A character with no memory of her past holds the key to a divine mystery.
In short: In Tamsyn Muir's 2022 novel Nona the Ninth, a mysterious girl awakens in a borrowed body on an unknown planet. As she navigates a war-torn world, she must uncover her true identity before her fragile existence unravels, revealing a connection to the origins of a god and a locked tomb.
Nona the Ninth, the third installment in Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb series, originated as the first act of the planned final book, Alecto the Ninth. When the initial draft of that act reached 140,000 words, it was spun off into its own novel. The story follows Nona, who inhabits the body of Harrowhark, as she navigates a planet abandoned by the Empire and threatened by the Resurrection Beast Varun. While Nona works as a teacher's assistant and befriends local children, she is secretly part of a rebel cell attempting to open the Locked Tomb.
The narrative is marked by the protagonist's amnesia and her unique magical abilities, including rapid healing and an intuitive grasp of all languages. As the plot progresses, Nona discovers she is actually Alecto, the entity originally entombed by John Gaius. Her presence in Harrow's body resulted from a conduit formed when Harrow opened the tomb at age ten. The book intersperses these events with memories of John Gaius, revealing his role in the destruction of Earth and his subsequent ascent to divinity, where he consumed the planet's soul to fuel his own power.
Critical reception of the novel has been varied. Some reviewers praised its shift from the grief-focused tone of previous entries to a narrative centered on life and hope, while others found the structure challenging, describing it as an expansive intermission that lacks the grace of its predecessors. Despite the debate, the book remains a significant entry in the series, exploring complex themes of faith, gender, and the feminine nature of the divine within the Locked Tomb universe. Ultimately, the story concludes with the restoration of the souls to their correct bodies, setting the stage for the final confrontation in the upcoming fourth book.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Nona the Ninth
- Also: Wikidata — Nona the Ninth · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — Nona the Ninth · CC0
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