I think one of the quotes that best defines John is when Cassiopeia says “John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment.” He’s a wonderfully interesting character, but his downfall comes in his desire for vengeance
On the Camilla + Palamedes = Paul discussion: their lyctorhood is explicitly *not* perfect, and I think they highlight how some relationships can be loving and fulfilling but can also foster unhealthy mutual codependency. My takeaway from the end of HTN was that perfect lyctorhood means both involved still have their own bodies, and so far, that has only happened with Alecto & John. Calamedes don’t really have a viable 2-body option because bodies reject mismatching souls, and Palamedes went out with a bang. He qualifies what they’re about to do as simply “the best and kindest thing [they] can do in this moment” to save their family & friends and hopefully lure the resurrection beast away from the planet (though Nona ends up taking care of that). Their readiness, almost eagerness, to jump into being Paul highlights the blurriness between loving un-selfishly in a sustainable way and being self-sacrificing to the point where you lose yourself in devotion to another. I love Camilla & Palamedes (and was mentally calling them Calamedes before I listened - you’re not alone!) but always saw their relationship as another, far kinder but still deliberately imperfect example of the different relationship dynamics explored in the series.
As I read it, they made a melange of their souls; Camilla consumed his bones and her blood before Palamedes took over and using necromacy mixed their physical and metaphysical beings. Edit: upon further reflection, I have changed my understanding of these events; I think Palamedes took over the dying Camilla's body, and completed the "standard", imperfect, lyctor transformation, consuming her soul in the process. Perhaps I am still mistaken, and we will find in Alecto if something different happened, or perhaps it will always be left to the interpretation of the reader.
@@AbnerHolsinger I just finished it and Ianthe, in Bab's body said something like "so there was another way to do it huh?" and also Nona made clear that their physical movements seemed like a mix of the two. Whereas the imperfect lyctor the necromancer has full control
Late to the thread, but I suspect Muir did the Calamedes thing on purpose. I think she knew that’s the ship name that would make sense, but instead of the final merging being “a calamity”, she makes the merged soul Paul, maybe kind of to juxtaposition what could have been either the tragic slow deaths of two souls trying to survive in one body or the awful lyctor route, but actually became something so ordinary and perhaps almost disappointing as a resolution to us the reader… but which was to them the characters their best option and they were happy to get to choose something for themselves.
I wholly disagree that John is acting 'fully logical'. At first? Yes absolutely. But his power corrupted him. John acts like a calm everyman, but at the end of the day, it was an act. The fact he never fought any of the beasts, for thousands of years, in spite of possibly being the best weapon against them as he is unkillable, speaks to his self serving nature. John simply wants things to be normal, but he refuses to adjust himself to changing circumstances. He refuses to acknowledge things that complicate his existence outside of himself, and will act in whatever way possible to preserve his own comfortable reality. If he was so purely logical, everyone in his inner circle wouldn't come to hate him so. He refuses to talk to anyone about his plans, and takes drastic actions with seemingly little forethought. He can dress up what he did in cold calculating language all he wants to give a veneer of pragmatism, but John is a monster.
Also I can't believe the discussion about whether or not John is a villain. He murders the entire solar system on the off chance he might be able to kill less than 300 rich people.
I laughed out loud at the "Jon didn't do anything particularly bad" when he literally genocided the universe!!! or at least our solar system. At the end, when he is talking about when he figures the soul out, he talks about how when the nun killed herself (believing that it would help Jon see the soul and he would resurrect her) he saw the soul and was able to hold it, but then he saw "her" (aka Alecto, aka The Earth) and he decided he wanted the soul of the Earth and left the nun's soul lying there in a rather cruel way. This bit here is what gives it away: "He said, But that’s when I realised you were there. And I realised the soul of a single human being was incredible, but at the same time-incredible small potatoes. I wasn’t holding two nukes on the line. I was holding three. And compared to you, the other two were birthday candles. He said, I left her dead in the bedroom." And then later, "I reached out and stopped G-’s heart"Jon is an incredibly unrealiable narrator that tries to paint himself as an accidental happenstance and even then his narration of what happens lets slip how selfish and power-hungry he is. At the end, he made the choice of killing the Earth and gobble her soul by starting a nuclear war (it wasn't an accident!!) instead of healing the Earth. He calles the souls of all the human beings "small potatoes", like cmon. I believe a lot of things are going to make much more sense once we read Alecto, given that this was supposed to be the first half of Alecto the Ninth. We can't really establish if something matters or not until we read the next book, and considering Tamsyn Muir's writing, I highly doubt she included meaningless things. Like, everything was so essential that they decided to make an entire book out of it. They could have just gone with erasing all the "slice of life" side of Nona's story but their judgement was that it shouldn't be erased. If it was true that Nona's existance doesn't change anything, I don't think it would have made it an entire book. I think the fact that Nona existed is going to be critical in Alecto the Ninth for how Alecto thinks of the world around her, the Nine Houses System and every other human being and it's going to define her choices. Hence, the important of showing us Nona. In the same way, I think Gideon appearing was important firstly because obviously you need her if you want to open the Locked Tomb but also to show that is it not Gideon as we know her. Not only because we are not listening to her thoughts but like, she is suddenly daddy's girl and defending Jon in a way she never even hinted to before. The fact that the narrator keeps calling her Kiriona Gaia as opposed to Gideon Nav (only the characters who knew Gideon before calls her Gideon) makes me believe that the corpse is not, in fact, Gideon. At least not the entirety of her, maybe part of her soul and the rest is still bound to Harrow or something like that. That's why she feels so weird and ooc. Anyhow, great podcast! Can't wait to read Alecto to see how all comes together
completely agree with everything you said except i also thought the first 40% could have been shortened. agree with the gideon stuff, except fun fact: Kiriona is just the Maori word for Gideon :D
This is character assassination of our kindly prince the necrolord prime by the Blood of Eden ANTIFA goons! How is nuking the world to create your perfect mommy gf morally wrong? /j
Listening through this very fun podcast! I'd just like to comment: The struggle between Blood of Eden and the Nine Houses is partially given in Harrow, and clarified in Nona, but by John, not any BoE members: John sees every human being that he didn't personally resurrect (or who isn't a descendant thereof) as a traitor to the human race and to the planet he fought so fiercely to save, and the reason the Nine Houses are engaged in endless wars of expansion is to punish them. BoE, for their part, would really like the Earth back from the omnipotent, omnicidal wizard fascist, thank you. At least, that's my read on it. It gets a lot easier to digest once you realize John is just a petty little man with control issues who just wants to get laid and Do Fascism.
John sees Blood of Eden as the descendants of the people who doomed the earth to begin with, which he is arguably correct about. Blood of Eden sees John and the Nine Houses as imperialistic death-wizard fascists lead by the guy who kickstarted the extermination of the human race through nuclear fire, which BoE are also correct about
i totally disagree that there isn't motivation for the conflict between john and blood of eden! the trillionaire ancestors of BoE witnessed the horrific ascent of a normal man into a necromancer into a god, then watched him wipe out everyone on earth, destroy the solar system, and almost crush them in his massive hand. that would be enough in itself for them to want to hunt him down for the next 10,000 years (and i can only imagine the legends that developed from the stories they passed on), but on top of that he currently has an army of necromancers that are turning millions of people into refugees and killing their planets. sure there's a little inference that readers have to do, but the motivation is definitely solid. (by the way great recap and discussion! definitely gonna save this video for friends who don't want to read the books but who i want to talk about the books with, haha)
"John never really did anything wrong" I think y'all are forgetting John was the one who told Gideon the First to kill Harrow in HtN - which is I think why a lot of fans hate him (including me!!! He sucks SO MUCH - in a love to hate the character way though, like he's a fantastic character that I enjoy reading about because I despise him)
I think, though not necessary for most readers, Nona painted the world building 1000x better than the other 2 did previously. The universe wasn't explained well in the first two and it bothered me because I couldn't tell if it's suppose to be our world in the future or one of complete fantasy. So if nothing else it helped strengthen the world building.
There is a little mistake, the nun is Cristabel Oct not Anastasia. Cristabel helped John with the souls problem by killing herself with a gun. Anastasia comes much after the resurrection.
The experiences nona has in this book are absolutely gonna shape alecto in the next. Those 6 months will be formative for the person alecto becomes in book 4
I didn't catch this on my first read, but it's stated (before Ianthe and Camilla's duel) that the Sixth house left because the Lyctor Cassiopea left instructions for them. I think.
Im surprised nobody has mentioned the Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah of Alecto during the Epilogue is a reference to the Barbie Girl song by Aqua lmao (or, at least, seen a comment mentioning it)
Recently powering through the books, I think the answer as to why the Blood of Eden hate the emperor, is that their impression of him is that he keeps murdering planets. In the text of Harrow, she says that after murdering a planet it becomes a tomb and all live on it will die, likely making it very difficult for non necromancers to live on it as well as potentially seeing him as part of climate apocalypse because he keeps making these planets unlivable for the BoE. BoE is also made of the survivors who escaped so they probably see him as a genocidal maniac, and built the nine houses out of this disgusting and unsavory necromancy magic. I'm also gonna guess the names of BoE are supposed to be from the bits and pieces of culture pre-resurrection that made it off of Earth, as a way to honor the dead.
I did not read her stabbing John as an attempt to kill him. I thought it was on par with the way she thinks kissing involves teeth and blood, I think that Alecto Was expressing anger towards john but she would know that couldn't kill him
I really enjoyed your breakdown of Harrow, and this one for the most part, but I'm seriously concerned for your reading comprehension skills if you don't know by the end of Nona the Ninth why Blood of Eden hates the Houses. Working from memory here, so forgive me if I get a few details wrong: Of course, as you said, they hate Jod, but there's a lot more than that. The Cohort, remember, is the military arm of the Houses, which all of them contribute to (even the Ninth historically), and which two of them (the Second and the Fourth) are practically synonymous with. In Gideon the Ninth, Harrow bribes Gideon with an officer's commission, which has the terms that most of the spoils go back to the Ninth, but some go to Gideon, which is stated to be completely normal for this kind of thing. Those aren't terms of any kind of defensive war, they're terms of conquest. This is at the beginning of Gideon, so practically the first thing we learn about the Cohort is that it's in a war of conquest. We later also learn from the Fourth kids that the Cohort regularly uses child soldiers, and regularly uses pseudo-blitzkrieg style tactics, which is another indicator of aggression. In Harrow, slipped into the description of Resurrection Beasts, Harrow mentions that the Cohort regularly, as a matter of normal warfare, will "flip" a planet, killing it over the course of a few generations until it no longer supports any life whatsoever, because it causes the planets to produce Thanergy as they die, allowing necromancers to work their magic. At the end of Harrow, Augustine calls the wars of the Cohort 'endless' and 'largely symbolic'. So far, these have been kinda subtle, but in Nona we hear horrific stories about Cohort necromancers animating fallen corpses to look merely wounded, and then ambushing the people who come to help them, or using necromancy to rig corpses to explode, to kill the people who try and recover their dead. Both of these strategies are what we, in the modern day, would call war crimes in the literal sense, in addition to morally repugnant. All this taken together, it paints a picture of the Nine Houses that is a brutally cruel expansionist empire, which slashes and burns entire planets for tactical gain, caring nothing for the people it displaces, except that their deaths provide convenient Thanergy blooms. This also explains the antipathy toward necromancers, since almost everyone outside the Houses is going to interact with them primarily as horrifying enemies, or oppressive conquerors, as well as why necromancy is some times called a disease. It is literally used to infect planets, rendering them dead after a period of infection.
I love this analysis! One thing to note re: the Judith/Corona dynamic is in the short story “As Yet Unsent,” which I believe occurs shortly before Nona, Judith gives us her account of being forced into enemy (BOE) captivity and by the end of the story, it is revealed Jody was in some unrequited love with Corona (our poor fail girl, she has a hard life). So I do agree that some of it could be vestiges of Corona’s past she is desperate to hold onto but these two apparently were super close friends and grew up together and it’s very possible Corona shares Jody’s feelings but keeps them closer to her chest. Either way, I’m rooting for these sapphics to go off in Alecto and get a win. Along with Gideon and Harrow of course.
Late to this party, just finished Nona. I’m surprised that nothing about John’s gigantic lie came up when discussing him. His whole thing was that he destroyed the planets to resurrect what would become the nine houses, but in his own (possibly honest) explanation to harrow/Alecto/Gaia he describes killing our entire solar system purely to destroy a few thousand rich assholes. The entire foundation of John creating the RBs as a necessary evil is just completely false, and so I’m not sure how his morality is debatable. Great character, easy to empathize with for most of the book, but textually a villain.
I actually agre with Maria I didn't read him as sleezy but he is def a fascist or he becomes one, and justifies it to himself. Also, was the girl he was talking to actually Harrow? I thought this was misdirect because "and is this the part where you hurt me?" and "i still love yiu" so what I thought was that Nona/Alecto/Earth dreamt herself / a memory of talking to John in Harrow's body.
Great cast, guys, this was a treat to listen to, and I loved listening to all your takes. TLT's amazing in how much thought and reflection and sheer emotional reaction it provokes. A lot of the book isn't directly contribution to the plot. But none of it is inessential as far as the relationships and themes are concerned. They've given the setting a moment to breath. Camila and Palamedes, love, Phyrra, Alecto/Nona. It wouldn't have a fraction of the impact if we didn't actually linger a moment in this place. And we got a LOT laid down about BoE. And critically, we actually got OUT of the Nine Houses. We'd been buried in the Imperial Core the previous two books. Now we get to see the actual world. Campal's mutual suicide to create Paul had been brewing all book, and those little domestic moments made it work. Same with Nona's death. We got a little fake out, 'what if we didn't have to worry about all that Empire and Lyctor and Necromancy stuff'. What if they could just have an apartment and live together and go to school and be a family and be away from all that. But you can't get away from an Empire. And you can't get away from what you are, and what you've done, and what everyone else is and has done. And what Camilla and Palamedes did was the old Lyctor ritual. The powder was almost certainly poison. That's why she had it in her knife, a suicide pill, basically. There's also a moment where Camilla drinks a drop of her own blood. And THEN she goes nuclear. The critical theme of the whole Locked Tomb series is 'The Horrors of Love'. What Camilla and Palademes had was twisted. Love, yes. Pure, yes. But still messed up. Remember her conversation with him. "Love and freedom can't coexist". And then Palamedes is all like 'so simply by existing I have added to the weight of your existence', and she's like 'yes, but that's fine'. Compare with her dissociating in the tub for hours after Nona passed on that kiss. They're addicted to each other. And as equal as they seem, they're still Necromancer and Cavalier. Mouth, and food, in other words. And them both dying and Paul coming into existence from their remnants is a part of that. It ended about as happily as Harrow's Lyctorisation, in a way. Or Johns. Their relationship was hellishly codependent, it was never meant to be 'perfect'. A book does NOT have to have a happy ending, or having people do the right things for the right reason and with the right results. This isn't a YA book. I very very much doubt this series is going to get a happy ending, or a clean one, or one where most of the cast survives. Also, did you notice that the last two phrases they said to each other, mirrored their exchange before the duel in Gideon the Ninth? So sweet, so tragic. That's the horrifying thing about Nona, really. She's what Alecto could be, if Alecto was never slowly murdered by humanity. If she wasn't enslaved by Jod. If she wasn't turned into something profoundly traumatised and rejected and spurned and caged. Alecto is what happens when Nona has to endure Jod, and humanity's love. Remember how upset she was about her body. Not enough legs, not enough nose, a weird torso and ears and everything. She was living her life dysphoric because some asshole had nailed her previous expansiveness into the image of a male-gazed fashion doll. And Alecto 'kissing' Harrow also came with her BITING her. "This is how meat loves meat". Which is an amazing line. Also poor Admiral Sarpedon. You finally got to hook up and seal the deal with God himself only to wake up to some gigantic ghoul woman impaling him with a giant sword, except God seems really chill about the whole thing. Also worth mentioning that Gideon isn't black, he's Maori, as is Jod. There's a HEAP of Maori/Aotearoa themes in Jod's arc which really add some fascinating layers to his character. And he's a dick, and he's caused so much pain. He did so many wrong things. And yet, he's just some guy given the love of a planet. Of course he messed things up. What else is a person in that situation going to do? John Gaius didn't go INTO that situation clean or pure or happy or complete, he wasn't going to come OUT of it a good man or a happy man or a complete man one way or another, that's the messed up part. I also think that there is zero chance that Nona's experiences aren't going to carry over. Don't forget that wham line. "Whatever else happens, you were loved. You can't take loved away". And there's also another allusion to like, the only thing that God taught her was how to die, or something like that? But she didn't die until she was Nona.
Saaaaame there was so much in the epilogue that didn't make sense to me. And I was so confused with the John talking to Harrow parts. Muir is a great writer but if you space out for 5 seconds you miss soooooooo much!
I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments or (so far, I've not watched it all yet) in the video but I'm pretty sure it's stated or at least strongly implied that Blood of Eden disliked the Nine Houses and John because they're colonialist? I seem to remember that somewhere in this book they mention settlements of the Houses existing outside of the confines of those nine - I might be wrong but that's how I understood it
I love podcasts, and most of the time I just listen to them. But with you guys I want to sit down, make some popcorn and watch you beautiful, handsome and wonderful people tell me about books I haven't read💙 Also, welcome back Gina!💙 And Katie!💙 And Nona sounds absolutely adorable.
I did read Nona back when it came out but since English isn't my first language I only caught like 40% of the epilogue, you guys made me run back to it to read it fully lmao. Your takes are also really interesting!! They have nothing to do with what I've seen in my online circle and are closer to my personal opinions. Can't wait to reread the whole series right before Alecto comes out and rewatch the podcast episodes!
While Paul is super significant character progress, it doesn’t inherently change the plot. Palamedes and Camila shared a body and now they share a body and a mind. I wouldn’t say Paul impacts the overall plot of the ENTIRE series yet but that might just be how I am looking at it. Alecto actually waking up DOES impact the actual plot of the series by comparison. - Maria
on Jod and resurrection, the most important ingredient is the soul, the body could be reconstructed even without a soul even when he was just a man. But without a soul the body would not be self animated, and could only be a puppet. As far as why Gideon 2.0 wasn't properly raised with her body healed, it isn't really clear other than that it is convenient for the story.
I tried reading the wiki articles on all three books. It was so confusing I had to stop several times to cross reference things. Plan on checking the sample on amazon for the first one today. All the body hopping sounds hilarious.
I would love to see you guys review "Neuromancer" or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". I know they're a lil' out of your wheelhouse, but that's kinda why.
Maybe I'm just reading into this but I though that BOE hated the houses because they were the people who have necromancy which is directly linked to Jod. As well I thought that there wasn't really a reason for the 6th house 'Leaving" I thought it was just because at the end of Harrow when the sun died it like really fucked up the nine houses because they're so close to it?
If you’re looking for another Moira Quirk narrated book I’d highly recommend The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley. It one of my favorite historical romances and just a silly sweet romp.
I have to agree with Katie that this book’s plot was integral, but also I disagree that not much happened. In fact if we are talking about books in this series that don’t do much plot wise, even less happens in Harrow than Nona. That whole books is just foreplay for a fight. In Nona we see what the oppositional forces are doing, we see how much manpower it takes to muster those forces, we see what the common person’s perspective in all of this is, and how the resurrection beasts actually effect the system. Nona herself isn’t aware of everything that is happening around her, but a LOT is happening. A revolution is being mounted that’s having to fight on three fronts and we get a carefully crafted look into the motivations and plans of multiple factions and the events that bring all of these opposing sides together in a united purpose.
OMG THANK YOU THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! My favorite podcast reviewing my favorite series!!!! I was checking your channel everyday for the nona review!!! Your review of harrow is still the best out there!! Thank you guys.
Regarding the conflict between the houses and BoE being vague. The story has a huge theme of what life is like in a heavily war torn area, thick Afghanistan or Somalia. In these places it is often highly unclear what groups motivations are, where a conflict even started, etc. I think the core conflict being vague is here quite realistic and not at all a flaw in the book.
As for Blood of Eden, and possible motivation for wiping out the houses including John; they stated I think that they hate necromancy? and want to completely wipe it out which would mean getting rid of the houses essentially, or several of their bloodlines including the primary ones which would amount to the same thing
Muir’s writing is much more showing than telling which is generally a sign of a good author. I think this works super well in sketching her characters and their relationship. She never explicitly says that Gideon and harrow love each other but we see they do in how the choices they make. However, I think that this series could benefit a lot from more explicit explanation of the plot. I was so confused at the end of harrow and at what was going on politically in Nona. Just a bit more explanation would have helped a lot a think
I agree that this book could have been shorter. Compared to Harrow which was hitting your expectations in the face from the very first page, this really didnt have that many surprises. I was able to put most of what was happening together from about 40% of the way through the book. It was still very fun and enjoyable, just didnt really live up to what Harrow was doing.
I had to turn it off after you all agreed that John wasn't a villain. You don't have to have had initial bad motives to turn into a villain. He killed the entire solar system.
I really love john as a character, I could read about him for 400 straight pages and have a great time, but I think he's an intensely unreliable narrator. the way he tells the events shows a very sympathetic tragic fall arc, and I think that overall trajectory is probably true, but there's this bit in his last chapter in nona where his story of how the bombs went off contradicts itself, he goes from saying he detonated g---'s bomb in melbourne first to saying that the other bombs went first, and when harrow says "wait that's not what you said before" he says "what? why does it matter, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do anyway." it reads to me like that's meant to indicate he's been massaging a bunch of other details in his retelling to make himself look as blameless as possible.
Gideon is described as ‘haughty’ in this book - she is not at all like that in the first book, I felt her very very differently in this one. I do think it’s bc she’s sad as fuck but like there’s no denying her characterisation is really different
How did griddles soul get out of harrows body and into her kiriona body? Have we got that answwr did i miss it. Someone please tell me its hurting my.brain
We did not get that answer. But we did learn that Harrow abandoned her own body at the end of HtN and that her body physically died- recall the voice ordering chest compressions at the end of HtN because her heart stopped beating. We have been previously told throughout the series that souls leave the body upon death and that if a soul is strong enough it comes back and lingers as a ghost/revenant for a while. And we have also been told that revenants are very strongly drawn to haunt their own corpses. So presumably the portion of Gideon's soul that Harrow had been preserving was ejected from Harrow's body when it died at the end of HtN and rushed back to Gideon's own body (and Alecto took advantage of the free real estate that was Harrow's body). So then John must have anchored her ghost/soul to her body for reasons of his own that have not yet been explained or explored. Maybe he just wanted to be a dad.
To pick up on pithy critique that William made about unnecessary plot rigmarole, I’m trying to be good with it all, and I tell myself that Muir is like Shakespeare, whose plots and characters were often excessive, gratuitous, not unified, etc. In both cases it’s all so genius that you have to forgive it. Though I do wonder that if Netflix ever made a series (probably not too much gore), I want Muir to listen to your podcast, pare some things down, and make others viewer friendly. Like Williams said, she set herself up so well to explore Nona>Alecto: what does it mean to embodied, to love in a body, etc. What I still don’t get though is why Alecto, when in Harrow’s body, doesn’t remember herself……….
I got the impression that Alecto was very deliberately suppressing her memory from the way the later parts describe her keeping her layers of thought seperate and telling Pyrrha not to say her name because that would make her remember. I believe there's even a line where it says something like, "She looked at her body and for the first time *deliberately* acknowledged that it was not her." Presumably she's doing that because it would destroy Harrowhark's body even faster if she was using her full consciousness like how Judith's body is shutting down because of Varun the Eater, and also because she just wanted to be happy for a little while. Everything we've heard about Alecto and seen from her when she's in her right mind indicate she's deeply unhappy and unstable. Living a childlike, naive existence with the ability to find joy in humanity again without any baggage or anger about the death of everything she was seems like it would be deeply appealing to such a being.
I would literally stop reading the series if there was a book ab John lmao. This is just an assumption but from one lesbian to another I also highly doubt Tamsyn Muir would be even remotely interested in dedicating a whole book to him.
If you want another hysterical audiobook with a genius narrator, I 1000% recommend listening to The Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall, starting with A Crown For Cold Silver. Its the funniest story I've ever read and it's just so fun but so underrated. I remember getting Piera Forde to read it (and she's a massive Gideon fan too) and in her reading vlogs she's literally crying laughing at Crimson Empire. And the audio books are definitely the way to go! Angele Masters just massively elevates an already hilarious story with her incredibly funny narration.
As characters: Harrowhark > Gideon > Nona I found Nona to be very annoying in a way where I think she probably would've been fine if I had went into this know she was going to be a child basically. Her childish understanding of the world annoyed me so much and that's just that. I really really really liked John in this book. My day one Ianthe was also great. John, Ianthe, Harrowhark, and Cytherea are my faves. Maybe Palamedes as well... I really enjoy Paul and welcome them into the list. I'm excited for Alecto the Ninth!!!!
I am with john is a terrible person, th gaslighting, th controlling, the choosing to be vendictive over relationhips, th narrowmindedness, thats unerstandable but choosing poer over honet relationship all of th way. Like i feel if he werent, h woulnt have gaslit so much.
The reason they don't delve into the BoE conflict too much is because no one is in the right or wrong. It's a fucked up situation and everyone has errors on their hands. Except for Nona she can do no wrong. So John isn't evil nor is he good. He's a guy that got power in his hand and had to make split second decisions that weren't fantastic.
I think one of the quotes that best defines John is when Cassiopeia says “John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment.” He’s a wonderfully interesting character, but his downfall comes in his desire for vengeance
He's the old testament god haha
On the Camilla + Palamedes = Paul discussion: their lyctorhood is explicitly *not* perfect, and I think they highlight how some relationships can be loving and fulfilling but can also foster unhealthy mutual codependency. My takeaway from the end of HTN was that perfect lyctorhood means both involved still have their own bodies, and so far, that has only happened with Alecto & John. Calamedes don’t really have a viable 2-body option because bodies reject mismatching souls, and Palamedes went out with a bang. He qualifies what they’re about to do as simply “the best and kindest thing [they] can do in this moment” to save their family & friends and hopefully lure the resurrection beast away from the planet (though Nona ends up taking care of that). Their readiness, almost eagerness, to jump into being Paul highlights the blurriness between loving un-selfishly in a sustainable way and being self-sacrificing to the point where you lose yourself in devotion to another. I love Camilla & Palamedes (and was mentally calling them Calamedes before I listened - you’re not alone!) but always saw their relationship as another, far kinder but still deliberately imperfect example of the different relationship dynamics explored in the series.
Honestly, with some distance I actually really agree with this. It is not a selfish love but is 100% to selfless! - Maria
As I read it, they made a melange of their souls; Camilla consumed his bones and her blood before Palamedes took over and using necromacy mixed their physical and metaphysical beings.
Edit: upon further reflection, I have changed my understanding of these events; I think Palamedes took over the dying Camilla's body, and completed the "standard", imperfect, lyctor transformation, consuming her soul in the process. Perhaps I am still mistaken, and we will find in Alecto if something different happened, or perhaps it will always be left to the interpretation of the reader.
@@AbnerHolsinger I just finished it and Ianthe, in Bab's body said something like "so there was another way to do it huh?" and also Nona made clear that their physical movements seemed like a mix of the two. Whereas the imperfect lyctor the necromancer has full control
Late to the thread, but I suspect Muir did the Calamedes thing on purpose. I think she knew that’s the ship name that would make sense, but instead of the final merging being “a calamity”, she makes the merged soul Paul, maybe kind of to juxtaposition what could have been either the tragic slow deaths of two souls trying to survive in one body or the awful lyctor route, but actually became something so ordinary and perhaps almost disappointing as a resolution to us the reader… but which was to them the characters their best option and they were happy to get to choose something for themselves.
I wholly disagree that John is acting 'fully logical'. At first? Yes absolutely. But his power corrupted him. John acts like a calm everyman, but at the end of the day, it was an act. The fact he never fought any of the beasts, for thousands of years, in spite of possibly being the best weapon against them as he is unkillable, speaks to his self serving nature. John simply wants things to be normal, but he refuses to adjust himself to changing circumstances. He refuses to acknowledge things that complicate his existence outside of himself, and will act in whatever way possible to preserve his own comfortable reality. If he was so purely logical, everyone in his inner circle wouldn't come to hate him so. He refuses to talk to anyone about his plans, and takes drastic actions with seemingly little forethought. He can dress up what he did in cold calculating language all he wants to give a veneer of pragmatism, but John is a monster.
YES thank you!!
Also I can't believe the discussion about whether or not John is a villain. He murders the entire solar system on the off chance he might be able to kill less than 300 rich people.
I fell like a dumby. Why did I think there were wayyy more people.
Yeah that part of the discussion was absolutely baffling. 💀 I was hoping they were being sarcastic 😅
I laughed out loud at the "Jon didn't do anything particularly bad" when he literally genocided the universe!!! or at least our solar system. At the end, when he is talking about when he figures the soul out, he talks about how when the nun killed herself (believing that it would help Jon see the soul and he would resurrect her) he saw the soul and was able to hold it, but then he saw "her" (aka Alecto, aka The Earth) and he decided he wanted the soul of the Earth and left the nun's soul lying there in a rather cruel way. This bit here is what gives it away:
"He said, But that’s when I realised you were there. And I realised the soul of a single human being was incredible, but at the same time-incredible small potatoes. I wasn’t holding two nukes on the line. I was holding three. And compared to you, the other two were birthday candles. He said, I left her dead in the bedroom." And then later, "I reached out and stopped G-’s heart"Jon is an incredibly unrealiable narrator that tries to paint himself as an accidental happenstance and even then his narration of what happens lets slip how selfish and power-hungry he is. At the end, he made the choice of killing the Earth and gobble her soul by starting a nuclear war (it wasn't an accident!!) instead of healing the Earth. He calles the souls of all the human beings "small potatoes", like cmon.
I believe a lot of things are going to make much more sense once we read Alecto, given that this was supposed to be the first half of Alecto the Ninth. We can't really establish if something matters or not until we read the next book, and considering Tamsyn Muir's writing, I highly doubt she included meaningless things. Like, everything was so essential that they decided to make an entire book out of it. They could have just gone with erasing all the "slice of life" side of Nona's story but their judgement was that it shouldn't be erased. If it was true that Nona's existance doesn't change anything, I don't think it would have made it an entire book. I think the fact that Nona existed is going to be critical in Alecto the Ninth for how Alecto thinks of the world around her, the Nine Houses System and every other human being and it's going to define her choices. Hence, the important of showing us Nona.
In the same way, I think Gideon appearing was important firstly because obviously you need her if you want to open the Locked Tomb but also to show that is it not Gideon as we know her. Not only because we are not listening to her thoughts but like, she is suddenly daddy's girl and defending Jon in a way she never even hinted to before. The fact that the narrator keeps calling her Kiriona Gaia as opposed to Gideon Nav (only the characters who knew Gideon before calls her Gideon) makes me believe that the corpse is not, in fact, Gideon. At least not the entirety of her, maybe part of her soul and the rest is still bound to Harrow or something like that. That's why she feels so weird and ooc.
Anyhow, great podcast! Can't wait to read Alecto to see how all comes together
completely agree with everything you said except i also thought the first 40% could have been shortened. agree with the gideon stuff, except fun fact: Kiriona is just the Maori word for Gideon :D
This is character assassination of our kindly prince the necrolord prime by the Blood of Eden ANTIFA goons! How is nuking the world to create your perfect mommy gf morally wrong? /j
When I found out that John was from New Zealand I immediately cast him in my mind with Taika Waititi and I cannot unsee that now.
Listening through this very fun podcast! I'd just like to comment: The struggle between Blood of Eden and the Nine Houses is partially given in Harrow, and clarified in Nona, but by John, not any BoE members: John sees every human being that he didn't personally resurrect (or who isn't a descendant thereof) as a traitor to the human race and to the planet he fought so fiercely to save, and the reason the Nine Houses are engaged in endless wars of expansion is to punish them.
BoE, for their part, would really like the Earth back from the omnipotent, omnicidal wizard fascist, thank you.
At least, that's my read on it. It gets a lot easier to digest once you realize John is just a petty little man with control issues who just wants to get laid and Do Fascism.
John sees Blood of Eden as the descendants of the people who doomed the earth to begin with, which he is arguably correct about.
Blood of Eden sees John and the Nine Houses as imperialistic death-wizard fascists lead by the guy who kickstarted the extermination of the human race through nuclear fire, which BoE are also correct about
i totally disagree that there isn't motivation for the conflict between john and blood of eden! the trillionaire ancestors of BoE witnessed the horrific ascent of a normal man into a necromancer into a god, then watched him wipe out everyone on earth, destroy the solar system, and almost crush them in his massive hand. that would be enough in itself for them to want to hunt him down for the next 10,000 years (and i can only imagine the legends that developed from the stories they passed on), but on top of that he currently has an army of necromancers that are turning millions of people into refugees and killing their planets. sure there's a little inference that readers have to do, but the motivation is definitely solid. (by the way great recap and discussion! definitely gonna save this video for friends who don't want to read the books but who i want to talk about the books with, haha)
"John never really did anything wrong" I think y'all are forgetting John was the one who told Gideon the First to kill Harrow in HtN - which is I think why a lot of fans hate him (including me!!! He sucks SO MUCH - in a love to hate the character way though, like he's a fantastic character that I enjoy reading about because I despise him)
I think, though not necessary for most readers, Nona painted the world building 1000x better than the other 2 did previously. The universe wasn't explained well in the first two and it bothered me because I couldn't tell if it's suppose to be our world in the future or one of complete fantasy. So if nothing else it helped strengthen the world building.
There is a little mistake, the nun is Cristabel Oct not Anastasia. Cristabel helped John with the souls problem by killing herself with a gun. Anastasia comes much after the resurrection.
The experiences nona has in this book are absolutely gonna shape alecto in the next. Those 6 months will be formative for the person alecto becomes in book 4
I agree with Katie. Totally necessary. Nona is also my fave so far.
THANK YOU -Katie
I didn't catch this on my first read, but it's stated (before Ianthe and Camilla's duel) that the Sixth house left because the Lyctor Cassiopea left instructions for them. I think.
Im surprised nobody has mentioned the Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah of Alecto during the Epilogue is a reference to the Barbie Girl song by Aqua lmao (or, at least, seen a comment mentioning it)
Recently powering through the books, I think the answer as to why the Blood of Eden hate the emperor, is that their impression of him is that he keeps murdering planets. In the text of Harrow, she says that after murdering a planet it becomes a tomb and all live on it will die, likely making it very difficult for non necromancers to live on it as well as potentially seeing him as part of climate apocalypse because he keeps making these planets unlivable for the BoE. BoE is also made of the survivors who escaped so they probably see him as a genocidal maniac, and built the nine houses out of this disgusting and unsavory necromancy magic.
I'm also gonna guess the names of BoE are supposed to be from the bits and pieces of culture pre-resurrection that made it off of Earth, as a way to honor the dead.
I did not read her stabbing John as an attempt to kill him. I thought it was on par with the way she thinks kissing involves teeth and blood, I think that Alecto Was expressing anger towards john but she would know that couldn't kill him
I just want Alecto to wear the shirt Pyrrah bought her for her six month birthday. Mustache
I really enjoyed your breakdown of Harrow, and this one for the most part, but I'm seriously concerned for your reading comprehension skills if you don't know by the end of Nona the Ninth why Blood of Eden hates the Houses.
Working from memory here, so forgive me if I get a few details wrong:
Of course, as you said, they hate Jod, but there's a lot more than that.
The Cohort, remember, is the military arm of the Houses, which all of them contribute to (even the Ninth historically), and which two of them (the Second and the Fourth) are practically synonymous with.
In Gideon the Ninth, Harrow bribes Gideon with an officer's commission, which has the terms that most of the spoils go back to the Ninth, but some go to Gideon, which is stated to be completely normal for this kind of thing. Those aren't terms of any kind of defensive war, they're terms of conquest. This is at the beginning of Gideon, so practically the first thing we learn about the Cohort is that it's in a war of conquest. We later also learn from the Fourth kids that the Cohort regularly uses child soldiers, and regularly uses pseudo-blitzkrieg style tactics, which is another indicator of aggression.
In Harrow, slipped into the description of Resurrection Beasts, Harrow mentions that the Cohort regularly, as a matter of normal warfare, will "flip" a planet, killing it over the course of a few generations until it no longer supports any life whatsoever, because it causes the planets to produce Thanergy as they die, allowing necromancers to work their magic. At the end of Harrow, Augustine calls the wars of the Cohort 'endless' and 'largely symbolic'.
So far, these have been kinda subtle, but in Nona we hear horrific stories about Cohort necromancers animating fallen corpses to look merely wounded, and then ambushing the people who come to help them, or using necromancy to rig corpses to explode, to kill the people who try and recover their dead. Both of these strategies are what we, in the modern day, would call war crimes in the literal sense, in addition to morally repugnant.
All this taken together, it paints a picture of the Nine Houses that is a brutally cruel expansionist empire, which slashes and burns entire planets for tactical gain, caring nothing for the people it displaces, except that their deaths provide convenient Thanergy blooms.
This also explains the antipathy toward necromancers, since almost everyone outside the Houses is going to interact with them primarily as horrifying enemies, or oppressive conquerors, as well as why necromancy is some times called a disease. It is literally used to infect planets, rendering them dead after a period of infection.
I love this analysis! One thing to note re: the Judith/Corona dynamic is in the short story “As Yet Unsent,” which I believe occurs shortly before Nona, Judith gives us her account of being forced into enemy (BOE) captivity and by the end of the story, it is revealed Jody was in some unrequited love with Corona (our poor fail girl, she has a hard life). So I do agree that some of it could be vestiges of Corona’s past she is desperate to hold onto but these two apparently were super close friends and grew up together and it’s very possible Corona shares Jody’s feelings but keeps them closer to her chest. Either way, I’m rooting for these sapphics to go off in Alecto and get a win. Along with Gideon and Harrow of course.
Harrow's body: *falling apart, busting open, oozing blood*
Harrow: 💤
She was Harrowing Hell at the time.z
Late to this party, just finished Nona. I’m surprised that nothing about John’s gigantic lie came up when discussing him. His whole thing was that he destroyed the planets to resurrect what would become the nine houses, but in his own (possibly honest) explanation to harrow/Alecto/Gaia he describes killing our entire solar system purely to destroy a few thousand rich assholes.
The entire foundation of John creating the RBs as a necessary evil is just completely false, and so I’m not sure how his morality is debatable. Great character, easy to empathize with for most of the book, but textually a villain.
I actually agre with Maria I didn't read him as sleezy but he is def a fascist or he becomes one, and justifies it to himself.
Also, was the girl he was talking to actually Harrow? I thought this was misdirect because "and is this the part where you hurt me?" and "i still love yiu" so what I thought was that Nona/Alecto/Earth dreamt herself / a memory of talking to John in Harrow's body.
This podcast is literally my favourite and i love that you guys love my favourite series so much ❤ ♥
Great cast, guys, this was a treat to listen to, and I loved listening to all your takes. TLT's amazing in how much thought and reflection and sheer emotional reaction it provokes.
A lot of the book isn't directly contribution to the plot. But none of it is inessential as far as the relationships and themes are concerned. They've given the setting a moment to breath. Camila and Palamedes, love, Phyrra, Alecto/Nona. It wouldn't have a fraction of the impact if we didn't actually linger a moment in this place. And we got a LOT laid down about BoE. And critically, we actually got OUT of the Nine Houses. We'd been buried in the Imperial Core the previous two books. Now we get to see the actual world. Campal's mutual suicide to create Paul had been brewing all book, and those little domestic moments made it work. Same with Nona's death. We got a little fake out, 'what if we didn't have to worry about all that Empire and Lyctor and Necromancy stuff'. What if they could just have an apartment and live together and go to school and be a family and be away from all that. But you can't get away from an Empire. And you can't get away from what you are, and what you've done, and what everyone else is and has done.
And what Camilla and Palamedes did was the old Lyctor ritual. The powder was almost certainly poison. That's why she had it in her knife, a suicide pill, basically. There's also a moment where Camilla drinks a drop of her own blood. And THEN she goes nuclear. The critical theme of the whole Locked Tomb series is 'The Horrors of Love'. What Camilla and Palademes had was twisted. Love, yes. Pure, yes. But still messed up. Remember her conversation with him. "Love and freedom can't coexist". And then Palamedes is all like 'so simply by existing I have added to the weight of your existence', and she's like 'yes, but that's fine'. Compare with her dissociating in the tub for hours after Nona passed on that kiss. They're addicted to each other. And as equal as they seem, they're still Necromancer and Cavalier. Mouth, and food, in other words. And them both dying and Paul coming into existence from their remnants is a part of that. It ended about as happily as Harrow's Lyctorisation, in a way. Or Johns. Their relationship was hellishly codependent, it was never meant to be 'perfect'. A book does NOT have to have a happy ending, or having people do the right things for the right reason and with the right results. This isn't a YA book. I very very much doubt this series is going to get a happy ending, or a clean one, or one where most of the cast survives. Also, did you notice that the last two phrases they said to each other, mirrored their exchange before the duel in Gideon the Ninth? So sweet, so tragic.
That's the horrifying thing about Nona, really. She's what Alecto could be, if Alecto was never slowly murdered by humanity. If she wasn't enslaved by Jod. If she wasn't turned into something profoundly traumatised and rejected and spurned and caged. Alecto is what happens when Nona has to endure Jod, and humanity's love. Remember how upset she was about her body. Not enough legs, not enough nose, a weird torso and ears and everything. She was living her life dysphoric because some asshole had nailed her previous expansiveness into the image of a male-gazed fashion doll. And Alecto 'kissing' Harrow also came with her BITING her. "This is how meat loves meat". Which is an amazing line. Also poor Admiral Sarpedon. You finally got to hook up and seal the deal with God himself only to wake up to some gigantic ghoul woman impaling him with a giant sword, except God seems really chill about the whole thing.
Also worth mentioning that Gideon isn't black, he's Maori, as is Jod. There's a HEAP of Maori/Aotearoa themes in Jod's arc which really add some fascinating layers to his character. And he's a dick, and he's caused so much pain. He did so many wrong things. And yet, he's just some guy given the love of a planet. Of course he messed things up. What else is a person in that situation going to do? John Gaius didn't go INTO that situation clean or pure or happy or complete, he wasn't going to come OUT of it a good man or a happy man or a complete man one way or another, that's the messed up part.
I also think that there is zero chance that Nona's experiences aren't going to carry over. Don't forget that wham line. "Whatever else happens, you were loved. You can't take loved away". And there's also another allusion to like, the only thing that God taught her was how to die, or something like that? But she didn't die until she was Nona.
I seriously love you guys. I really feel like a a buddy of y'all's sitting down for a good, thought provoking chat. 💜
I finished the book a few days ago and you all touched on a LOT of stuff I missed listening to the audiobook. Love hearing this discussion!
Saaaaame there was so much in the epilogue that didn't make sense to me. And I was so confused with the John talking to Harrow parts. Muir is a great writer but if you space out for 5 seconds you miss soooooooo much!
I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments or (so far, I've not watched it all yet) in the video but I'm pretty sure it's stated or at least strongly implied that Blood of Eden disliked the Nine Houses and John because they're colonialist? I seem to remember that somewhere in this book they mention settlements of the Houses existing outside of the confines of those nine - I might be wrong but that's how I understood it
I love podcasts, and most of the time I just listen to them. But with you guys I want to sit down, make some popcorn and watch you beautiful, handsome and wonderful people tell me about books I haven't read💙
Also, welcome back Gina!💙 And Katie!💙
And Nona sounds absolutely adorable.
Maybe BOE hate Houses for what lyctors doing to planets (kill them). In HtN was episode about this.
Anastasia is not the nun. It’s cristbel, Mercy’s cavalier. Anastasia came later
I did read Nona back when it came out but since English isn't my first language I only caught like 40% of the epilogue, you guys made me run back to it to read it fully lmao. Your takes are also really interesting!! They have nothing to do with what I've seen in my online circle and are closer to my personal opinions. Can't wait to reread the whole series right before Alecto comes out and rewatch the podcast episodes!
"nothing plot wise has significantly changed" WHAT ABOUT FUCKING PAUL????????????
While Paul is super significant character progress, it doesn’t inherently change the plot. Palamedes and Camila shared a body and now they share a body and a mind. I wouldn’t say Paul impacts the overall plot of the ENTIRE series yet but that might just be how I am looking at it. Alecto actually waking up DOES impact the actual plot of the series by comparison. - Maria
on Jod and resurrection, the most important ingredient is the soul, the body could be reconstructed even without a soul even when he was just a man. But without a soul the body would not be self animated, and could only be a puppet. As far as why Gideon 2.0 wasn't properly raised with her body healed, it isn't really clear other than that it is convenient for the story.
You three are SO good together. Thanks!!!
Thanks, this analysis was very helpful. I was a bit confused about the ending.
I really need to start this series it sounds hysterical
I tried reading the wiki articles on all three books. It was so confusing I had to stop several times to cross reference things. Plan on checking the sample on amazon for the first one today. All the body hopping sounds hilarious.
I definitely recommend the audiobooks
I love watching your reviews, and I love The Locked Tomb
Oof I got goosebumps when you read Judith's lines 🤣
Alecto just throwing Harrow over her shoulder is so funny to me 💀
Also Harrow's very great grandmother got mentioned we up!
I think it weas mentioned that the nine houses destroy and kill other planets which I think woud count John as a villain
I would love to see you guys review "Neuromancer" or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". I know they're a lil' out of your wheelhouse, but that's kinda why.
Maybe I'm just reading into this but I though that BOE hated the houses because they were the people who have necromancy which is directly linked to Jod. As well I thought that there wasn't really a reason for the 6th house 'Leaving" I thought it was just because at the end of Harrow when the sun died it like really fucked up the nine houses because they're so close to it?
If you’re looking for another Moira Quirk narrated book I’d highly recommend The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley. It one of my favorite historical romances and just a silly sweet romp.
What a heckin cool series. It's so creative, fucking Evangelion style.
I have to agree with Katie that this book’s plot was integral, but also I disagree that not much happened. In fact if we are talking about books in this series that don’t do much plot wise, even less happens in Harrow than Nona. That whole books is just foreplay for a fight. In Nona we see what the oppositional forces are doing, we see how much manpower it takes to muster those forces, we see what the common person’s perspective in all of this is, and how the resurrection beasts actually effect the system. Nona herself isn’t aware of everything that is happening around her, but a LOT is happening. A revolution is being mounted that’s having to fight on three fronts and we get a carefully crafted look into the motivations and plans of multiple factions and the events that bring all of these opposing sides together in a united purpose.
OMG THANK YOU
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!
My favorite podcast reviewing my favorite series!!!!
I was checking your channel everyday for the nona review!!!
Your review of harrow is still the best out there!! Thank you guys.
The duels are so cliche but I still FREAKING LOVE THEM! There is something so cool about it!
Regarding the conflict between the houses and BoE being vague. The story has a huge theme of what life is like in a heavily war torn area, thick Afghanistan or Somalia. In these places it is often highly unclear what groups motivations are, where a conflict even started, etc. I think the core conflict being vague is here quite realistic and not at all a flaw in the book.
As for Blood of Eden, and possible motivation for wiping out the houses including John; they stated I think that they hate necromancy? and want to completely wipe it out which would mean getting rid of the houses essentially, or several of their bloodlines including the primary ones which would amount to the same thing
God does not have Gideon’s soul. I think. So that’s why he can’t resurrect her.
That’s also why Gideon isn’t as lively and fun as she was.
(And she has been fighting for months, that changes a person as well.)
Muir’s writing is much more showing than telling which is generally a sign of a good author. I think this works super well in sketching her characters and their relationship. She never explicitly says that Gideon and harrow love each other but we see they do in how the choices they make. However, I think that this series could benefit a lot from more explicit explanation of the plot. I was so confused at the end of harrow and at what was going on politically in Nona. Just a bit more explanation would have helped a lot a think
I agree that this book could have been shorter. Compared to Harrow which was hitting your expectations in the face from the very first page, this really didnt have that many surprises. I was able to put most of what was happening together from about 40% of the way through the book. It was still very fun and enjoyable, just didnt really live up to what Harrow was doing.
I just realized that you edit out the pauses between the speakers.
I just finished this and I was hoping y'all would cover it!!! 💜💜💜💜
Funny that a lot of you seem to like John. Whereas I skipped his parts on second read…
I had to turn it off after you all agreed that John wasn't a villain. You don't have to have had initial bad motives to turn into a villain. He killed the entire solar system.
He's a great nuanced villain, but very clearly a villain.
I definitely sided towards him being a villain. You should watch more to watch my massive hate boner for him -Katie
The thing that makes him a great villain is that if you have sympathetic imagination you can… Imagine yourself doing what he does
I really love john as a character, I could read about him for 400 straight pages and have a great time, but I think he's an intensely unreliable narrator. the way he tells the events shows a very sympathetic tragic fall arc, and I think that overall trajectory is probably true, but there's this bit in his last chapter in nona where his story of how the bombs went off contradicts itself, he goes from saying he detonated g---'s bomb in melbourne first to saying that the other bombs went first, and when harrow says "wait that's not what you said before" he says "what? why does it matter, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do anyway." it reads to me like that's meant to indicate he's been massaging a bunch of other details in his retelling to make himself look as blameless as possible.
Gideon is described as ‘haughty’ in this book - she is not at all like that in the first book, I felt her very very differently in this one. I do think it’s bc she’s sad as fuck but like there’s no denying her characterisation is really different
Can you read Outlander Diana Gabaldon and Breaking Time Sasha Alsberg
Great discussion even if I’m a year late. Just finishing the books.
How did griddles soul get out of harrows body and into her kiriona body? Have we got that answwr did i miss it. Someone please tell me its hurting my.brain
We did not get that answer. But we did learn that Harrow abandoned her own body at the end of HtN and that her body physically died- recall the voice ordering chest compressions at the end of HtN because her heart stopped beating. We have been previously told throughout the series that souls leave the body upon death and that if a soul is strong enough it comes back and lingers as a ghost/revenant for a while. And we have also been told that revenants are very strongly drawn to haunt their own corpses.
So presumably the portion of Gideon's soul that Harrow had been preserving was ejected from Harrow's body when it died at the end of HtN and rushed back to Gideon's own body (and Alecto took advantage of the free real estate that was Harrow's body). So then John must have anchored her ghost/soul to her body for reasons of his own that have not yet been explained or explored. Maybe he just wanted to be a dad.
To pick up on pithy critique that William made about unnecessary plot rigmarole, I’m trying to be good with it all, and I tell myself that Muir is like Shakespeare, whose plots and characters were often excessive, gratuitous, not unified, etc. In both cases it’s all so genius that you have to forgive it. Though I do wonder that if Netflix ever made a series (probably not too much gore), I want Muir to listen to your podcast, pare some things down, and make others viewer friendly. Like Williams said, she set herself up so well to explore Nona>Alecto: what does it mean to embodied, to love in a body, etc. What I still don’t get though is why Alecto, when in Harrow’s body, doesn’t remember herself……….
I got the impression that Alecto was very deliberately suppressing her memory from the way the later parts describe her keeping her layers of thought seperate and telling Pyrrha not to say her name because that would make her remember. I believe there's even a line where it says something like, "She looked at her body and for the first time *deliberately* acknowledged that it was not her."
Presumably she's doing that because it would destroy Harrowhark's body even faster if she was using her full consciousness like how Judith's body is shutting down because of Varun the Eater, and also because she just wanted to be happy for a little while. Everything we've heard about Alecto and seen from her when she's in her right mind indicate she's deeply unhappy and unstable. Living a childlike, naive existence with the ability to find joy in humanity again without any baggage or anger about the death of everything she was seems like it would be deeply appealing to such a being.
Commenting until The Demonata Series is reviewed
I would literally stop reading the series if there was a book ab John lmao. This is just an assumption but from one lesbian to another I also highly doubt Tamsyn Muir would be even remotely interested in dedicating a whole book to him.
I think this absolutely was John’s book.
If you want another hysterical audiobook with a genius narrator, I 1000% recommend listening to The Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall, starting with A Crown For Cold Silver. Its the funniest story I've ever read and it's just so fun but so underrated. I remember getting Piera Forde to read it (and she's a massive Gideon fan too) and in her reading vlogs she's literally crying laughing at Crimson Empire. And the audio books are definitely the way to go! Angele Masters just massively elevates an already hilarious story with her incredibly funny narration.
As characters: Harrowhark > Gideon > Nona
I found Nona to be very annoying in a way where I think she probably would've been fine if I had went into this know she was going to be a child basically. Her childish understanding of the world annoyed me so much and that's just that.
I really really really liked John in this book. My day one Ianthe was also great. John, Ianthe, Harrowhark, and Cytherea are my faves. Maybe Palamedes as well... I really enjoy Paul and welcome them into the list. I'm excited for Alecto the Ninth!!!!
I am with john is a terrible person, th gaslighting, th controlling, the choosing to be vendictive over relationhips, th narrowmindedness, thats unerstandable but choosing poer over honet relationship all of th way. Like i feel if he werent, h woulnt have gaslit so much.
And, he’s a total man.
Sounds like someone mashed solaris and steven universe together
Pal...uh...meed.ease
The reason they don't delve into the BoE conflict too much is because no one is in the right or wrong. It's a fucked up situation and everyone has errors on their hands. Except for Nona she can do no wrong. So John isn't evil nor is he good. He's a guy that got power in his hand and had to make split second decisions that weren't fantastic.
"decisions that weren't fantastic" - he detonated a whole bunch of nukes???? how is he not evil lol
JK Rowling didn't speak against trans rights, she spoke up for womens' 🤷♂️
Nah, she's a through and through transphobic woman. True blue TERF and very hateful and spiteful in her actions.
Also for Nazi rights, don’t forget them.