Gideon the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It’s wildly entertaining with a really cool setting and engaging haunted house mystery plot. And best of all, it has the best protagonist: an immensely charismatic swaggering butch lesbian sword fighter who just gives no fucks
Harrow the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It’s challenging and rewarding with fascinating character dynamics, incredibly cool structural storytelling and deeply philosophical themes. And best of all, it has the best protagonist, a fiercely determined, immensely powerful necromancer, who is also an incredibly traumatized useless lesbian who can’t deal with the fact that she loves women more than God, who she works with
Nona the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It’s a deeply compelling exploration of the effects of war and colonization on the people who it hurts the most, with humanist themes and queer found family dynamics. And best of all, it has the best protagonist, an endlessly optimistic, childlike but never infantalized girl who can’t do anything but love every single person that she meets even in the middle of a war zone and also she’s friends with a six legged dog
hey you ever think about how grief is so irrepirably carved into the lines and muscles of harrow’s face that even nona looks a little sad all the time, even when she’s smiling? cause i do. i think about that.
She had known this for about 48 hours, now. Ever since the blue light faded from the sky over New Ro, ever since monsters fell from the heavens like rain. Ever since Nona -
Hot Sauce carefully avoided thinking of Nona. It made her feel - too much, which was something she couldn’t afford.
It has been a week since the zombie broadcast, over a week since the mob had shot and burned three zombies in the cages at the riots. Hot Sauce had been there. She had not slept well since.
Honesty was still missing. He had been gone for three days. He had left in a hurry, saying he had urgent buisiness in another part of the city. He had said he would be back before dark. He hadn’t been home since.
Kevin was asleep in a cot in the corner of the classroom, at school. He looked peaceful. When he wakes up crying, he is badly in need of a bath.
Born in the Morning and Beautiful Ruby had left to be with their families. Hot Sauce didn’t have a family to go back to.
The Angel is gone. She - they? - had taken Noodle with them. Hot Sauce missed Noodle terribly.
Hot Sauce pulled her knees to her chest and faught the headache that pulsed through her neck and shoulders up through the base of her skull. Her belly was empty, and ached. Her eyes and mouth were dry. Her skin was parched and itchy. And there was a wound, from the night when the people with masks and guns had stormed the school. The wound festered and stung.
Hot Sauce closed her eyes. She could still smell the blood.
More than anything, Hot Sauce was cold. She was colder now than she had ever been. The sky had gone dark when the sun went out in the middle of the day and had not turned back on, and the world had been plunged into cold, cold darkness.
“The sun is going out,” said the woman in the middle of the crowded street. “God is dead. The sun is going out.”
And people were panicking, screaming and rioting in the streets. People in uniform, with guns. Gunshots. Dead bodies in the street.
Hot Sauce was wounded. Her wounds would not heal.
Kevin is sleeping in the corner of the room that is most sheltered from the window with the broken glass. He stirs, then is quiet again. He smells bad.
Hot Sauce curles into a ball on the floor beside his cot, and closes her eyes.
When she opens them again, she is being shaken awake by hands that are not gentle, but persistent.
It is dark, but even in the darkness, Hot Sauce finds herself staring at the most beautiful zombie she has ever seen. Its hair is gold, tumbling down around her shoulders. Its skin is pale. There is something uncanny about the features - the nose is too small for the face, and there is blood all over the chin. The body is at least seven feet tall, the hips and chest too large, the legs too long, the waist impossibly small. The eyes are too big. And those eyes -
Hot Sauce would have known those eyes anywhere.
“Hot Sauce!” says an unfamiliar voice that is, nevertheless, unmistakably, Nona. “Can I still be part of the gang?”
aita for atomizing a man in front of all my coworkers (one is a three year old idk why she’s even allowed to work here)
ESH. OP conveniently forgetting atomising the man kills the sun and destroys like a million people 🙄🙄🙄
If we’re going to get very technical about it, the population of the Nine Houses is probably more in the 30-40 million mark…
We know the Sixth has three million people, and that the Seventh and Eighth together are around nine million (per Palamedes in NTN chapter 1). So let’s say 3-6 million per House, and for all we know the major Houses like the Second, Third, or Fifth could be even larger.
Killing 30-40 million people by deicide-induced solar collapse is not great. But then again, John Gaius murdered 10 billion people with his mind (and a nuclear fission chain reaction…), wiped Mercymorn’s memory, and manipulated her into becoming an immortal enforcer of his genocidal fascist theocracy so…
hey do you guys know why harrow’s name is written as “harrow nonagesimus” in the book sometimes? like i feel it only happens when she’s being vulnerable or in a very intimate moment… is there an actual reason/deep meaning behind it or am i just crazy? i’d like to know y'all thoughts
I can’t speak to the specific importance/meaning of every instance you pointed out, but I DO think the naming is intentional, as pointed out directly here in GtN:
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“Harrowhark Nonagesimus” is a performance and a shield that Harrow puts up when she needs to Be Someone. “Harrow” is what’s left when it’s only Gideon in attendance
You’re absolutely on to something! I’m just copying over my tags from this post by @procrastinationaccount because I don’t think I’ve come up with anything more eloquent since then:
Talk about ianthe being a villain, talk about ianthe being a fashionista, talk about ianthe being a pervert, talk about ianthe being toxic…
Can we talk about Ianthe being a fucking nerd?
As pointed out in the unwanted guest, she didn’t become a lyctor by hating books and enjoying parties, that’s her facade.
That girl has spent more cannon time in the canaan library than Harrowhark and Palamedes TOGETHER.
Ianthe looked at the lyctoral challenges and thought to herself “I could solve some of them, oooor… I could view them as math problems! That should be faster!”
Ianthe reads romcom novels almost like Palamedes does.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus called Ianthe’s special interest boring. Harrowhark “my favourite things are tab water, bones, prayer and research” Nonagesimus of all people, says Ianthe does passionate research on a subject, that is too boring/irrelevant for her to get deep into.
Ianthe unironically said “this is the best night of my life” while getting drunk with a bunch of really old people.
Thought too hard about the 200 Graves prayer and now I’m sad.
“The Tomb I will serve till the end of my days, and then see me buried in two hundred graves.”
Only 200. Harrow is so wrapped up in making the genocide that conceived her worth it that she will never allow herself to be a person in her own right. Harrowhark Nonagesimus is the greatest necromancer of her generation, the shining jewel of the ninth and the perfect reverend daughter, and when she dies she will have no grave of her own. She will be nothing but a monument to the atrocity that made her because that was all she was in life.
The animatic I’ve been working on since last November is finally done!! Over 100 hours of work on this, much agony and tribulations, but it’s finally done.
hello gideon the ginger from the book of gingers and death and lesbians and such
But seriously I just finished Gideon the Ninth like five minutes ago and hot dog. Hot dog hot dog hot diggity dog. I’m gonna buy the second book soon I just gotta let all those deaths sink in for a sec
If a mentally ill 17yo can perform brain surgery to keep “alive” the girl she definitely doesn’t have a thing for, I can wait until 2026 for Alecto *sobs*
the way ianthe uses coronabeth is actually genuinely genius. she just sits back, knowing thanks to a lifetime of living in her shadow, and lets everyone in canaan house underestimate her. she’s so fucking smart about it. if coronabeth hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have been half as successful because harrow and palamedes would’ve clocked her immediately. they don’t even notice that naberius really only take his orders from ianthe (because she’s ACTUALLY the necro, not corona!!!). you gotta hand it to her. she came to play and she put down a solid performance.
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