Review of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
I’m an unabashed fangirl of the Locked Tomb series, so I devoured Nona the Ninth (Tordotcom, 2022) almost as soon as it was available. As the third book in the series, you’re going to want to have read Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth (which I weirdly have not reviewed) before you tackle this book. But similar to the differences in the style of storytelling between Gideon and Harrow, Nona is its own thing entirely.
Nona is a young woman who has no memories prior to six months earlier. She lives with a few friends, who we were introduced to at the end of Harrow. She helps out at a school, mostly handling a six-legged dog named Noodles and hanging out with some of the students, who are physically younger than her, but more mentally mature than she is. In many ways, Nona’s age really shows in terms of having only six months of memories–she doesn’t have the wealth of experience that a human who looks her age would. So when she makes bad decisions (and oh, she makes many of those), it made sense to me from a human development perspective. She’s essentially a toddler, at best, with slightly more control over her bodily functions.
As seems to be the case with most of Muir’s books, the tone shifts around halfway to two-thirds of the way through the book. The opening is very slice-of-life, following Nona and her housemates through their normal lives, until things reach a breaking point where they can no longer be “normal,” and instead have to deal with the potentially planet-ending threat on their doorstep. Things kick off after that, and steadily spiral into a very strange place by the end of the book, much like the endings to the other books.
If you enjoyed Gideon and Harrow, you may not like Nona as much. I’ve liked each book a little more than the last, which means Alecto the Ninth should completely blow my mind. But others have felt like Gideon was the strongest book, and that they’ve gone downhill since then. Not me! Check out Nona the Ninth if you like books with a great mix of fun and serious business, and hold on to your swords for whatever comes next!
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