Nona The Ninth (The Locked Tomb #3) by Tamsyn Muir

Format: Audio (Borrowbox)
Read: May 2026

By the third book in this series, I was ready for Tamsyn Muir to hand me another protagonist who knows the least about anything that is going on. This time, we get Nona, who’s only been alive for 6 months in a 19-year-old body that belongs to somebody else. She lives with Pyrrha, Camilla and Palamede in quite a sweet little family unit. They are taking care of her as they wait to see who Nona is – is she Harrowhark, Gideon Nav or somebody else?

It is a bold choice to start the third book in such a similar way to the second! Here again, we have a naive amnesiac POV character in Harrowhark’s body, and I spent a good while wondering who this really was! The novel is very different, however, since Nona has the intelligence and personality of a young child. She is sweet and innocent and is experiencing everything for the first time. She also has a pure love for her family unit, and a good chunk of the start of the story is focused on her domestic routines and her friends at school. This is a much warmer book in tone – in stark contrast to the harsh coldness of Gideon – but once I got used to it, I did enjoy being in Nona’s perspective.

We do get to learn quite a bit more about this world, finally. Nona lives on a planet called New Rho, which is outside of the system of the Nine Houses but was at some point occupied by cohort forces, until the Seventh Resurrection Beast anchored above it and scared all the necromancers away. Though we only get limited information from Nona’s POV, reading between the lines, New Rho is a dangerous place full of desperate people living lives of crime and violence, and everyone hates the cohort and refers to them as “zombies.” There are also at least two rival Blood of Eden factions, one of which has agreed to help Palamades, Camilla and Pyrrha in the hope that Nona will turn out to be a friendly lychtor who can help them. I was glad that we got to zoom out even further in the story and finally see what is going on outside of the Nine Houses. It was, of course, confusing and difficult to understand who was who and what their allegiances were, but I’m getting used to that now!

There are also chapters in which God/Emperor/John is telling his origin story to somebody in a dream. Here, we learn he’s from New Zealand, and he was a research scientist working on developing cryogenic chambers to preserve the people of Earth when transported off their dying planet. This backstory to Earth is climate crisis, capitalism and the selfish self-preservation of trillionaires – all resonate themes. The thing is, I don’t really understand John and his original motivations are not explained clearly enough; we only hear any of this from him, and it’s extremely shallow. I also really hate his personality and the way he speaks. These chapters were welcome for their precious exposition, but also painful because I can’t stand his character’s voice! He sounds like a hippy douchbag, and yet he was a top research scientist, and then founded a whole cult… I could never make this make sense. At least know where Gideon Nav gets her shithead personality from, I guess it’s hereditary?

This book is more narratively straightforward than the second one was, and it provides a lot of context for the world that I found very satisfying. I am actually really looking forward to a future re-read of the series, knowing what I do now (and in print, which will be easier, I think, than audio!). There were still plenty of times where I had no idea what was happening, and I had to listen to the last few chapters twice because I don’t think I was paying enough attention the first time (on my commute home from the office!). I also read a few summaries and Reddit threads that showed I had completely missed certain things! This could be frustrating, but I actually find it fun because I feel like I can trust that it is not the result of sloppy writing, and that the author has laid all the pieces out for me to find.

I’ve now read all the available books in this series, and I feel a bit sad to be leaving it – there will be a fourth, but no release date yet. I think I will hold off my re-read until there is a release for the next book, so I can have it all fresh in my mind! Maybe when I do that, I’ll write more spoiler-filled discussion posts.

I don’t think this added anything for me for Law of Fives, only categories I’ve completed, but it is another Locus Award Nominee (3rd place for Fantasy in 2023), and there is a six-legged dog in it (Noodle).