The Locked Tomb (also known as lesbian necromancers IN SPACE, also known as Shakespeare with more bones and more gay)

Gideon Nav has been an unwilling servant/slave/whipping girl of the Ninth House, the Keepers of the Locked Tomb, ever since she was dropped on the planet by her dying mother when she was a baby. Her greatest enemy is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the heir of the House, a girl her own age who has done everything in her power to make Gideon's life hell their entire lives. After yet another unsuccessful escape attempt, Gideon is given a new duty: She will be Harrow's cavalier as she journeys to the First House, where the Emperor has invited the heirs of all Nine Houses to attempt the process to become immortal Lyctors and serve him forever.

Ignoring all the necromancy, the series genuinely reminds me of Shakespeare, with lots of Sophisticated as Hell juxtaposition between a lot of very pretty people using very large words and then dropping boner puns. One of the series greatest strengths is that it is very good at not shoving world-building in your face; for example, each House is heavily specialized, mostly in their branch of necromancy but also in their appearances and supposedly their personalities. But everyone in the story knows these stereotypes, so no one really mentions them except when they're surprised that they're breaking the stereotypes.

We have a page.

The longest title ever has me intrigued enough to check the books out!

I really love this series. It had me at lesbian necromancers in space.

I have to give the author props. This series has the only use of 2nd person narration that hasn't made me want to gouge out my eyes.

Technically, it's first person.

Oh, and I've been looking for this for months, but I finally found it so I thought I'd share: The Mysterious Study of Dr. Sex. A short story from Camilla's perspective.

Nona the Ninth is out! I just got the audiobook, but it will be a couple days until I can start it (still finishing off Mother of Learning).

I just finished Harrow the Ninth today, it'll be a few days yet for my copy of Nona the Ninth to arrive. Damn that blurb I read was perplexing.

Nona's been out for a while now, and oh boy, so much is going on.

There's been so much rich analysis of the symbolism and layers of meaning in the story and the setup, I'm genuinely in awe. One of the first times I've felt glad to have been raised Christian, to understand the exact viewpoint.

Would you care to elaborate? I wasn't actually considering a Christian view point when reading the series.

Oh yeah, it's everywhere, baked into the fabric of the worldbuilding. Basically everything about God (Jod) and the Saints, for one. John positions himself in a very paternal role, God the Father, and the Saints who serve him are... well, they're Saints. Augustine is named after a canonical saint, Gideon is named after a Biblical hero, etc etc. Heck, in Nona, John's sections are titled after relevant Bible verses that loosely link his backstory to Jesus, and his overall behavior also links him to Noah. A ton of the feel and iconography is also very Christian, right down to the Ninth House being full of nuns specifically.

But! To be specific, this feels like a very ex-Catholic book to me. Maybe this is me speaking as, myself, an ex-Catholic, but I feel like there's a special familiarity that comes from betrayal. When you grow up queer and learn that it doesn't want you, and you can either walk away or you can scream "Why have you forsaken me?"; and TLT is the latter. It's so much in dialogue with Christianity on the topics of God as the Father, religious love, love as a duty and as a smothering obligation, a God that only wants you if you act in certain ways. How someone can be divine and human at the same time, including human failures, especially human failures. It feels like an exploration of those questions.

But but! It's not an anti-Catholic series either. It would be so easy for a series about lesbian necromancers fighting God to come off as trite or simple, or just have the easy "Christianity bad" take. But TLT doesn't. Because the things that raise you in pain and suffering still raised you, and that applies to cultures too, and just killing the thing that hurt you and told you you were an awful unlovable child doesn't (always) help. Sometimes you need to step into it and feel it around you. You have to know something to climb inside it and eat its heart, and feel that heart inside you and make something different out of it.

...Is my take.

The symbolism goes DEEP, too. Sure, there's the basics like the fact that Harrow spends much of the second book literally carrying a cross on her back, or how Nona gets called "green thing" and "salt thing," but there's more. John's sections in the third book are sometimes super obscure religious references. One of them is a reference to a non-canon passage about angels using divine power to draw a parallel with how John positions himself as the sole power of the Empire. Or how the name of the Mythraeum is a reference to Cretan bull cults, in turn foreshadowing for John's backstory reveal in Nona about the thing with the cows.

Short version: Muir's symbolism is always deeper than you think it is.

It's really fascinating. I think once Alecto is out I'll have to do a full series reread just to have the actual context to everything that's going on.

I still need to read Dr. Sex too.

I am on chapter 27 of the first book. I'm trying to avoid reading any of the previous posts in the thread in order to dodge spoilers.

My current main suspect for the murders is Dulcinea. What tipped me off was realizing that her cavalier punching the Eighth guy during the ritual was what stopped him from summoning the victim's spirits, which the killer would likely want to avoid. It's portrayed as him doing it because of the ritual hurting Dulcinea, but she may have faked how much it affected her. The talk about how her disease is a source of thanergy also makes her among the most likely to perform the necromancy feats that were used to kill the Fourth teens. Presumably she kills people to get more powerful, extend her lifespan, or both. As for what happened to Protesilaus, and the identity of the bodies in the crematory, I have two theories. The first is that Protesialus was an undead construct made with parts from multiple bodies, who eventually got too hard to maintain and had to be gotten rid off. This explains why Protesilaus never uses his rapier, because he's controlled by Dulcinea who doesn't know how to use it. The other theory is that Dulcinea and Protesilaus are actually impostors who killed the originals (whose bodies were brought over from the shuttles so that nobody would find out), and Protesilaus doesn't use his rapier because he's not really a cavalier. That one doesn't explain whre the hell Protesilaus went, though.

I have two side suspects as well. The first one is Teacher. The First House could also be powerful enough in necromancy to do these murders, as shown by how great their regular contructs are compared to everyone else. He might be targeting people who take too long to get any keys as a part of the test or something, and the burnt bodies are priests who had some kind of disagreement with his plan. Alternatively he's an impostor and the real Teacher is in the crematory. The second side suspect is Harrow. She's a skilled necromancer, the killer attacked inside her and Gideon's secret room, and all the victims are people she knew were about to enter the depths for the first time. I think the construct that killed Isaac might have regenerated itself, which only Harrow should be able to do, but I don't quite remember whether it did. The victims aren't at all who I'd expect Harrow to target, though. Following my previous two impostor theories, it's possible as well that Harrow is actually in the crematory and has been an impostor ever since Gideon found her in the cocoon. That episode certainly marked a big shift in her character. I have no clue who'd be impostoring her, though, and I can't remember whether or not Harrow and Gideon have discussed their backstories since that moment.

Absolutely wonderful series. I hope we get a release date for Alecto in 2024 (that is, I hope the date is in 2024, not that we learn it in 2024).

I love reading people's theories mid book.

I just got to Protesilaus' head in Harrow's drawer. To me now the killer has to be either Harrow or Dulcinea. Either Harrow is the kiler or she caught on to Protesilaus interrupting the seance and decided to eliminate him. I also just now remembered that Harrow changed the teams so that it was Harrow and the Fourths who went down the shaft instead of her and the Sixths. This was either to set up their murder or because she wanted to keep an eye on Dulcinea. I also realised that Dulcinea has seen the red key and thus would be the only one besides Harrow to know which room Gideon could have brought Jeannemary to, if she's seen the door. I think the door was already concealed when Gideon found it, which is strange considering none of the other lyctor doors were. Maybe Gideon wasn't the first to find the door?

I'm still leaning towards Dulcinea being the killer, because of how sus the seance breaking is and because Harrow feels like a red herring. If you read the paragraph above, the inreptretations/evidence to Harrow being the killer tends to be the most plain while the ones pointing to Dulcinea tends to be a bit more complex.

Are you reading it or listening to it? I read it first, but the audiobook is great, and I feel it makes it easier to keep track of the characters.

The book has a character list at the front for keeping track of characters.

So the big reveal about Protesilaus happened, yet Dulcinea wasn't accused of anything, and it seems he was unrelated to the crematory (so where did Harrow dump his body?). Maybe my theory was wrong, but I'm still suspicious of her. Especially since she only has a couple of days left to live, which indicates to me that something big regarding her will still happen pretty soon. That said, I'll have to check over the other suspects a second time as well.

Teacher is still one of my top picks. I now remembered that while Dulcinea was the one who stopped the seance, Teacher was the one who told them not to do it again. Of course, the murderer could also be the Emperor himself intervening in the trials. One of the wilder possiblilites with Teacher/the Emperor as the culprit is that the murders might actually be fake, and the "victims" are actually the ones who've completed the test and are taken somewhere else. My main evidence for this is that if I had to pick who among this cast to give lyctorhood to, the contestants of the Fourth and Fifth Houses would probably be my first choices, as they're among the nicest people here. The entire thing with the keys and challenges might just be a distraction to test their characters, as shown/foreshadowed by nobody agreeing on how exactly they're meant to make you ascend.

The above theory ties into something that has bugged me from the start. Why did everyone immediately treat this as a competition rather than trying to work together? There's only a single example of this challenge being successfully completed, and it involved all of the contestants ascending together.

They made a big deal of Harow being innocent just now, but I'm still not compeltely settled on her. There might still be a reveal that she actually forced her parents to kill themselves through necromancy, or that she's the one who killed her old cavalier, or even that she unleashed the plague that killed all those Ninth children (depends on the timeline, which I'm not completely sure about). Speaking of which, I've started thinking that the people in the crematory are actually Ortus and his mom, as they're the only two characters who we know died a couple of months before the start of the challenge (besides Protesilaus). How they actually got there is a pretty tough question though, and would probably need to involve some sort of conspiracy by Harrow, Crux and/or Aiglamene.

My other suspects that aren't just "they're a suspect because they're in the story" are from the Sixth and Third Houses. There was a conversation between Sextus and Gideon that could foreshadow Camilla being the culprit with Sextus as her accomplice, and Camilla does have some mysteries regarding her backstory. Ianthe has been suspicious for pretty much the entire book, and I'm betting that she has the eighth key and is hiding it from Corona, though I'm kinda hoping that her big reveal/moment will be something different than her being the killer. Corona is also pretty suspicious, what with her surprising fighting skill and also biting people. I'm starting to think that maybe Ianthe and Corona were originally one person who was split in two through some sort of ritual, or one was created from the other.

Okay so I finished the book. Pretty proud of myself for pinpointing Dulcinea as the main suspect, and not letting her go even after the fake reveal. Only time anyone truly overtook her as my main suspect was in the very short time period when it looked like Palamedes was killing people in order to extend her life. I even guessed both Dulcinea being an impostor and Protesilaus being a construct, but I kinda separated it into two mutually exclusive theories. I also correctly guessed that the lyctor challenge was never really supposed to be a competition. Rather the challengers were suppposed to gradually learn the true meaning of lyctorhood together.

Just two things I want clarified. I assumed that Colum got taken over by Dulcinea, but maybe it was actually some ghosts in Canaan House that possessed him? Also, did Ianthe become accepted as a lyctor by the Emperor? She did become a lyctor, but in the complete opposite way form how you were supposed to, and we don't see her with Harrow in the epilogue.

From what little I recall, it seems likely that Colum fell prey to whatever the Eighth House uses for their channeling. As for Ianthe, it's intentionally left vague but explained in the next book.

Speaking of Ianthe, it bugs me that if she had just asked instead of backstabbing naberius she would have learned that Corona actually would have volunteered. This would have let her avoid the problem of Naberius' soul fighting against her and likely would have let her win her fight against Cytherea and Gideon wouldn't have had to sacrifice herself. I hope this gets brought up in the sequel.

So the fun thing is, Muir used to be a very well-known fanfic author for a very well-known property, and Ianthe has a number of similarities to a character from that property. I'm being intentionally vague to avoid coloring your perceptions, though I want to stress it's not bad or anything. Just that when I made the connection it felt a bit obvious in hindsight.

Regarding Colum Without getting into spoilers there are some deeply concerning spiritual predators out there which have particular interests in the First house and Lyctorhood. They will be important moving forward but we still know little about them. Pay attention to mentions of hell.

Your points about Ianthe and Colm are both brough up in later books and short stories if you pay attention.

I've heard Muir did some Homestuck fanfics. Knowing this, it was pretty easy to spot the similarities to the arc where the trolls are stuck on the meteor lab and start to kill each other.