History Literature / NonaTheNinth

* ContrastingSequelProtagonist: Nona is wildly different than both Gideon and Harrow, which is part of what makes the DrivingQuestion of which she is so hard to answer. Unlike Gideon, Nona is innocent and sincere, and is viewed as someone needing protection rather than a protector. Unlike Harrow, Nona is unintelligent and outgoing, and leans on others for help easily. Unlike both of them, Nona is a child, [[WiseBeyondTheirYears which they never were]]. Nona is openly loving, untroubled by her past, outrageously self-confident, and has both a loving family and friends, despite growing up in even more dire situation than the impoverished and abusive Ninth.

* DrivingQuestion: Who is Nona? ''Harrow the Ninth'' ends with [[BolivianArmyCliffhanger Gideon drowning in the River]] and Harrow [[GainaxEnding laying down to sleep or die in the Locked Tomb]]; after being saved from the brink of death and spending weeks recovering, the person who awoke in Harrow's body was totally amnesiac and practically newly born. Dubbed "Nona", her personality and mind are radically different from both Gideon and Harrow, to the point where her "family" is still stumped on who she is. Contradictory lines of evidence point to her being one or the other, with stranger possibilities such as being a fusion of both not definitively ruled out. [[spoiler: During the middle of the book, once Nona reveals that she's dying, Eden becomes convinced that she is Gideon. It takes Kiriona making it known that Nona isn't Gideon before the truth, that Nona is Alecto, or a part of her, possessing Harrow starts to be revealed.]]

* GenreShift: Much like the prior two books, ''Nona'' features a markedly different tone than its predecessors, this time combined with a ''very'' different setting and protagonist. Taking place outside the Empire on one of the last three non-Empire planets in a politically unstable city filled to bursting with refugees and militias and gangs and on the edge from the threat of the Empire and a Resurrection Beast, viewed through the lens of Nona: a KindheartedSimpleton who is overflowing with love for her family and friends. Muir summarizes:

* MoodWhiplash: The extremely portentous, dramatic moment during the epilogue where one character swears to another is capped off by [[spoiler: Gideon yelling "get in line, thou big slut!" at Alecto.]]
* MotiveRant: As in ''Harrow'', a secondary narrative plays out while Nona is asleep, that of John recounting the events that led up to the Resurrection as a dream, to his companion: [[spoiler: Harrow reliving Alecto's memories. His justifications for the events that led up to the death of Earth are equal parts noble, traumatic, and vindictive]].

** Later, [[spoiler:when Camilla stabs Naberius' body, Palamedes' soul jumps over through the injury, subdues Ianthe in a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind, and takes control.]]

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler:The nun in the John flashbacks, who kills herself in the hope that John will be able to touch the soul and thus gain the ability to save the world. The first part works. [[ApocalypseHow The second, not so much.]]]]

** Pyrrha Dve snags Gideon's sunglasses to avoid revealing that she's not the Saint of Duty right before the climax of ''Harrow''. Palamedes and Camilla extensively use Gideon's sunglasses throughout the book for the exact same thing, allowing them to switch out mid-conversation.

----

* AllForNothing: Harrow spent her entire life obsessed with the resurrection of her House, and the Emperor ultimately granted her several hundred new members. [[spoiler: The Ninth ends up destroyed regardless, with most of the new members being killed by the devils, a foe even God claims to not understand]].

* DramaPreservingHandicap: The Resurrection Beast hanging out in orbit prevents Ianthe from steamrolling everybody the second she arrives.

----

* HumanPopsicles: Prior to being given Necromancy, John was an influential cryonics researcher who was one of the leaders in a multinational attempt to evacuate the Earth, with A-- and M-- being his research colleagues. Ultimately the ultra-wealthy trillionaires chose to yank their funding, which kickstarted John's furious path to becoming God.

* CentralTheme: Following on from ''Gideon the Ninth'''s theme of bonds, and ''Harrow the Ninth'''s theme of grief, ''Nona'' centers on love.

* ArcWords: Several, all of which tie into the themes of love and change that run through the book:
** "Who are you?" recurs frequently throughout the book, with Nona specifically getting variations where she asks others "Who am I?"

** The John chapters have a repeating line, "I still love you" [[spoiler: delivered by Harrow-as-Alecto to John, loving him despite everything awful he has done]]. The sentiment is echoed throughout the book by others bound by love.

%% * CentralTheme: Love
* ContrastingSequelProtagonist: Nona is wildly different than both Gideon and Harrow, which is part of what makes the DrivingQuestion of which she is so hard to answer. Unlike Gideon, Nona is innocent and sincere, and is viewed as someone needing protection rather than a protector. Unlike Harrow, Nona is unintelligent and outgoing, and leans on others for help easily. Unlike both of them, Nona is openly loving, untroubled by her past, outrageously self-confident, and has both a compassionate family and friends, despite living in an even more dire situation than either of them.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Do you know who I am yet?"'']]
'''''WARNING''''': '''''[[LateArrivalSpoiler Late Arrival Spoilers]] for prior books in the series'''''

Everybody around her seems really bothered, though. Bothered about the giant blue sphere hanging in the sky, bothered about the necromancer forces trapped in one last facility. Everybody says that the sphere will kill them all, or the Undying Emperor will return to save his necromancers and kill them all. Everybody says that the city has been infiltrated by zombies, or that it's okay if they get conquered because it's still better than what they have.

''Nona The Ninth'' is the third book in ''Literature/TheLockedTomb'' series. Originally planned as merely the first Act of ''Alecto the Ninth'', ''Nona'' was split off into its own book as it grew out of control, turning the planned trilogy into a series.

It was released September 13th, 2022.

Ahead of ''Nona'''s release, some excerpts were released publicly:
* [[https://www.tor.com/2022/03/15/revealing-the-dramatis-personae-from-nona-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir/ Dramatis Personae]]
* [[https://publishing.tor.com/nonatheninthsneakpeek-tamsynmuir/9781250891730/ First six chapters]]

* BlackSpeech: [[spoiler:While posing as Harrowhark in front of Ianthe, Nona gets out of responding to a difficult question by feigning a fit of blue madness and using her {{Omniglot}} skills to scream for help in the language of ''a Resurrection Beast''. Doing so causes water to come out of her eyes, mouth, and ears, seems to accelerate the rate at which her body is degrading, makes the electric lights flicker, and drops every necromantic body in the room. Ianthe, who is remotely piloting a corpse, notes her real body just vomited.]]

Her city is under siege.

The zombies are coming back.

And all Nona wants is a birthday party.

In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona's not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger's body, and she's afraid she might have to give it back.

The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.

And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face...

* WrongContextMagic: Nona has incredibly strong and fast regeneration, can instantly understand anything said in any language, her tantrums have horrific effects on the people around her, she can read body language to a degree that she can recognise people in disguise by the way they move, and [[spoiler:she can understand the Resurrection Beast in the sky and is immune to its effects.]] Pyrrha, Palamedes and Camilla have no idea how or why she can do these things, especially since neither Harrow nor Gideon could do anything similar.

* TheReveal: ''Nona'' clarifies the how and when and much of the why of early necromancy, before the Resurrection. [[spoiler: The Earth herself gave John the power over life and death because of how hard he had been fighting to try and save her, and then John took that power and used it to [[WhoYouAreinTheDark kill everybody on Earth, and the Earth herself]], [[ItsAllAboutMe to make himself a God and punish the people who abandoned Earth instead of giving him the money to save it]].]]

* MeaningfulRename: A running theme throughout the book is of becoming someone new; this is most explicitly symbolized with most major characters from the prior books adopting new names or being granted one. Their reactions to it also indicate their emotional arc and their reactions to change: [[spoiler: the antagonist Kiriona is very different from the hero Gideon, the Saint of Awe trumpets her title and belittles it in the same breath, Crown is as much a synonym of Corona as it is a reinvention, Paul chooses their new name after a grand act of love and sacrifice, and Nona spends the entire book desperately trying to cling to that part of her that is Nona and not Alecto]].

* MotiveRant: As in ''Harrow'', a secondary narrative plays out while Nona is asleep, that of John recounting the events that led up to the Resurrection as a dream, to a girl, [[spoiler: alternatively implying she is Alecto, Harrowhark, or the Earth itself. His justifications for the events that led up to the death of Earth are equal parts noble, traumatic, and vindictive]].
* MultipleNarrativeModes: As with ''Harrow'' the book is divided into [[TwoLinesNoWaiting two threads]], with the main one following Nona and her family, and the second being a dream of a memory [[spoiler: of Harrowhark-as-Alecto and John remembering his first days with Alecto, where he recounts the events of that led up to the Resurrection.]] The final chapter also shifts perspective, and is written in the style of the KJV bible [[spoiler: from the perspective of the reawakened Alecto.]]

** The John chapters have a repeating line, "I still love you" [[spoiler: delivered by Alecto and Harrow to John, loving him despite everything awful he has done]]. The sentiment is echoed throughout the book by others bound by love.

* JustBeforeTheEnd: All the John chapters, which are flashbacks in the form of conversations in dreams, detailing the years leading up to the Resurrection and eventually the events that happened to make John into God.

* MeaningfulRename: A running theme throughout the book is of becoming someone new; this is most explicitly symbolized with most major characters from the prior books adopting new names or being granted one. Their reactions to it also indicate their emotional arc and their reactions to change: [[spoiler: the antagonist Kiriona is very different from the hero Gideon, the Saint of Awe trumpets her title and belittles it in the same breath, Crown is as much a synonym of Corona as it is a reinvention, The Angel is torn between being the Messenger and just Aim, Paul chooses their new name after a grand act of love and sacrifice, and Nona spends the entire book desperately trying to cling to that part of her that is Nona and not Alecto]].
** [[spoiler: John's habit of referring to others by initials is also revealed to be a remnant of an early affectation of his, where he symbolically renamed the two corpses of U-- and T-- to Ulysses and Titania, with it being implied he renamed all his disciples]].

* TheReveal: ''Nona'' clarifies the how and when and much of the why of early necromancy, before the Resurrection. [[spoiler: The Earth herself gave John the power over life and death because of how hard he had been fighting to try and save her, and then John took that power and used it to [[WhoYouAreinTheDark kill everybody on Earth, and the Earth herself]], [[ItsAllAboutMe to make himself a God and kill the people who abandoned Earth instead of giving him the money to save it]].]]