dulcinea--both supposedly doomed to die on their home world, and you can't tell me they wouldn't have found each other charming. princess dress femme x sword butch

Wake/we suffer--another one that's BASICALLY canon. Why else would we suffer have promoted pash

And finally! Dulcinea/alecto--girl who's dying x girl who's the death of the solar system what's not to like