Farewell, Nona -- for now, anyway.
Here we all are, at the end of our long read, for now. For now, because Alecto the Ninth will be released sometime later this year (as far as I know there’s no publication date yet) but, because we’ve undertaken this read journey together, together we’ll be ready . . . to be confused again. That is, until we suss it all out.
If you look back at any of these entries when approaching Alecto, it will probably be this one, so as we wrap up I want to leave you with a recap of where everything stands as of the end of Nona the Ninth, plus some thoughts about the characters and some of the salient themes that Tamsyn Muir has been weaving together. Finally, our list of lines and events that (I, anyway, think) are important or portentous, the characters and characteristics of the Nine Houses, and a bit about names.
This is not exhaustive! What would be the fun in that? There would be little room and less inclination for you to ruminate about all the little bits and pieces that catch in your mind and ferment, growing into interpretations and leading you to research everything from quantum physics to the history of the Trojan War. Therefore, let’s get on with it —
Where Are the Characters?
Blood of Eden
As far as we know, Ctesiphon Wing and the rest of the Blood of Eden troops on Ur are still on Ur, with a few recovering necromancers in the barracks (who may or may not be ready to make peace with BoE), a restive population, and a lack of ships and/or any way to leave. While Varun withdrew from the planet with Nona’s departure and entered the River, we don’t know the disposition of the Heralds it already sent out, whether they would go inert or keep fighting on the surface.
This is not an idle observation: while active Heralds are the stuff of nightmares, especially for civilian refugees (and what else are the civilians trapped in the city?) inert Heralds could be turned into weapons to be used against the Nine Houses. So things aren’t great, but there’s potential for a particularly brave and resourceful commander to make a difference.
Aim, the Angel, along with Pash, are holed up on the armored megatruck on the landing pad of the Ninth House, with Crown, Judith, and the Sixth House Oversight Committee. Speaking of which . . .
The Houses
The Ninth House is under siege from devils, the same creatures that are fighting the Empire at Antioch, according to Gideon Nav/Kiriona Gaia. They are of the same species that possessed Colum Asht at Canaan House. (Teacher did say that there were worse things than ghosts loose at the Canaan House facility. The question is: did he know what they were? For that matter, does anyone know what they are? Answer: Not yet.)
According to Crux, there are more than two hundred devils at the Ninth House, and they’ve been turning the inhabitants, especially the younger ones, the newly-awakened sent by John to renew the Ninth. (As an aside — how much bad karma do you have to accrue, to be frozen for 10,000 years, sent to the Ninth House, and in short order, turned into a monster?) Gideon Nav reports that the dead/reanimated devils move differently than the ones turned while living. They followed Nona’s group down the passage and into the Tomb, where there was a battle underway at the end of Nona.
The Sixth House is still parked on an exoplanet outside the Ur system, but Ianthe knows they’re there. Whether she conveys that information to John is anybody’s guess.
Pyrrha and Paul are with Gideon. At last report, Ianthe was in the water in the tomb, but it’s a good bet she didn’t stay there. She and Paul are Lyctors; whether she slipped away to run back to John, whether she collected Crown and the others, whether she took up knitting or table-top role playing games — it’s all anyone’s guess.
What Paul, Pyrrha, Crown, and Judith all do next (supposing that Judith has survived possession by a Resurrection Beast) is also anyone’s guess. But the situation in the Ninth House, still under siege by devils, isn’t great, whether you’re a necromancer holed up in a megatruck or a former Lyctor fighting your way out of a tomb.
An aside: the “blue madness” that affects necromancers — is that insanity or is it possession? Is Judith, as a necromancer, the exception or the rule? Remember, in addition to Varun and Alecto, there are two more Resurrection Beasts out there. And the Eighth House with its soul-siphoning abilities has some sort of unhealthy relationship with the stomata at the bottom of the River — all of which will likely come into play. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the vanished Resurrection Beasts and Lyctors make a reappearance, but at this point, there’s not a lot that would surprise me, anyway.
Harrow
Harrow is with Alecto. Asleep.
Alecto
Alecto just woke John up. Rudely.
Gideon
It’s a fair bet that Gideon is somewhere close to Harrow. Whatever her priorities as Kiriona Gaia, when it came to a crisis, she chose Harrow, saying, “Keep it together. Wherever you are, idiot, I know you can hear me. Keep it together ...” (Ntn, p. 470). She chose Harrow over everything else, just as we hoped she would.
We don’t know whether Gideon is still great-hearted but dim, believing that John wants her to kill Alecto and become his cavalier, or whether that’s a story she tells Ianthe so that she can break into the Tomb to save Harrow — in other words, has Gideon learned to be deceitful and manipulative (she’s been with John and Ianthe, so anything’s possible), playing them the way they would play her? Or did her priorities shift when Nona in Harrow’s body entered the fray and Gideon realized there was a way back to her?
The jury’s out on that one. Whatever it might be, Gideon is still dead but she’s never stopped being the Reverend Daughter’s cavalier.
John/God
God has been having a midlife crisis, as the emotional effects of having been betrayed by his late Hands sink in. He’s living on Sarpedon’s ship, The Seat of the Emperor (once Erebos), apparently drinking and sleeping around, leveraging his status as God to force sexual relationships and all other sorts of inappropriate behavior on his followers. Once a cult leader, always a cult leader.
Speaking of which . . .
We learn a lot about John in Nona, the tale woven from his own perspective. The “John” sections showcase all his seductive charisma, as well as his capacity for deceit. Stripping away some of his “reasonable” rhetoric and our perception of near-future science fiction tropes to look at John’s plan for humanity reveals how cultish he is from the start.
Based on current estimates (and acknowledging that the numbers are squishy), planet earth can support around nine or ten billion people, called its “carrying capacity.” Other studies suggest it could be as much as twenty billion but, if we expect all humans to live like middle class Americans, it’s apparently closer to two billion. These are not peer-reviewed sources but back of the envelope calculations — let’s just say that, as we all know, earth’s resources are finite but the capacity for reproduction over time is not. And already, in 2023, we’ve fouled our air and water, run many species into extinction by poisoning or bigfooting it all over their habitats, and cooked the atmosphere. John’s apocalypse is arguably reachable without our lifetimes. So we should look at our current level of technology and add a little more.
Now, the Emperor Undying started as a scientist with a crazy idea to cryogenically freeze and preserve all of earth’s population — ten billion people — on spaceships or . . . somewhere . . . and wait until earth recovered from human depredation. With some financial seed money, he and his friends, a medical doctor, M— , and another scientist, A— , began perfecting the process of freezing and preserving human bodies, but their research was limited to corpses. The funders of the project decided their work wasn’t as viable as investing in spaceships to remove the human population and relocate.
Given that the novel’s prehistory is set shortly after our own time, we can assume some technological advances over our own era, advances like near-earth space exploration and limited settlement, experiments in faster-than-light travel, etc., but there’s nothing in the text to indicate that cryogenics had ever been attempted on living beings (and I’m not just talking about humans, but mammals and birds, and not even, say, snakes or bugs). Whether cryogenic preservation is even possible is very much unaddressed in the text — all we know is that his team were experimenting on preservation of the already-dead. And we know that, as soon as the bodies thawed, they turned to soup and were too hazardous to be disposed of using any traditional methods. This is not encouraging.
The backers pulled their support and the project was supposed to wrap up, when John began to exhibit what can only be described as strange powers: power to preserve corpses and power to heal the sick. Healing and preservation — two abilities that would be central to curing the damaged earth of a host of human-borne ailments, including climate change, pollution, overpopulation, habitat loss, etc. etc. etc.
But instead, John focused his attention on the dead, to the point it became an obsession.
I would be remiss not to note that John’s attention was focused entirely on human beings, but the earth contains life in almost infinite variety and multiplicity. This matters because, although it takes us three books to learn it, John’s powers were granted by the earth itself, but he doesn’t pay attention the earth, just to the people. And, interestingly, human life seems to be inherently different from earthly life. It doesn’t appear that the ten billion people who died in John’s apocalypse were related in any way to Alecto/Gaia/Earth’s death/transformation/subsumation into John’s soul. Does this mean that humanity is not part of nature? If not a natural part of the earth, whence does humanity derive? In a book so replete with theology, this is an appropriate question.
Put more simply, the earth gives John power to heal it, but he spends all his time and attention on humans instead of, say, anything else. He prioritizes his species above everything.
And we wonder why Alecto is pissed.
Bearing all that in mind, it’s not unreasonable for the financial people to not want to bet the future of humanity on the death-cult guy in New Zealand. In fact, if a reader steps outside of John’s charismatic halo, the whole scheme sounds kooky. I mean, would you freeze your family — your partner, your parents, your children, your extended relations — in order to let the earth “recover” for some unspecified length of time? And even if the cryogenics plan worked (which is very much in question) and the time came to thaw out the ten billion people, what would hitting the evolutionary pause have accomplished if the planet is so suddenly and densely repopulated? Would the environment and all life on earth not be imperiled again? Would you trust the “walking corpse” guy?
And let’s not forget that John himself has been looking for “Element X,” the spark of life. He’s worked only with corpses, and has not thawed and reanimated a damn thing. If you’re a government, would you invest in that? If you could afford to cut and run, why wouldn’t you do that?
My point is that the John chapters seduce us into the cult’s mindset, to the point that we forget to question the original premises. We take for granted that John’s “freeze all the people” plan is doable, that the frozen can be revived, and that whoever is left in charge on earth will not abandon ten billion popsicles on Tau Ceti and repopulate the earth themselves. On, and we assume that infrastructure — food, shelter, electricity, and all the cultural amenities that add up to human life — will be up and running on earth, waiting to welcome the people back.
And if all that happens — if every bit of it goes the way that John envisions — ten billion people are revived and wham! — earth is back to a breaking point.
No wonder the contracts went to the space ships. And you can argue that John’s increasing agitation caused the investors to panic and run. Yes, we can hate on the trillionaires (and we should), but would we be any different?
Mooving on . . . to cattle — because this theme speaks directly to John’s psychology. The Lyctor labs in Canaan House are adorned by sculptures of cattle (and serpents). Don’t believe me? Go back and look. We can parse the serpent imagery almost right away, given how much of the Locked Tomb series is laden with Biblical imagery. The serpent is, according to Genesis 3:1, “more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made.” The serpent tricks Eve and Adam into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, which gives them the knowledge of good and evil. What is Lyctorhood, other than forbidden knowledge of good and evil, knowledge that corrupts everyone who undergoes the process?
[That is, until Paul — Paul is incorruptible. Palamedes and Camilla act to become Paul out of love and in mutual sacrifice, without manipulation on either side. Harrow and Gideon have a similar chance to do it right, or they might if, for a change, things go their way.] Anyway, back to the ornamentation:
The cattle motifs are a little more difficult, and it takes a while for us to understand them. It begins with the cow-wall around John’s facility in the Wairarapa. And, for the record, a wall of that size would require a lot more than the 80 cattle and maybe as many sheep that John admits he killed (I live on a farm; 80 cows don’t generate nearly enough mass). But it’s not the fact that he used the cattle to build his protective bunker that provides the rationale for the motif, it’s that he got yelled at online for it. An actually funny sendup of internet trolling demonstrates his thin skin and his propensity to hold a grudge. Thereafter, he dismisses criticism from any quarter, however justified, with “Cows watch sunsets and form meaningful relationships.”
What is a sore point for him becomes a badge, as he adorns his palace with cattle, to remind himself of his grievance. But wait, there’s more — because cattle is the controlling metaphor in his relationships. People are cattle. He stashes ten billion souls (somewhere), resurrects a few of them, wipes their memories (although not as cleanly as he supposes, since Pyrrha retains some of her pre-apocalypse knowledge) and disposes of them when they no longer serve his needs. He feeds thousands of soldiers, even children, into the meat grinder of the Cohort, just to give his people something to do, expanding an empire that withers everything it touches, harvests death, and moves on in an ever-expanding search-and-destroy mission. All because he cares about none of them.
You could argue that the entire call for a new crop of Lyctors that starts the ball rolling in Gideon comes about because John knows his old buddies have fallen away from him and he no longer trusts him (or he may simply be tired of them). He’s ready to clean house. He may even be preparing to wipe his creation clean (all the Houses are in serious decline) and start fresh with a new crop of disciples. But, thanks to Cytherea, stage one of the plan goes sideways. By the end of Nona, John is seriously dissolute and appears ready to hit bottom.
Finally, let’s look at John’s original mission, half-crocked though it may have been: to heal the earth. The earth gives him the power to heal and preserve. Out of love for “his” special corpses, he turns that power to preservation of bodies, which leads to his obsession with death. With his enhanced powers of healing and preservation he learns how to manipulate corpses, and then, how to draw power from death itself in waves that feel like hits of meth. The addiction metaphor is spot-on. He’s drunk on power and goes full mad-scientist, killing the solar system and the earth, and becoming all-powerful.
Who Is Blood of Eden?
Some readers think Blood of Eden is descended from the trillionaires who escaped John’s apocalypse. Others think that’s impossible, and they may be descended from humans who had already colonized outside the solar system. No one is sure.
We know a few things: Blood of Eden appears to be culturally distinct from the rest of the human populations on the steal planets. Their naming conventions don’t seem to have any parallels in other societies, although we’ve seen very little of the other people apart from Nona’s gang and the few people she associates with in shops. And Blood of Eden preserves a memory of earth, even if it’s 10,000 years removed. It feels like Blood of Eden obsessively preserves a memory of earth, when other humans have adapted to their new planets.
We know that John killed every human in earth’s solar system; he says so: “We took Uranus … Neptune … crunched down Pluto … found every satellite and craft, crunched up all the humans, moved on” (p. 409). The surviving populations had to come from somewhere. That’s the argument for Blood of Eden (and everyone else outside the Nine Houses) being descended from the ones who got away.
There is, however, an argument against it, and it’s this: the 10,000 year anniversary is an awfully specific time marker for immortal beings. John’s been holding out, waiting for something for 10,000 years, but now he’s wrapping everything up. In their final confrontation, Augustine tells John, “Stop your mission, John. Give up on the thing I know you’ve been looking for since the very beginning. Stop expanding. Stop assembling this bewildering cartography, this invasion force. I’ve puzzled over it for five thousand years, and I don’t believe I truly understand it now. But let it go. Let them go. Nobody has to be punished anymore for what happened to humanity” (HtN, p. 483 — emphasis mine).
Who is left to punish? Who, indeed, but the trillionaires who turned their backs against humanity and slipped out of John’s grasp.
The fact is, John doesn’t really care about Blood of Eden — he could have crushed them easily but he found them useful in keeping the Cohort occupied in the same way that the Resurrection Beasts kept his Lyctors occupied. As of the events of Nona, however, two things have happened that signal the end times.
The first is revealed in the Nona Dreamtime sequences and the initial poem about putting, “this first-draft dream of mine to bed,” and that John is preparing to wipe the slate clean and start creation again, with a fresh cast and a new plan.
The other is that the Tower has been reactivated, and whatever has been left alone for too long (the souls of ten billion murdered people?) are coming out.
Also, devils. Somehow, I don’t think they’re part of John’s plan.
But we know as much about them as we do about the disposition of the ten billion, so let’s move on.
One More Point About John
What does it mean to love God?
This is the question Harrow puts to John, and John’s answer reflects the bleakness of, not only his vision, but his divinity itself: “You live in a darkened house, and in your darkened house are infinite rooms. By the light of a dying candle you cross the room — knowing that when you reach the threshold of the next room you’ll be gone — the candle passed to someone whose face you can’t see clearly” (NtN, p. 432).
In Christianity, candle are symbols, not of the worshiper’s love for God, but of God’s love for the worshiper. That’s why, in liturgical churches, anyway, there’s an eternal flame that burns above the altar, symbolizing the eternality of God’s love. In John’s world, this candle is dying.
The rooms are dark and infinite. “In my Father’s house there are many Mansions” (John 14:2). Christian theology presents heaven as a place of light and rest, a place where all hurts are healed. In John Gaius’ theology there is only darkness — no end goal, no salvation, no coming to rest for the believer.
The candle is dying. Believers carry it forward without hope. Once their room is crossed, they’re gone. There’s nothing more; there’s oblivion.
Is there anything, any hope, that would be a comfort in this bleak world and bleaker afterlife? John posits that hope would be that “The love of God is the trust that you won’t have to illumine that darkness alone” (NtN, p. 433).
That’s it. Communal misery. There is no revelation, no higher wisdom, no kindness, no comfort, in John’s divinity. It’s only worship without hope. This is the heart of the Houses, the center of John’s Empire, and it’s utterly bereft.
You might think I’m being hard on John, who was man and became God. But he didn’t become God: he became an unbelievably powerful but deeply flawed, deeply damaged, and powerfully lonely man who calls himself God.
Is he a villain? Yes. Is he human? Yes. His nature reflects something that Jung first articulated and Ursula Le Guin poetically expanded on, and something we all know inherently, even if we don’t always recognize it: in the human being, there is capacity for unimaginable good and unimaginable evil — and those two conditions can exist side by side.
And now, for something completely different
Coleman3 made a couple of comments early on in the read that stuck with me, because not only is he an astute and learned reader, he’s a fine fine writer as well, and besides, the interpretation is important. The comments in question are a pair from Gideon the Ninth, Act 4, part 1, about courtly love and representation. They’re linked, so I have come to think of them as an extended meditation about the same subject: Gideon is the perfect courtly lover, adopting the unselfish role of servant to their beloved. Throughout the read so far, the thesis holds.
Coleman3 summarizes the courtly love tradition, as it developed under the patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the pen of Marie de France, and as outlined by C. S. Lewis in The Allegory of Love, and does so succinctly and clearly. The only bit that I could add to his explanation is that, under the tradition of courtly love, the lady who withholds her favor (and doesn’t “cure” the lover’s lovesickness by consenting of extra-marital sex) is considered dangereuse, as in de Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses, meaning cruel, arbitrary, and unworthy. The connotations of the word were indeed enduring.
In later medieval romance, courtly love was satirized and recognized as a double-bind, at least for the beloved (who is more object than person). And we can get into that if you’re interested, but it suffices here to say that Muir is drawing from the early tradition of courtly love, where the lover is ennobled by love and inspired to great deeds on behalf of love. The lover also (importantly) suffers through pursuit of the beloved, until the lover proves worthy and is rewarded by being loved in return. We can venture that Harrow undergoes similar trials in her love(s), suffering, sacrificing, and being ennobled. In their own way, each is a courtly lover. Thanks, Coleman3, it’s a great interpretation.
And that’s as far as we can go now with the courtly love theme, because the final book hasn’t been published yet.
Finally
A character’s name is not their destiny, but maybe the name holds clues, either to the character’s fate, or personality, or role in the text. To that end, I’ve assembled some references to the names of the characters in put them in a handy list for your reference:
First House — for the Emperor and Lyctors/Saints/Hands
- John: the evangelist who wrote the fourth, and latest, of the Gospels, as well as the book of Revelation, which describes the apocalypse and descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem at the final Judgement.
- Gaius: masculine form of Gaia, referring to the spirit of the earth. Also the Bishop of Ephesus beloved of John the Apostle, and a couple of famous Romans: Gaius grandson of Caesar Augustus who was supposed to succeed him but died instead and, more pointedly, the emperor also known as Caligula, who notoriously loved and married his own daughter (puts a spin on John’s relationship with Harrow, doesn’t it?)
- Alecto: one of the Furies, aka the Kindly Ones, aka the Eumenides. Alecto is the spirit of anger, sister of Tisiphone, spirit of revenge, and Megaera, spirit of jealousy.
Second House — discipline, heedless of trial
- Judith: Israelite woman who seduced the invading Assyrian general Holofernes, and cut off his head while he slept.
- Marta: variant form of “martial,” denoting a perfect soldier.
- Gideon: Israelite prophet and soldier whose name denotes the military triumph of a small force over a larger one.
- Pyrhha Dve: Pyrhha: Daughter of Pandora who, with her husband Deucalion, survived an apocalyptic flood and repopulated the world by throwing the "bones of their mother" (earth) over their shoulders. Dve: Serbo-Croatian nominative and accusative forms for "two."
Third House — the gleam of a jewel or a smile
- Ianthe: A Greek name meaning “one who delights” or “violet flower,” depending on which etymology you prefer. Also, Ianthe is a character in Shelley’s Queen Mab, a philosophical poem about the perfection of society, and the object of Aubrey’s affection and Ruthven’s attention in John Polidori’s The Vampyre. (It’s worth noting that Shelley was present during the writing of The Vampyre and had a daughter named Ianthe.)
- Coronabeth: “Corona” means crown, and Coronabeth is the crown princess of Ida, but it also refers to the bright halo of a star.
- Naberius: a demon, and a noble in hell, first mentioned by Johann Weyer in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or The False Monarchy of Demons. The link is to Wikipedia, which is always a good place to start research, and there are about a billion print editions out there, so have fun if you want to run down a rabbit hole. Muir, from “A Little Explanation of Naming Systems” in the digital version of GtN: “Naberius is one of the demon princes of Hell. Will this mean anything significant later on?? (No.)” The rest of the Muir naming notes are from this source.
- Cyrus: Cyrus the Great was king of Persia 559-530 BCE, ended the Babylonian Captivity of Israel and was responsible for Jewish repatriation and rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.
- Valency: In chemistry, valence or valency measures how well atoms combine when making compounds. It’s also a linguistic term, which I must confess I did not know.
Fourth House — fidelity, facing ahead
- Isaac: Muir: “’Isaac’ in Christian theology foreshadows Jesus’ death by taking the wood for his own sacrifice up a mountain. Isaac here foreshadows Gideon’s death by doing the ‘bravest and stupidest’ thing, i.e. getting his abdomen made into a huge Connect-4 board. I might as well have called Jeannemary and Isaac ‘Don’tgetattached’ and ‘Deadsoon.’”
- Jeannemary: Muir: “’Jeannemary’ is a Biblical car crash, but Jeanne here is meant to be reminiscent of Jeanne d’Arc.” You know, the virgin soldier? Yes. Mary: you got this one — Jesus’ mother, ever-virgin, intercessor for humanity.
- Ulysses: Wandering hero of Homer’s Odyssey. ‘Nuff said.
- Titania: Queen of the faeries. Also a moon of Uranus.
Fifth House — tradition and debts to the dead
- Abigail: From 1 Samuel 25: A wise and virtuous woman, first married to a lout but, by her prudence and good manners, became one of David’s wives. Traditionally considered a model of wisdom.
- Magnus: Means “great,” from Latin. In the Church, most famously applied to Albertus Magnus, or “St. Albert the Great,” one of the great theologians of medieval Christianity. But really, I think the appellation “great” applies, because Magnus is possessed of some great qualities.
- Augustine: Bishop of Hippo (354-430), author of On Church Doctrine, Confessions, and The City of God, among other foundational Church works. Loved his secular life before entering the Church. Famed for the prayer, “Lord, give me chastity and constancy, but not yet.”
- Alfred: King of Wessex (848-899), founded the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Sixth House — the truth over solace in lies
- Palamedes: Greek soldier in the Trojan War, renowned for his ingeniousness.
- Camilla: From Latin, referring to an acolyte who serves with the priest in Roman rites; connotes assistance and, in Arabic, means “perfect.”
- Cassiopeia: Mother of Andromeda, became the goddess of fantasy and the sea. Best friends with Aphrodite.
- Nigella Shodash: Nigella: a flower commonly called “Love-in-a-Mist.” Shodash: the Sanskrit word for “sixteen,” which is confusing at first, until you consider that it may refer to the sixteen disciples who were supposed to become eight.
Seventh House — beauty that blossom and dies
- Dulcinea: The non-existent beloved of Don Quixote. The name means “sweetness.”
- Protesilaus: The first Greek soldier to die in the Trojan War.
- Cytherea: Another name for Aphrodite.
- Loveday: A formal day of reconciliation between enemies. The most famous loveday was held at St. Paul’s in London in 1458, called by Henry VI. It failed.
Eighth House — salvation no matter the cost
- Silas: An early Christian missionary who accompanied St. Paul.
- Colum: Means “dove,” meant to be a sacrificial animal.
- Mercymorn: Appears to be a Muir original possibly denoting deferred mercy, as in, “I’ll forgive you in the morning, but not tonight.”
- Cristabel: Protagonist of the poem by Coleridge, a trusting and innocent woman tricked into taking in the evil Geraldine, who betrays her.
Ninth House — the Tomb, and all that was lost
- Harrowhark: Named for the “Harrowing of Hell,” in which Jesus freed the souls of the righteous during the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, combined with “hark! a doleful sound,” according to Muir.
- Gideon Nav: See “Gideon” in the First House. “Nav” means “navigator.” Neither are traditional Ninth names.
- Anastasia: Greek, meaning “resurrection.” It might be a hint.
- Samael: Hebrew for “Vengeance of God.” Also another name for Satan.
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![Cover art for Tamsyn Muir's "Nona the Ninth," with a picture of Nona, a smiling young woman with a face mask in one hand and wearing a shirt with an anthropomorphic cheeseburger on the front. All around her, skeletons are collapsing on the barren ground. A white dog watches her, and a brooding blue sphere in the background sheds blue light.](https://images.dailykos.com/images/1122221/story_image/Nona.jpg?1665435217 "Cover art for Tamsyn Muir's "Nona the Ninth," with a picture of Nona, a smiling young woman with a face mask in one hand and wearing a shirt with an anthropomorphic cheeseburger on the front. All around her, skeletons are collapsing on the barren ground. A white dog watches her, and a brooding blue sphere in the background sheds blue light.")
