Today we finish our reading of Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth, the third volume in the Locked Tomb (once a trilogy, now a) series. Here’s how I’m laying out this penultimate installment: first, we cover the Epilogue, and I will preach a short sermon about why I think Muir handled this short and very different chapter the way she did. Then we break for hot cocoa. (I broke what I had planned for tonight into two installments that are much more manageable for me.)
Next week I want to look at the three novels, not just as individual volumes, but as an interwoven narrative. I want to discuss the major themes and look at the issues that are left still unresolved. In all fairness, we might extend some of the discussion over to one more week, especially since I hope and expect you all to extend the discussion. Then I’m going on break to write a book.
Once more, with feeling!
Epilogue Header: First House skull
The epilogue is only three pages long, but is really dense and packed with significance.
The soul longs for its body: as soon as Nona in Harrow’s body falls on Alecto’s frozen corpse, her soul snaps back in place, the chain that Harrow placed on her with the kiss broken, and Alecto wakes. Likewise, Harrow’s soul returns to her body and rouses in time to see Ianthe launch an attack on Alecto. Harrow declares the vow that bound her to Ianthe’s service, the vow that extended to Harrow’s life and everything except the Tomb itself, is finished.
Her chains broken (along with her wrists and feet) and, forgetting that she holds a sword, Alecto hits Ianthe with her free hand. Ianthe is thrown off the bier and lands in the salt water pool. Alecto rises from the coffin and her broken bones mend. On the shore, skeletons emerge to attack the interlopers (maybe) on the shore. She recognizes Pyrrha and calls to her, but Pyrrha doesn’t hear her over the fighting.
Alecto turns back to Harrow, thinking that she and Ianthe had woken her to destroy her, but then she recognizes her as the face she dreamed of, and Harrow declares her love and willingness to die for her. This angers Alecto, and she “kisses” her, drawing blood, but then recognizes her as Anastasia’s descendant and vows to serve her. Gideon yells to her to “Get in line, thou big slut” (p. 477).
After an interval, carrying an unconscious Harrow over her arm, Alecto arrives at the ship and stabs John through his heart. He wakes up and says Annabel, good morning.
It’s instructive first to return to the preface, which consists of the familiar “One for the Emperor, first of us all” poem and the facing page lyric:
You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning.
I asked, What is morning? and you said,
When everyone who fucked with me is dead.
When everyone we loved has gone or fled,
That’s morning. Empty’s just another word for clean.
Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed.
In the appointed hour
I’ll pull up your sheets. I’ll kill the light,
Lie down beside you; die; and sleep the night.
This time will be the time we get it right:
Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long;
Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true.
You held aloft the sword.
I still love y
- Alecto’s first word upon waking is “You.” It completes the poem. And now we can deduce the final words between her and John — him encouraging her to sleep and looking forward to dying and/or wiping the universe out and starting over, in a time when (his) forgiveness will be easier, (his) anger less enduring, (their) grave shallower, and (his) lies more flamboyant.
- How do you get a Resurrection Beast to lie down long enough to be frozen and chained? With reassurances and lies.
- She’s the “rock that had been made meat” — she’s the planet, put into human form (p. 475).
- Her form is described as “terrible.” Remember that Mercymorn called her a “monster.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “terrible” as “Excited or fitted to excite terror; such as to inspire great fear or dread; frightful, dreadful.” The use of the word here is similar to Milton’s use of the word “awful” to describe Satan in Paradise Lost, where it means, “inspiring awe.”
- She cries out “Ah, ah, ah.” It’s been Alecto the whole time.
- Harrow, the “black-eyed infant,” is no longer a Lyctor — her eyes are black again. She’s lost the bit of Gideon’s soul that she had incorporated at Canaan House.
- The argument she and Ianthe have is quick and decisive. Harrow declares the vow between them broken, Ianthe tells her, first, that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and then that she’s in no position to stop her, since she’s half-dead. Harrow threatens to kill Ianthe herself and Ianthe laughs, saying she’ll only die of lovesickness for Harrow.
- Harrow could not be colder in her rejection: “Then perish.”
- The skeletons come out of bier and the tomb walls, but when Alecto raises her sword, they run.
- “And there was a crowd of dead children there. They were striving loudly against the living children” (p. 476).
- The skeletons have fled. Paul, Gideon, Pyrrha, and Aiglamene are fighting with “dead children” — the devils who followed them into the tomb — and it’s noisy.
- Pyrrha calls to Alecto for help, but Alecto has other concerns right now.
- “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.”
- The first part tracks with what John has said about the Lyctors, that they demanded John “put her down,” and that they wanted to be more than disciples; they wanted to be able to move out of John’s proximity. And John wanted them to, so he let them “feed” Pyrrha as a cavalier to them.
- The cavalier’s position and Alecto’s position — batteries — are the same.
- Neither of them were “appeased” — they were only used.
- Remember that dying was the only thing Alecto feared? She doesn’t fear it any longer.
- Harrow’s declaration of love angers Alecto, who picks her up and bites her mouth.
- I haven’t figured out why she’s angry.
- “Alecto knew not how to kiss, except such as it involved the mouth and teeth.”
- “That is how meat loves meat.”
- Great line for the carnivores among us.
- A reminder (in case you needed one) that Alecto is not human.
- Tasting Harrow’s blood tells her Harrow’s identity — one of Anastasia’s descendants.
- She apologizes for what happened to Samael (p. 477).
- I want to learn more about this.
- “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.”
- So Alecto’s first loyalty had been transferred from John to Anastasia. Interesting. I wonder how that happened.
- This is a mirror of the vow that Harrow makes to Ianthe, but without exceptions.
- It’s not a “one flesh, one end” vow — it’s an “I owe you a debt and I’ll pay it off” vow.
- Alecto makes a blood oath with Harrow, which makes Gideon exceedingly jealous: “Get in line, thou big slut.”
- Was it Gideon who yelled “No, no, no” at the end of Chapter 32, or Ianthe?
- Probably Ianthe, when she saw her plans all sliding sideways.
- “Afterward” — in other words, after the passage of some time, but we don’t know how much — Alecto travels through the River “and was grieved to find it yet dead” to find John on his ship.
- Remember Abigail: “Something is wrong with the River.”
- If it’s “yet dead” (still dead), that means that she expected it to be different, as in, living?
- John is still in his dissolute phase: naked, dirty, and still drunk.
- Harrow, “who accepted the blade and thereupon fainted with hunger and thirst was thrown over one of Alecto’s arms, a deep sleep like death upon her.”
- Whatever fight was in progress on the shore of the tomb is presumably over, and Alecto has become Harrow’s . . . guardian? . . . cavalier? . . . servant?
- “John awakened and said, Annabel, good morning.
- “For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
- Out of the cast, who has gotten what they wanted?
- Harrow wanted to live long enough to die at Alecto’s feet. She’s still alive, and something tells me that Alecto’s service is going to be a mixed blessing. She’s a Resurrection Beast, after all.
- Gideon got her soul back, but she’s in a dead body and playing second runner-up in the cavalier contest.
- Ianthe, who set out to catch the Sixth House, most likely didn’t, and her sister double-crossed her. Also it’s certain that waking Alecto was not part of her plan.
- Paul wants to safeguard the Sixth House and get everyone on Ur out of their situation alive. Jury’s out on their success.
- Pyrrha has found two shreds of Wake’s family — two bits of the woman she loved, but has lost Gideon the First, Nona, Palamedes, and Camilla. Still, in Chapter 31 she tells Nona that she liked Alecto and thinks she’ll be capable of more than Nona suspects, so there’s that.
- Nona got a happy birthday wish, a handkerchief, and the promise of a t-shirt, but it hasn’t exactly been the happiest of birthdays.
- John. I think that John got what he wanted.
- His plans are coming to fruition. He’s about to ring down the curtain on this version of creation, as soon as “everyone who fucked with me is dead. / When everyone we loved is gone or fled.”
- He sent Gideon/Kiriona to open the tomb. It didn’t happen the way he envisioned, but the effect is the same.
- Ianthe was right that Gideon would not have been able to kill Alecto, so why did John set her the task?
- What he might not have reckoned on: Alecto has learned not to be afraid of death. What has John learned not to fear?
- Nothing, as far as we know.
So — what about the change of style?
You are not the first to suddenly realize we’re reading a twist on King James.
Let’s talk about intention. What does Muir accomplish in three pages? Answer: a lot.
This is not just the climax of Nona, it’s the climax of the first three novels — the opening of the Tomb and the waking of the Emperor’s death is the event Muir has been building to for some 1,400 pages. We know it’s well within her capacity to write another 50,000 words to have covered all the aspects of the ending.
She could have done that, but chose not to. In fact, starting in Chapter 31, she’s been narrowing the narrative focus from Nona’s perspective to Nona’s consciousness even as that consciousness is fading. The effect for the reader is a selective and impressionistic one — she doesn’t capture everything and doesn’t try, instead sketching for us the outlines of the action. She distances us and makes us read through a veil. She forces us into active reading; it’s up to us to connect the dots and fill in the shading, to interpret according to the outlines of what we’re given.
For instance, Gideon’s confrontation with Crux, an event Gideon has dreamed about her entire life — the moment when her childhood fantasy has come true and she can shove it down Crux’s throat — is mixed up in both Alecto’s memories of being drawn into the Tomb and confusion as the group tries to break the ward that holds the rock in place. We don’t see it happen. We’re buffered from the the confrontation, Crux choosing to declare his fidelity to Harrow and reject Gideon, and Gideon’s emotional devastation in killing him.
That’s intentional (obviously). It’s not that this moment in Gideon’s story is unimportant — it is important, and it’ll reverberate in Alecto — it’s that so much happens all at once that we have to choose what to pay attention to. Think about what’s going on — the whole House is under siege by devils; the Sixth House necromancers, along with Noodle, the Angel, and Pash, are parked on the landing pad; Gideon has returned to the site of all her earthly trauma and had her heart broken again by the father figure who tormented her all her life because he could, and all just as Harrow, the person for whom she gave her life, is literally falling apart; Ianthe is writhing on the floor from the Herald bullet; Alecto is remembering the way John trapped her . . . oh, and they’re breaking into the Tomb.
It’s a lot.
How to present all the confusion and emotion? By limiting it, by selecting what to pay attention to. Since Nona is our viewpoint, and Nona doesn’t know the history of Gideon and Crux, the moment is lost an a whirl of other concurrent events. Or, it would be, but for the fact that, as readers, we know what to pay attention to, and in that passage, two things stand out: Gideon and Crux facing off, and us seeing through Alecto’s memories just how John coaxed her into the trap of the Tomb and betrayed her.
That’s just one story thread. We could follow others. Pyrrha, Paul, even the equivocal figure of Aiglamene — hell, Crux himself, still holding to the faith that Harrowhark will remember her catechism and save the House: all have their stories reaching critical mass in these chapters. But it all pales compared to the rise of Alecto.
Chapter 32 ends with Nona climbing the Tomb and falling on Alecto’s body. With Nona gone, we need a new narrative voice and a new viewpoint. The voice Muir chooses is canonical, scriptural, highly mannered and ambiguous. Very ambiguous. The viewpoint is Alecto’s.
It makes sense that, in a book so layered with religious themes, eventually we would break into scripture the way that characters in a musical break into song. The style contains all the extreme emotions that would, if written explicitly, run the risk of going so far over the top as to lose their punch.
Instead, the passage reads like canon, like holy text. Like it’s part of an historical and/or religious teaching, tinted with the passage of time and made sacred, even if some of the language is anything but. Try to imagine whose scripture this is.
Finally, and this might just be me, but this epilogue has affected the way I read Biblical passages. Knowing how fraught the events of the epilogue are and how distanced the reader is from the characters’ raw emotions by the formality and spareness of the language, you have to reconsider the style of scripture itself. For instance, the famous passage that Gideon says to Harrow upon her death at Canaan House: “The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee”: this is the vow that Ruth makes to her mother-in-law Naomi when Naomi tries to send Ruth back to her family. What sounds ancient, the edges of the words worn down by time, is really tearful and heart-wrenching. Also, the fact that it’s been recorded at all marks the event as noteworthy — if the widowed daughter-in-law of every Israelite woman gave this response, it wouldn’t stand out. Try reading any part of the scriptures while aware of the forced formality, distance, and terseness of the language, and it’s a different experience. What is and was rote and boring, rubbed smooth by familiarity, is made fresh and new.
That’s my take, anyway. Who’s ready for cocoa?
Podcasts
If you haven’t tuned into the Locked Tomb Podcast, you should.
PINS
As we anticipate Alecto the Ninth, here are many of the remaining plot points that are still hanging out there awaiting resolution.
NONA THE NINTH
Nona’s Waking World
- Millions of people from many different planets are on Ur, many of whom have endured being resettled from other planets multiple times. None of them are happy. And one of the three “steal” or “shepherd” planets, Antioch, is at war, not only between the Empire and Blood of Eden; the Houses’ principal enemy is the devils, which Gideon explains as “revenant magic.”
- The Angel’s is Aim, the Messenger. She has “millions” of bosses. She “is” Blood of Eden. Palamedes asks if she received an implant from a House necromancer. It’s possible that there’s a 6,000 year old link between the Sixth House and Blood of Eden.
- Noodle is the “king of dogs in secret.”
- The worst of the Resurrection Beast’s effects on necromancers is transmitted through the light spectrum. “Absorption through the eyes is worst for the brain’” (p. 322). This means something to Nona, but she can’t remember it.
- Palamedes’ “vengeance and grace,” and his “fight through time” (p. 351). I can’t say why, but I suspect it has something to do with the Angel’s mysterious implant.
- Coronabeth and Ianthe have agendas. Ianthe’s agenda involves Harrow.
- Anastasia’s tripod principle”: Body + soul + thalergy (animating life force) = life (p. 361).
- The Message Aim carries “is too simple for human beings like us to understand . . . I hope you hear it one day” (p. 427). Human beings can’t understand the message, but maybe Nona will? Does Aim understand who Nona is?
- Alecto/Nona has seen the devils before, but doesn’t remember where or why (p. 446). They’ve existed since the Apocalypse.
- Why is the salt water tidal pool filled with bones?
John’s Dreamtime Memories
- “The corpses were my batteries.”
- “They said they’d managed to find some poor dipshit geek who’d fixed the FTL problem of getting locked in the chrono well, you know, moving so fast you were stuck doing quantum wheelies” (pp. 220-221).
- Cassiopeia: “John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment . . .You can be quite the most appallingly vindictive person I have ever met” (p. 401).
- John: “People don’t forgive, not really. Once they doubt, you’ve already lost them” (p. 402).
- Harrow: “Teacher, what does it mean for a child of the Ninth to love God?” (p. 432). She asks God for justification, which is Job’s question to G-d.
- Harrow:
- “I want to know why she was angry … and why you were terrified” (p. 435).
AS YET UNSENT
- “Coronabeth Tridentarius has never been party to anything she did not want to do, and never successfully carried out a plan she didn’t think up first.” Also, from Crown in Nona: “I have a ripple of evil running through my soul — I know I do” (p. 177).
HARROW THE NINTH
- John: “I mastered Death; I wish I’d done the smarter thing and mastered Time.”
- Harrow was the 311th direct descendent of the Tomb keeper, and the 87th Nona.
- John has been fighting with Blood of Eden for 5,000 years. He’s been searching for another enemy for 10,000, but we don’t know who.
- Ianthe: “I always take the smartest option first . . .” Pair this with Harrow’s opinion that Ianthe dismisses as unimportant everything she isn’t interested it.
- Something has gone wrong with the River.
- John says his work is “not yet finished.”
- Why did John lie to his Lyctors and induce them them to kill their cavaliers?
- Gideon tells Ianthe that Harrow has already opened the Tomb.
- Mercy says that the Resurrection Beasts were coming for Alecto. They are, to support her.
- Augustine: “Nobody has to be punished anymore for what happened to humanity” (p. 483).
- Pyrrha wishes that Augustine had given them the packet.
GIDEON THE NINTH
- “Die in a fire, Nonagesimus.” (p. 47)
- Aiglamene: “Things are changing. I used to think we were waiting for something...and now I think we’re just waiting to die.” (p. 55)
- “’Down there resides the sum of all necromantic transgression . . . The unperceivable howl of ten thousand million unfed ghosts who will hear each echoed footstep as defilement….” (p. 151).
- Ianthe: “I’m interested in the place between death and life . . . where the things are that eat us” (p. 382).
- God: “There are things out there that even death cannot keep down. I have been fighting them since the Resurrection. I can’t fight them by myself’” (p. 441).
- God can’t go down Canaan House. He says, ‘I saved the world once — but not for me” (p. 443).
THE HOUSES
First House
- House of the Emperor, his servants, and his Lyctors.
- Seat: Once Canaan House, now the Mithraeum.
- Skull: no adornment.
- Planet: Earth
- Primary: John Gaius (gold eyes), aka God; his cavalier: Alecto (black eyes).
- Pre-Resurrection John was a scientist.
Second House
- Colors: white and scarlet, martial. Home of the Cohort, God’s armies.
- Characteristics: discipline
- Necro: Judith Deuteros, age 22, (Judith beheaded Holofernes) (brown eyes — h/t Runaway Rose), cavalier: Marta Dyas, age 27, (Marta=martial).
- Lyctor: Gideon, saint of Duty (brown eyes); his cavalier: Pyrrha Dve (green eyes).
- Canaan House trial: Projection and winnowing (the big bone construct). Pyrrha invented it.
- Pyrrha was a “bombshell” (John) and a “stone-cold fox” (Augustine).
- Pre-Resurrection: Gideon was G—, an engineer and childhood friend of John.
- Pre-Resurrection: Pyrrha was P—, a police detective and G—‘s best friend.
- Specialty: Spirit magic, use of thanergy in battle. They siphon their enemies to strengthen their cavaliers.
- Skull: A Spartan-style helmet
- Planet: Mars
Third House
- Colors: Violet?
- Characteristics: wealth and flash
- Necro: Ianthe and Coronabeth Tridentarius, princesses of Ida, both age 21 (purple eyes), cavalier: Naberius Tern, age 23 (blue eyes).
- Lyctor: Cyrus; his cavalier: Valancy Trinit.
- Cyrus drew the sixth Resurrection beast into a black hole.
- Valency thinks that “one flesh, one end” sounds like instructions for a sex toy.
- Specialty: Spirit magic, “animaphilia” — lover of the soul
- Skull: Jewels in the eyeholes.
- Planet: by the process of deduction: Neptune. It’s beautiful. It’s also the RB Number Seven.
Fourth House
- Colors: Blue
- Characteristics: courage
- Necro: Isaac Tettares, Baron of Tisis, age 13 (hazel eyes); cavalier: Jeannemary Chateur, knight of Tisis, age 14 (brown eyes). (eye color here and elsewhere h/t DesiderataDetritus)
- Lyctor: Ulysses; his cavalier: Titania Tetra.
- Augustine calls Ulysses “a madman” who incited “the sexy parties.”
- Specialty: Spirit magic? It’s unclear, but Abigail Pent was training Isaac, so it’s logical.
- Skull: Wears a laurel wreath
- Planet: Saturn? (h/t RunawayRose)
- Notes: The Fourth supplies soldiers and necromancers to the Cohort. The Fourth has large families, since so many die in battle. The Fourth is first on the ground in war.
Fifth House
- Colors: nothing formal, but sensible brown works.
- Characteristics: Intelligence. Temporal power.
- Necro: Abigail Pent, age 37, Koniortos Court cavalier: Magnus Quinn, age 38. Husband and wife.
- Lyctor: Augustine, saint of Patience; his cavalier: Alfred Quinque (eyes gray).
- Pre-Resurrection Augustine was A—, a scientist.
- Alfred, with Christabel, coin the phrase “one flesh, one end.”
- Second disciple in the Resurrection.
- Alfred “led astray” by Cristabel.
- Pre-Resurrection Alfred was A— Junior, a hedge fund manager and Augustine’s younger brother (h/t Deb, for the correction).
- Specialty: Spirit magic, speaking to the dead. Abigail is a famed historian.
- Skull: Wears a decorated headband, possibly a crown of thorns (h/t Ahianne).
- Planet: Jupiter
- Notes: “Koniortos” = “dust” (h/t BMScott).
Sixth House
- Colors: gray
- Characteristics: scholarship, rare book librarian and conservatorship skills, medical expertise
- Necro: Palamedes Sextus, Title of Master Warden, age 20, (Palamedes: genius Greek soldier in the Trojan War) (eyes clear gray), cavalier: Camilla Hect, age 20. Second cousins, (eyes gray/brown).
- Lyctor: Cassiopeia; her cavalier: Nigella Shodash.
- Cassiopeia developed the magma metaphor to explain travel in the River.
- She led a Resurrection Beast into the River and was ripped apart by ghosts in seven minutes.
- Described by John as “brilliant and sensible and careful.” (HtN, p. 97). And a good cook. And an easy drunk. Protective of and/or jealous around Nigella.
- Pre-Resurrection Cassiopeia was C—, a lawyer.
- Pre-Resurrection Nigella was N—, an artist .
- Nigella: “prettier” than Pyrrha Dve.
- Specialty: Flesh magic, emphasis on science and magic.
- Skull: Clutches a scroll in its teeth.
- Planet: Mercury.
- Notes: the Sixth House developed the process of cramming numerous souls into a body. Purpose and application still unclear.
Seventh House
- Colors: seafoam green
- Characteristics: love of beauty, especially the fleeting type. Fans of the beautiful death and heirs with hereditary cancer.
- Necro: Dulcinea Septimus, duchess of Rhodes, age 27 (pallid blue eyes); cavalier: Protesilaus Ebdoma, age 39 (Protesilaus: the first Greek to die in the Trojan war). Rhodes: island in the Aegean, site of the Colossus, visited by both Herod the Great and the Apostle Paul.
- Lyctor: Cytherea, Saint; her cavalier: Loveday Heptane (blue eyes).
- Cytherea was one of the 2nd generation Lyctors.
- Loveday was fiercely protective of Cytherea, and the rest at Canaan House disliked her.
- Second generation of disciples, the last to arrive at Canaan House.
- Specialty: flesh magic, with emphasis on beauty.
- Skull: A rose in one eyehole.
- Planet: Venus.
Eighth House
- Colors: White
- Characteristics: orthodox purity, dogmatism, “White Templars,” the “Forgiving House”
- Necro: Silas Octakiseron, age 16 (eyes brown); cavalier: Colum Asht, age 32, 34, or 37.
- Lyctor: Mercymorn, saint of Joy; her cavalier: Cristabel Oct (grayish hazel eyes).
- With Alfred, Cristabel coined the phrase “one flesh, one end.”
- First of the disciples after the Resurrection.
- Augustine calls Cristabel “a fanatic and an idiot,” and blames her for “leading Alfred astray.”
- Pre-Resurrection Mercymorn was M—, a medical doctor.
- Pre-Resurrection Cristabel was a nun.
- There’s some relationship between the Eighth House and the stoma, a place that God cannot comprehend. Augustine says the House “sucks at it . . . like a teat.” Likely has a relationship with soul siphoning.
- The entropy and siphoning challenge at Canaan House: Mercy designed it.
- Specialty: spirit magic, focus on soul siphoning. Also hypocrisy.
- Skull: Blindfolded, denoting blind loyalty.
- Planet: Uranus (of course). It’s a pale planet.
Ninth House
- Colors: black
- Characteristics: devotion to the Locked Tomb.
- Necro: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, age 17 (eyes black); cavalier: Gideon Nav, age 19, (eyes gold).
- Not-a-Lyctor: Anastasia; her cavalier: Samael Novenary.
- Specialty: bone magic.
- Skull: lacking a mandible.
- Planet: Pluto.
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
If you’re not already following Readers and Book Lovers, please go to our homepage (link), find the top button in the left margin, and click it to FOLLOW GROUP. Thank You and Welcome, to the most followed group on Daily Kos. Now you’ll get all our R&BLers diaries in your stream.