Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Nona, sorry, but hold on,” said Palamedes. “This isn’t making as much sense as I’d like it to, and we’re short on time.”
And here comes the next chapter in the absolutely bonkers story of space necromancers, the story that I’ve once described as a lovely migraine of a book, drenched in buckets of confusion and oddball strangeness. It’s a beautiful labyrinth of a story that requires you to stop guessing and just follow along with it, blindly trusting Tamsyn Muir to make it all eventually make sense. Just embrace the confusion and enjoy the ride.
“[…] But what we know is that we don’t know anything, okay? I want you lot to make that your motto. What we know is that we don’t know anything.” Nona quite liked this motto. It was an accurate summary of her entire life.”
When I picked up the first book in this series a few years ago, I really struggled with it for the first third, even abandoning it for a while because it just wasn’t clicking. And this book was similar — one third of the story of irritated frustration followed by a feverish inhaling of the rest of the book.
What almost broke my patience this time was the titular Nona. A personality trapped in Harrowhark Nonagesiumus’ body after the events of book 2, a pollyannish child whose upbeat wide-eyed innocence initially grated on my nerves enough to make me almost abandon the book (and I’m so glad I stuck with it). So far with a different narrator in each book we got obnoxious brashness with Gideon, dark sanity-cracking depression with Harrow, and now almost painfully naive childish innocence with nevertheless creepily dark undertones in Nona. And dammit, that’s annoying for a good chunk of the story (and how I wish all that story with her school friends was just culled from the final draft, taking out about 100 pages with them).
“Yes, congratulations,” said the Prince sarcastically. “No, babycakes, I didn’t fool you. Who is this literal goddamn infant? Can someone give her like a rusk or something and shut her up?”
But then we got the great supporting cast with the duo that warms my crusty shriveled heart – Camilla and Palamedes, the duo I adored since “Gideon”. Pyrrha. Crown (oh, you’ve gone far from that Canaan House, girl). John’s unreliably angrily weird segments. (On “Paul” I’ll reserve my judgment yet, I’m still a bit heartbroken). And “Kiriona”, dear, we need to talk and perhaps trade some quips.
“And so Nona lived with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on the thirtieth floor of a building where nearly everyone was unhappy, in a city where nearly everyone was unhappy, on a world where everyone said that you could outrun the zombies, but not forever.”
Now book 3 of the trilogy that became a quartet, Nona the Ninth actually gives a few sorta-answers to the entire bonkers universe setup with John the God (and as it was pointed out to me in a comment, with John and Paul we are this close to the Beatles reunion).
And in the end, despite me almost bolting a third of the way through, it ended up beautiful. Sad and lovely and still absolutely insane, with heartbreak and ass jokes coexisting without clashing (yes, it’s possible, trust me). I can’t wait till the final book although I’m sure it will break my heart, again.
4 stars. With Palamedes and Camilla responsible for most of them. Naturally.
“Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect … the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.”
_
Pre-review:
Ah, ok. The trilogy is now a quartet? Ok.
Just don’t pull a George R.R. Martin on us, please.
books are life 