Listen. Okay. Listen. What really gets me about the Locked Tomb books is that in any other universe the Nine Houses would be the hilariously overwrought bad guys. They have NO chill. They are Warhammer 40K levels of fucking weird. Triple-A videogames would blush at how absurdly, nakedly evil they are. Their oil-black spaceships are covered in THOUSANDS OF INTERLOCKING HUMAN SKELETONS. Their expansionist empire rolls forward to literally drain the life from your planet. Their interstellar transport & communication system uses jet-black space obelisks and stone tablets eight feet tall written in dead languages and PERPETUALLY BATHED IN BLOOD. Their emperor wears a crown literally made from the bones of children. NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS NOT OBJECTIVELY HORRIBLE. Even their names are impossibly sinister. “Our God the Emperor Undying”? “Lord of the Nine Resurrections”? “The Black Vestals”? “The Favor of the Chain”? “His saints, the Lyctors, his fingers and gestures?” THEY ARE NIGHTMARES. Everything about them screams enemy faction. In another context we’d all be laughing at the big flashing neon signs saying “HEY THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS.” But because we’re reading it from their point of view, we’re just like “haha aww Harrow you can’t even jog a kilometer without getting a skeleton to carry you? Or do you just want to be scooped up in a pair of big arms? What a dork.”
