The problem is, we know exactly what Gideon thinks of Harrow, as much as we can considering she is a fairly unreliable narrator when it comes to her feelings for H. But we have very little to go on about what Harrow thinks of Gideon except for context clues from other people’s perspectives. We haven’t actually been in her head the way we have been in Gideon’s - Two Whole books! Because my theory is that Harrow is long over her crush on Alecto. My theory is that unlike Gideon, Harrow isn’t even in denial of her feelings for Gideon. I think the moment she started to feel, whatever she started to feel, she accepted it and just never looked back. “I must no longer accept being a stranger to you,” is what she said half way through GtN with a straight face with no embarrassment while Gideon was left bumbling and blushing. The point I’m trying to make is that Alecto and Ianthe were never even in the race until Harrow literally lobotomized her memories of Gideon. The point I’m trying to make is that between Gideon and Harrow, Harrow fell first and with full awareness while Gideon fell harder. The point I’m trying to make is that the next time Harrow meets Gideon, Gideon stands no chance.
The back of Harrow the Ninth says that the fate of the universe rests on one woman (Harrow’s) shoulders. But crucially, it doesn’t. Harrow isn’t a full Lyctor, but is too loyal to God to consider betraying him. No one expects her to help fight the Resurrection Beast, and she doesn’t. Half the cast dies and she’s not even there to see it. Harrow the Ninth is such an intimate novel. Sure, you’re getting a handful space adventures and reveals about the characters (which are delightful of course) but the titular character? When she fights, she’s only fighting for herself and her cavalier. And I love that.
The series has so far been consistent in presenting a merging of souls as something that can’t be undone. The part of Gideon that Harrow took, I don’t know if she can give it back. I don’t know if Gideon would even want her to.
Maybe I’m a romantic, but the ideal ending to me, the most satisfying conclusion, would be Harrow balancing the scale by giving a piece of her own living soul to become a part of Gideon. Not Gideon’s heart returned, but Harrow’s heart in return. We’ve seen lyctorhood as a one-sided consumption, and we’ve seen it as a mutual consummation. We’ve still never seen it tried as a reciprocal exchange.
Gideon hating Alecto out of burning petty lesbian jealousy is great, but that the innocent loving amnesiac version of Alecto took one look at Gideon and went ‘lame, nothing to write home about. I hate her hair’ just sends me
Mutual distain. Instant shared animosity. Gideon is going to end up pledging her devotion to Alecto by the end of this series this is how all her relationships start
Alecto hates her hair because Gideon let Ianthe convince her to get an ugly third house style instead of the wicked shaved job she had in book one.
…..p-pompadour gideon….
Funny thing is Gideon is totally horny for Alecto’s ex-ex-body (the Earth)
i think a part of the 'you have not begun to see the horrors of love' will include varun and alecto. like, what does it mean for two planets to love each other?
varun clearly likes her, if 'my green-and-yellow salt water thing' is anything to go by (side note: why green and yellow??? i guess the green is reference to the ocean, and the yellow means there's less trees, but still. what happened to earth????) and the feeling is mutual at least on nona's end, but how far back do they go?
earth being able to gift john necromancy implies, at least to me, that planets in general know what the river is. so have varun and earth been hitting each other up through that, and that's how alecto got her message out to the other planets as she and they were all dying?
Congratulations on possibly the most esoteric ship in the entire Locked Tomb fandom.
I think of Varun as her cousin, or older sibling, but however we want to look at it with our human frames of reference, I bet you’re right. Varun does love Alecto, and somewhere down under all the fear and pain, Nona is still a part of Alecto and part of Alecto was Nona. She’s capable of great love, too, even if she doesn’t see it right now. Love on that scale, between planets and their ghosts, who knows what horrors that could lead to. Varun tried to destroy another planet and all its inhabitants because Alecto cried for help. It is asking Alecto to avenge it, to avenge all of them. What does that entail, to a planet? What will Alecto feel compelled to do for that love?
(And I think the ‘green and yellow salt water thing’ is a reference to the colors of Earth’s landmasses seen from space. Green forests, yellow deserts, and salt water)
I’m rereading gtn and there are quite a few moments where it’s like “later, Gideon would wonder about/realize/consider xyz” but like, she does not have a great deal of time to sit and Consider because of the events of the book, and the realizations etc don’t happen in her narration for the rest of the book, so now I’m wondering if the “later” when she thinks about all this is when she’s kiriona
piggybacking off of my other post but gideon (never kissed a girl) looking at alecto (kissed two girls that we know of) and being like “……………slut” is so funny
#gideon learns the word slut from ianthe and proceeds to use with enthusiasm
tazmuir said if the earth was a girl first of all she would eat erasers. also she’d speak every language and love every person and every dog and even though she’s forgotten everything else she’d still love to swim in saltwater, and she would love to be touched and she wouldn’t know how to lie, and she would love her body and she would be selfish with it all because she loves it all so so much. she would also eat marker caps
I sound insane whenever I try to rec the locked tomb series. I’m like it’s a really good scifi fantasy book with lesbians. and necromancy. and cultlike futuristic pseudo-catholicism. maybe look up some trigger warnings before you read it, for the cannibalism and the age gap and the necrophilia. god makes a none pizza left beef joke. god’s in a polyamorous relationship. there’s so much gender. so many people die horribly and graphically, including children. it’s really funny.
To be completely honest, Tamsyn Muir could release 20 more Locked Tomb books with the premise “Where the fuck is Gideon? More in ~350 pages”, and I’d eat it up every time. She’s got me hooked so badly.
Also very much looking forward to Paul and Alecto’s relationship because they’re not Camilla and Palamedes and she’s not Nona but I really hope they end up cutting off an episode of godly wrath by telling her to sit down and count her breaths and she reflexively listens
mx. gveret the first time i HEARD about the locked tomb series was this september on a tumblr post about ianthe fucking gideon's "chussy" [sic] and for the life of me i could not figure out where the fuck in a human's being body could a hole be located that warranted the nickname "chussy". also nona the ninth had just come out so there wasn't a lot written about the plot that i could find. but i was SO CURIOUS about this that i just,,,, read the fucking books. anyways just finished ntn and i can now die in piece knowing that ianthe fucked gideon's stigmata. idk why but i felt i had to share this after seeing your latest reblog. almost unrelated, but really great books. sure did have fun.
I’m. Uh. I feel like the kind of person who would be enticed to read this series because of a tumblr post about Ianthe fucking Gideon’s chussy [sic] is like. The very exact encapsulation of its intended audience. You’re the platonic ideal of a locked tomb reader. A crystallized image of the target demographic. When Tamsyn Muir pitched these books to a publisher she relied almost entirely on a blind fervent belief in your existence. The ride this ask took me on. Indescribable delight. Almost unrelated, but really great books
if ianthe tridentarius knelt beside you then, no matter with what sugary contempt or filigreed third condescension, you would press your diminished bloody terror into her; you would creep naked into her lap, shamelessly, and weep.
Does anyone else think about how the nicknames Pyrrha gave Nona and the way she acted around her in general probably had something to do with the fact that there was a good chance Nona was Gideon, at least at first?
Pyrrha ended up loving Nona as her child regardless of who she ended up being, of course.
But the books aren’t exactly shy about the fact that Pyrrha wanted Gideon (which is a concept that in itself would probably make Gideon explode if she let herself realize it). I think the first thing we ever hear her ask Wake, way back in Harrow, is why she brought the baby when she came to the Ninth.
Pyrrha thought Gideon was dead for eighteen years, and she was still thinking about her. She was still grieving her.
The last coherent soul she’d met inhabiting Harrow’s body was Gideon. What does it matter if she’s technically John’s kid? She’s still Pyrrha’s. And Pyrrha came out of that situation okay, but Gideon didn’t.
But the body is okay. And the body might have amnesia, and the girl in it might not know what she’s doing, but someone is alive in there, and there’s a good chance that it’s still the baby she grieved for eighteen years.
And so Pyrrha cooks her breakfast. She braids her hair. She goes to work for her. She kisses her forehead when they say goodbye. She shoots marbles off the roof just because the girl asks her to.
She gets to do all these things that she thought she never would, because the baby died eighteen years ago.
And she sees the girl’s body, and she’s her mom’s spitting image, and Pyrrha wants her, wants to take care of her, so much. Even now that she’s dead. Even now that she’s undead. Even when she’s acting weird, when she’s all grief and anger and takes her frustration out on everyone.
Pyrrha still calls her kiddo. She still tries to look out for her.
Gideon is Pyrrha’s kid in the same way that Nona is, but Gideon doesn’t know what to do with that, because she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a child that is wanted.
Thinking really intensely about what would have been if Nona had been Gideon, if she’d gotten to realize that she has friends and a parent who love her without any need for sacrifice, or any need to prove herself. Who love her just because she is.
And idk. I’m hoping she still gets to realize that. I’m hoping Pyrrha gets to call her stupid nicknames, too.
good morning to birthday girls, librarians with separation anxiety, dads who are MILFs, assorted traumatized school children, the hottest member of the militia and her comatose gf, sisters who act like ex-boyfriends, vengeful planetoids, guys who ended the world, the saddest girl in the universe, and of course, good morning to Barbie!
the story is about her but also it’s not about her at all. also it turns out the entire story is because of her, but not really. she’s the main character but she’s been dead for a year. she’s the key to the narrative but the narrative doesn’t even know her. if you even care
Do you think Harrow is genuinely in love with Alecto?
This is such a great question. Yeah, I definitely think so. I think she’s in love in the way that a child who has decided to die with the blood of her only friend under her fingernails loves the singular reason she has found to keep living. The ravenous, scrabbling, sightless way a plant starved in darkness loves a tendril of sunlight. The way a creature of worship on the verge of faithlessness loves the promise of divinity. The way a little girl who is two hundred dead sons and daughters of her dying house loves a big beautiful blonde babe with a sword.
I think Harrow loves Gideon like a person, with history and specificity and knowing, like a dickhead with acne and dimples who has punched her in the face and bitten her fingers and hugged her when she wanted to be drowned and looked at her like she was capable of being wrong. And she loves Alecto blindly, desperately, wholly, like something perfect and true and terrible, like a universe, like a symbol, like a god.
These books are very weird and gross and mutable and poly about love, I think. What do you think?