RogerBW's Blog

Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir 23 December 2022

2022 fantasy, third of what was going to be a trilogy but has now expanded. Nona is a child living in a city at war, but still just about managing to go to school, while Camilla and Pyrrha look after her.

OK, so I am already quite prone to say "read the first book first" – these days if you find volume three of something on a shelf it's not usually hard to find volume one as well. Here I say that at least twice: you won't have a clue as to what's going on without having read Harrow, and Harrow will make little sense unless you've read Gideon, and you should probably have read them recently. It's not just that familiar characters appear and it'll help to know who they are; several of them are under different names, and/or in different bodies, none of them talks about their motivations, and while you could read this as a straight story – Muir is after all good at this stuff – you'd be missing at least half of what's going on. Also the end would make no sense at all.

But if you have… well, another book, another style. It's less self-consciously literary than Harrow, and I think deliberately moving into the mode of the new-adult coming-of-age drama – but that's from Nona's perspective, and we have the extra layer of knowing who these people were before. The second half of this book was originally going to be the first half of the final book 3, more or less, so the almost pastorally relaxed first half of adolescent hi-jinks in a weird world feels out of place and almost filler in nature… but this is a series that's all about the contrasts, and to me it felt exactly right. I'd hate to have missed it.

We learn a lot about things that were previously mysterious: Blood of Eden, and how John got his start, and what life is like outside the Houses. This is both the fluffiest and the grimmest of the books so far, sometimes at the same time. Superb stuff.

He sighed and said, "We had the internet. We decided to stream."

She said, "What is this internet?"

And he said, "See, I did make a utopia."

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Harrow the Ninth | Series: The Locked Tomb

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1