Characters die, get resurrected, and swap bodies just as easily as ever.

To be fair, it also contains just as much violence and cruelty as its predecessors. A book that wasn’t even supposed to exist in the first place-the bones of this story were originally slated for the first act of the upcoming series finale Alecto the Ninth- Nona is the series’ most personal and human. (It’s worth it, I promise.)īut since the Locked Tomb series as a whole frequently defies description, it shouldn’t shock anyone that its latest installment, Nona the Ninth, does too. It’s truly unlike anything else in science fiction and fantasy, and the best way I can explain its appeal to you is simply to tell you to go read it and find out for yourselves. Muir’s biting, hilarious prose is full of dark subject matter (violent death, creeping body horror, and various bits of effluvia and gore are commonplace) but tons of heart, deftly exploring issues of identity, belonging, love, and family. Part fantasy, part space opera, and part apocalyptic nightmare, the story follows the swashbuckling adventures of bone mages and flesh adepts, cavaliers, skeleton armies, petty bureaucrats, and even God himself. Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series actively resists easy explanation, a story of impossible loss, love, and grief set in a far-flung universe where necromancers reign in the Nine Houses built on the bones of murdered worlds.

Goodreads nona the ninth