I'm sad, I knew this would happen. Pulling out the first half of the final book and padding it out into a whole new book doesn't make for a fulfilling extra instalment in the series. It was nice to see these secondary characters again and hear more backstory, but it's weak compared to the other Locked Tomb books.

The first half of Nona is fairly inconsequential to the main plot of this series. Its content was added to pad out the length, and it's obvious where the ‘real’ book starts - where Alecto the Ninth was supposed to start. In NtN we finally get to see the other side of the empire’s conflict, but I felt Muir didn't give us enough. If she now wants us to care about those who oppose the empire and necromancy, they need to be fleshed out better than this. Nona isn’t the right medium for us to discover the rebels. I didn't learn much about them, and I still only care about the characters from the first two books.

This is because Nona has literally no fucking idea what's going on at any given moment. She is lovely though. I was concerned Nona would become tedious to read, but she remained adorable throughout. Another testament to Tamsyn’s writing. There was so much love in this book between Nona and her companions. It made quite a change from the previous books.

I just wish this was tighter. I got bored occasionally during scenes with Nona and her school friends. The kids aren't nearly as captivating as the other characters from the series, and I can't tell how to visualise them. The same goes for the setting, especially the school.

In the second half, the plot kicks in and more familiar faces turn up. I found the humour style of this series made a full return at this point. I was less enamoured by the writing in NtN. Harrow and Gideon were full of beautiful and hilarious quotes. But here it's more…functional, I guess? It's focused on weaving this intricate web of confusion around Nona and the plot, keeping her (and us) from understanding the full context of what's happening.

Anyway yeah, in the second half there's sooo much wild shit. I was like thank fucking Christ, we're back.

Has Gideon finally realised she's obsessed with Harrow? She got particularly wild over seeing her body possessed by another. God it's so sad seeing her this bitter and broken. For a minute I wasn't even convinced it was her in her body. I thought John had stuffed someone else in there to keep up the act. There's going to be a lot to resolve emotionally in the final book. I am quite concerned that the first two books set up this amazing, complicated relationship between Gideon and Harrow, but now it's been sidelined. I’m losing track of what the themes of this series are. Is it still about them, or is it now about John and Alecto and what happened to the planet? The last book is Alecto’s book, so will we see a real resolution for our disaster lesbians? We shall see.

I adored the weird Ianthe/Corona interactions, especially more hilarious gems from Ianthe. “Honey, stop telling people things are going to be fine. Things are, I promise you, not going to be fine. Things are, frankly, going to be antonyms of fine.” me @ Tamsyn re: the last book ;_; Can't believe I'm saying this, but I missed Ianthe. The way Tamsyn writes her unique awfulness and sense of humour is masterful. I genuinely hope she survives the series, since my other terrible fave (Mercy) is permadead.

Speaking of. Yes, finally some Resurrection backstory! I always found the Lyctors and their relationships with John fascinating. One of my favourite tropes is ‘tight knit group slowly falls into tragedy and everything gets fucked up’. Seeing it all turn to shit á la Don't Look Up was great.

And it was what was predicted. I'm glad there's no weird twists in this one. I had ideas about why the world ended, and who Nona was, and whose body she was inhabiting, where Harrow’s soul ended up. It was good to see it all come to light.

And what an ending! Our saltwater beast is finally here. I really hope the last book starts with that scene from a better angle. Like Harrow’s POV. I need to know what she's feeling. I miss her so much :( It's such a huge gap of 3 years without hearing from one of the main characters.

While I was sad there was hardly any Gideon and basically no Harrow (therefore minimal gay yearning), Nona’s relationships make up for it a bit though. Love this found family of her, Cam, Pal and Pyrrha. God, the Sixth were always my second favourite House, after the Ninth of course. The striking emotions of their scenes: not being able to talk to each other, desperately scribbling notes, Pal trying his best not to consume Cam’s soul, them merging into Paul?! "I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.” Just wow. That reminded me of Gideon and Harrow at Canaan House. Paul is cool I guess, but I'm going to miss them dearly. Especially their sense of humour. Pash was fucking hilarious as well, she probably got the loudest laughs from me.

I'm not going to pretend I'm not disappointed that this book is a side quest, and that Harrow only appears for like, a minute. It was a glorious minute. But y’know, going from the utter perfection of HtN to this was jarring. There’s a lot of souls and bodies flying around in this book, without any real explanation of why it has to be like this. It's so bizarrely complicated. Surely there was a tighter way to move the story along from the end of HtN to the opening of the tomb? I still don’t understand why Nona even exists (along with a million other questions).

Listen, I do love a book that makes me work. The exercise of deciphering the clues is a fun brain activity. But we had a lot of that in the first two books. And they were executed perfectly. But this book didn't do so well at that. At this late stage in the series, we need more answers than mystery. More development for the main characters and their relationships. Even when important stuff is happening, Muir writes it in a way that's intentionally confusing. Nona being so out of the loop means we're missing so much context in this book, and it got frustrating considering we're so close to the end. And that ending, presumably, will be from another new POV.

It's structurally weak and obvious where things have been added to pad it out. It doesn't move the main plot or our characters’ development along enough, so I'm concerned about the sheer amount that needs to happen in the last book. I'm sorry Nona, but you should have been a side novella that was released before Alecto.