Nona the Ninth

Good Morning Friends! This is going to be another mostly-book post. Whether or I like it or not, my gaming blog has veered closer and closer to a book blog over the last few weeks. In truth Tales of the Aggronaut is not a gaming blog, but a “me” blog, and when my activities shift so does it. I tend to obsess about things and right now it seems that I am obsessing over having a library card and “renting” books, and using that to knock out a bunch of things that I have been meaning to read for years. At this point since Christmas I have finished seven books, and over the weekend I knocked out the latest book in the “Locked Tomb” series by Tamsyn Muir, meaning that I am completely caught up in that series.

If Gideon the Ninth was Deathmetal Hogwarts, and Harrow the Ninth was Necromantic Battlestar Galactica, then Nona the Ninth is Spycraft Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Each novel in the series has been wildly different in part because it gives you a window into a wildly different part of this universe. I’ve tried not to really talk about a lot of details in these posts because I do not want to dive down the rabbit hole of spoilers, but I feel like I need to at least talk a little bit about the setting. Effectively in this fictional universe overlayed on top of our own universe an event happened thousands of years in the past that caused the extinction of the human race. John Gaius, the Necrolord Prime… the God Emperor of the known universe… resurrected humanity and formed the Nine Houses each with their own necromantic traits to serve as his flock.

Gideon the Ninth is a novel that dives deep into the traditions and variations among the nine houses. It is a tale woven through a trial for those assembled to figure out the process of becoming Lyctors. The second novel, Harrow the Ninth, is centered around the truth behind the throne as “God” aka John Gaius struggles against a hidden conflict that none of the nine houses were even aware of. You get an understanding of what the ruling hierarchy of the necromantic empire looks like, and get to know several of the key players. Nona the Ninth however is a novel centered around the common folk, the humans that survived the extinction event and that continue to live in fear of the empire and the nine houses. It also centers around an organization called Blood of Eden, effectively terrorists or freedom fighters depending upon your perspective.

The perspective of the novel is that of Nona, a personality that is inhabiting the body of Harrowhark Nonagesimus and is effectively going through a rapid evolution from infancy to young adolescence. Nona loves everyone, especially dogs. Nona is innocent and childlike unlike the rather severe Harrow that we came to know from the other novels in this series. This leads to a very distorted lens that this story is told from the perspective of an extremely unreliable narrator. The constant thread between the last two novels is a constant grasping for what the fuck is actually going on, and if that is not something you can handle as the pieces slowly slide into place… then you maybe want to stop with the first novel. Each novel has a mystery to be pried loose from the background infrastructure and it leads to a very wobbly and disjointed way that the tale is told until everything eventually comes into focus.

At this point, I am hooked, and I am probably going to be reading these novels forever. Each novel effectively resolves a crescendo that leaves more questions unanswered than know. We will ultimately have to wait for the next novel in the series before those questions even begin to be answered. This was not a big deal when I knew there were novels waiting patiently on me to consume, but now that I am caught up it will probably be a more tangible frustration. The next book has a name… Alecto the Ninth has a targetted release date of sometime this year, so here is hoping that the wait will not be too long.

Following wrapping up Nona the Ninth, I have now dived into The Lies of Locke Lamora another novel that I had been meaning to read for a while. At first, I was not terribly certain what I thought of this story. I tend to not really go into the whole Thieves Guild thing other than maybe the Elder Scrolls games. Now that I am settling into the story I am definitely hooked for the moment, but uncertain if this will be a setting I return to enough to consume all of the available books in the series. It feels very like David Copperfield meets Dishonored at the moment, or at least the Camorr reminds me a bit of the setting of the second game. I originally set myself the goal of 20 books during this calendar year, but I might need to revise that up a bit given that we are just now in February and have already finished seven and am now about 20% or so into the eighth.

I hope you all had a great weekend and I wish you luck in the coming week. I am trying to sort out what exactly I want to do gaming-wise. I am still playing an awful lot of Path of Exile, but am also starting to slide back into some more Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. I also know that Season 28 of Diablo III is just around the corner and am planning on diving into that as well. Given that I have been on this Audiobook plus Mechanically Enjoyable Game kick, I am not really sure when I will return to narrative games again.