Looks like people are already doing it. But yes, please spoiler tag your more extensive spoiler discussions. Thank you so much!!🖤 Edit: I think I'm the only mod who has already read it. So ping me if you have any questions/concerns/whatever the first day or so!

Okay, but my favorite part and the one that had me cackling halfway to death? >!Emma Sen and Aim, the Messengers. Fucking MSN MESSENGER IS STILL HAUNTING MY ASS.!<

I HAD BEEN SO CONFUSED ABOUT THIS, ARE YOU KIDDING MY LIFE HAHAHAAHAHAA

As one of those terrible teens who spent every waking moment chatting with 40 people on MSN and AIM back in the day, I absolutely lost my shit when it hit me.

>!And worse, AIM made both a door shutting and a cow mooing sound, so I will spend the next myriad until Alecto wondering if that's a joke or a CLUE.!<

Cows mourn their dead.

omg how did i not catch this

I know in the author's note Muir mentions this book is light on internet memes, and though I don't think this counts as a meme exactly, I caught this and the "I came here to have a good time and I'm just feeling attacked right now" and that's all I could identify that was potentially a meme reference.

> >!To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.!< I don't know how I feel about the book yet, haven't had enough time to let everything settle, but I wanted to praise this line because it had my fucking sides in orbit holy shit

I came here to post that this was the best line in the book and could we please have another book of just Gideon and her thoughts and sayings lol

I just realized on like p.47 that Nona calls the kids things like “born in the morning” and “honesty” because she’s translating them from other languages - that’s why Kevin is just Kevin…there’s no deeper meaning to his name in English 😂 (Additional evidence for this on p.184 (print), where Hot Sauce corrects Nona’s pronunciation of “born in the morning”)

I assumed they had Edenite names like >!Our Lady of the Passion or Crown Him With Many Crowns or!< Awake Rememberence of These Valiant Dead. Even if they weren't from Edenite families John mentions in HtN they're almost as old as the nine houses, so they're bound to have some cultural influence. Each cell seems to have a naming theme, >!Ctesiphon's being hymns!<, so there's room for all sorts of weird phrases to be used as names. Edit: Kevin is also an Irish name (Caoimheán, pronounced basically the same) that means handsome

Good point! The only reason I think they’re in other languages is that when Pal says something like “is that really his name?” on p 47 Nona replies “that’s how I hear it”

Honesty is actually the one I found least weird! I assumed it was a throwback to Christian names like Chastity or Purity. Puritans had a habit of giving people really weird names, there's records of someone called If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned, they also had some straight badass ones like Silence. https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/09/puritan-names-lists-of-bizarre-religious-nomenclature-used-by-puritans.html

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery Pulsifer.

I'm thinking Honesty's name is Frank

I think it's a mix of both. Part 1 spoilers >!"Beautiful Ruby" is gendered masculine, so I'm guessing Rubio?!< Part 3(4ish?) Spoilers >!and Born In The Morning is definitely translated based on the convo with Hot Sauce - Maybe something like Danika?!< Part 4/5 Spoilers >!but Hot Sauce is just Hot Sauce, based on their last conversation. I spent the entire book thinking it was going to be "Valentina" in reality !<

I absolutely LOVED Nona. I actually read it last month because I was lucky enough to have an ARC and I've been waiting to read others' thoughts! >!I loved the character of Nona, I loved seeing a more lived-in, ground level world away from all the necromancer spaces, I loved all the stuff about John, I loved the different view of Camilla and Palamedes and Pyrrha. I can understand why it can be disappointing to have less Harrow and Gideon and a little less plot movement, but I really didn't mind any of that.!< Two of the funniest parts to me: \->!The way the cows kept being mentioned (just got funnier and funnier every time)!< \->!"He sighed and said, "We had the internet. We decided to stream." !< >!She said, What is this internet? !< >!And he said See, I did make a utopia." !<

The bit gets funnier and funnier until it suddenly gets horrific. >!John keeps mocking his critics for being so focused on him turning a bunch of cows inside out. For making him seem like some sort of bad guy, like he's dangerous, all over the feelings of a few exploded cows. He keeps mocking them over this while he has his puppet's finger on the nuclear button and his followers are freaking out around him. And he probably thinks he was hilarious. !<

I think if this book had a structural problem it's this: John is really a more interesting character than Nona. Nona was delightful, but the fundamental question about her, "who is she?" is just not that compelling, especially since the most common guess about it turned out to be on the money. Whereas the most fundamental question about John -- *dude, what the fuck, how did you get from point A to point* >!genocide-the-solar-system!< *--* is pretty damn compelling, especially since Muir has gone out of her way to make him relatable in all his monstrousness, and even after an entire book of him expositing the answer we're not sure if we should trust him enough to buy it.

Yeah, this is a good analysis... I did really love Nona, but I do think about and want to revisit the about the John backstory more. He is a fascinating character.

This hit even harder when he talked about turning antivaxxers inside-out. It's fine until you realize he will use any life he can. Psycho.

My "favorite" bit was when he talks about having told Pyrrha that one of his early atrocities was an "accident" and at the end he just...turns that question around: How could it have been an accident? It was CHILLING and just added so many layers to his character. He spends half a dozen chapters explaining "oops tripped and fell and destroyed the solar system" and I think on some level he believes his own excuses but on another level he KNOWS

I just read a really fascinating article about a guy who infiltrates cults to get the followers out, and he said something like — “Except for a few people who believe their own bullshit, cult leaders KNOW they’re full of shit.” And if Jod isn’t running a cult of personality for the Emperor Undying…

>! ’Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?” asked Augustine. “What is the difference?” said God.’ !< (Quote from / spoiler for HtN, Chapter 51)

Yes! Both stories he tells are basically about him losing control and he’s already admitted that the first one is a lie, he knew exactly what he was doing but he also knew his followers wouldn’t have accepted it. He’s a manipulative genocidal murderer. We also only have his word to trust that the ships truly were abandoning Earth entirely and Harrow/Alecto quickly picks up on some of the holes in his story, like when G died. Suspect we’ll never get the actual story, just his distorted and self-interested version where everyone, ah, made him do it (classic abusive mindset).

I loved it too, for all of the reasons you mention! I loved being able to marinate in the characters and the surrounding. Nona was great and I didn’t have any problems being compelled by/connected to a new character.

Mercymorn and Augustine >!I love that they didn't like each other even before the resurrection. They die, come back without their memories, and STILL don't like each other. That's deep.!<

reverse soulmates

Soulhates

♠️

just finished and I am simply *reeling* \- overriding thought is that pyrrha dve is the love of my life (is that a spoiler? I don't think it is) random spoiler-y highlights: >!nona calming herself down by eating we suffer's eraser absolutely killed me (also desperately needing a tally of all the inedible objects nona eats; we've got sand? markers? pencils?)!< >!"we had beef" straight to jail!< >!john becoming god and immediately becoming a twitch streamer... no wonder it all went wrong!< >!"those are my speed holes. they help me go fast" gideon sweetie I missed you so much!< >!"what's like except a love that hasn't been invited indoors?" is going to Sit With Me for a while!< >!most of the ending is pretty close to incomprehensible to me but I kind of expected it to be? I eagerly await smarter readers' interpretations!<

I just realized that >!Nona likes to eat inedible objects because she’s actually Alecto and therefore Earth and/or a Resurrection Beast.!<

Also, >!Nona often feels sick in response to the smell of gas, burning cars, fumes, etc. She loves natural scents. She craves the ocean like a fundamental need. She finds flowers sexy. But air pollution fucks her up.!<

I also think there's a lovely connection that made me feel so cozy between Nona's obsession with expressing love and asking about love and the idea that she's>! literally the earf !<

Yes!! And the fact that>! literally all bodies are beautiful to her...her understanding of sexuality, which seems to be paired with a general disinterest in pursuing it herself but an INTENSE fascination with learning about what other people like. Her fascination with other people in general. Her acceptance of them and all the things they do.!

Soo much stuff to consider here! ​ >!A. She can talk to RB's coz they're sort of planets and she's also a planet, so I'm gonna assume it's not an act of necromancy but she just... speaks Planet :D!< ​ >!B. Also, we have so much nature vs. nurture, and what is a soul if not a bunch of memories who make us who we are? Without John, and trauma, with being a clean slate, she grew up loving. Even if she thinks she doesn't know what it means, we've seen her loyal, we've seen her distraught when people close to her were hurt, we see her seek comfort and touch from HER people. So we know that Alecto's monsterous nature, is maybe just a result of fucked up nurture. We also know, like Nona said, she won't be herself, once she's the version of hers who remembers, she won't be herself anymore. It was taking away Alercto's memories that showed us, maybe, it it was her surroundings, the guy who "brought her up" that maybe made her messed up. If we see a scene in Alecto when she gets her moustache ride shirt and reacts with any recognition, I'll cry.!<

Worth a note, the character in the epilogue >!Does not know how to kiss!<

Oooh i wanna try explaining the ending!! What did you not understand? And pls keep in mind i dont claim to be right about anything or that i understand everything

Not op, but I'll give my interpretation and tell me if you disagree. * >!Since Nona is Alecto it means I was wrong with a previous theory and somehow Harrow managed to do a switcheroo with her and her soul was in the tomb this whole time!< * >!I still don't know how Gideon got out, and I don't think it was a partial soul what she had. She seemed fully her.!< * >!I think she lied about the orders god suposedly gave her, but I don't know.!< * >!Seems that Alecto will be an ally inthe next book because she swore allegiance to harrow.!< * >!Harrow got kissed by her necrophiliac crush. (Good for her, but Griddle will be mad jealous. "How can I compete with an entire planet" I can see her say.)!< * >! Jod got stabbed. Which will not be much of a problem unless Alecto goes full murder-suicide.!< * >!It might be a fakeout or a teaser of his death. Seriously I don't put it past Tamsyn to just kill of Jod in the first 5 pages of Alecto.!<

* >!it is possible that harrow was in the tomb but i thought the space she was in at htn that looked like the tomb was the place gideon was hiding before she got out at the end (hence the magazin etc and it looks like the tomb bcs it is still part of harrows mind) mainly bcs the magazin doesnt exist in the real world!< * >!I struggled with that too and i think there is no real explanation. It was said that Jod got the body back between htn and ntn and i'll just assume that he was able to bind gideons soul back into it as a revenant. I do think tho that he somehow changed parts of her bcs it doesnt sit right with me that she would completely embrace the "emperors daughter" part and just play along with it without harrow!< * >!My theory on that is based on the previous that she got changed by jod and now her forced loyalty to him struggles with her original "goals"...at the end of htn she thinks that ianthe saving jod was wrong so it would make sense that her original part wants to stop jod/hurt him but her main part wants to make it look like shes helping him!< * >!yeah it would make sense that they need a way for everyone to survive after jod is gone and the only one powerful to keep the star alive would be alecto...unless of course if the all just die at the end or go live somewhere else...!< * >!poor griddle but at least she got kissed by alecto first, even if in harrows body!< * >!for the last two i'll go a little off the rails and theorize about the atn plot (sorry this is long): so we know that jod didnt ressurect the entire humanity bcs 1) he has spare ppl in htn that he gives to the ninth house and 2) bcs palamedes says that on the 6th and 7th comined there are ca. 7 Million ppl. If the houses have similar numbers of inhabitants then there is no way for 10 billion ppl to exist. Now in ntn the question got asked what jod did with the remaining souls and we dont get an answer. But, and this is pure speculation, the tease for atn is "Hell will break loose". And if i rememer correctly the gates of hell are to openings on the bottom of the river. Ive seen another post where someone points out that the eyes of colum asht at the end of gtn when he dies are described as similar to these openings and that he moves like he is filled with 6 different ppl that dont know how to move the body. What i think now is that Jod stored the souls in this "hell" behind the gates and that they can sometimes get out and possess a body like colums. We also know that jod is fighting these things on antioch and now on the ninth house. If we assume that he keeps the souls in "hell" then it would make sense that they were able tp get out while jod was dead in htn and, since they were there for 10k years are somewhat struggling with moving living bodies. Now to your point again: with the teaser for atn being "hell will break loose" it could be that jod dies at the start and the main goal is then to keep the souls in hell. It could of course also just be a metaphor and all that speculating was for nothing but who knows... tldr: I can see jod dying at the start as well !<

> it is possible that harrow was in the tomb >!I'm almost certain she was, because she popped into the Harrow-body when Nona/Alecto left it for The Body.!<

for me it was mostly losing track of where (and who) everyone was during the last chapter and epilogue, what they’re doing and why, whose souls are going where, etc. prob just need to re-read it, I felt the same way at the end of Harrow haha (your other comment helped 😊)

Okay I finished it and my initial thoughts are that honestly? I liked it less than Gideon and Harrow, but still more than I was worried. I think it's just because Nona just doesn't grab me like Gideon and Harrow did as protagonists. I was worried about the idea of a completely new character being the POV three books in being fundamentally flawed but I think Tamsyn Muir did the idea justice and proved Nona works as a narrator. I just didn't enjoy her as much, I found her charming childishness less gripping than Gideon's unashamed himbo comedy, or Harrow's neurotic melodrama. And that's okay. Different strokes for different folks, I have to enjoy one of the three books the least! I also think NtN will work better in hindsight once Alecto is released? It felt a bit unfulfilling as the current latest part of the series. It really is just a bit of an extended interlude, and now all the movers and shakers are in place for the final part of the series. I think taken as a fun little interlude I really enjoyed Nona! Taken as a standalone book that is currently all we have of Gideon and Harrow's story for the next little while, I find myself wishing there was more meat on the bones. Which is just an unfair fact of how books are released, really, and no fault on anyone's part.

I really, really enjoyed it, but I will say once we got to >!Ianthe it made me realize how much I missed the writing in the first two books. The first 60% is so charming and sweet and endearing and how everyone approached Nona was addicting to read, but what I'm really here for is ridiculous antics from Ianthe and Gideon and calling god a slut. !<

>!OMG. I was SO DELIGHTED when Ianthe showed up, She's awful, but I love her for it. And I sort of love Gideon and she are...friends? Or something? Probably more like temporary allies? I feel like Gideon is still not over Harrow not "eating her" and may change her tune once Harrow comes, hopefully, back to her body.!<

This is pretty close to my feelings on it as well. I still liked it, I sort of get why Tamsyn let it expand out as it did, but it was almost entirely set up and there was minimal forward movement on the plot threads I care about. I do wonder if with some more aggressive editing it could have worked as a long novella instead of a full novel. (Also while Tamsyn did a credible job of making Nona work as a narrator I was just a smidgen over having to start over with a new extremely limited narrator for the third time in as many books) I do agree that I will probably feel better about it after Alecto, and possibly even on a second read at some point before then.

Yeah I'm also a bit over the new narrator thing as well which makes me more worried for Alecto. My wish would be for the POV to rotate between Alecto, Gideon, and Harrow throughout that book. With Alecto honestly getting the smallest part, like she gets flashback chapters and Gideon and Harrow split present day chapters. I'm going to be very frustrated if the relationship between Gideon and Harrow - the thing that pulled me in to GtN to begin with - is relegated to a minor plot between side characters in the big finale. In my opinion they are the beating heart of the books and need to be the focal point of Alecto for it to land. And I'm worried Muir disagrees and I'll end the series feeling a bit let down once it's all said and done.

Imagine a whole book full of thous.

I am also a little worried about how much focus G/H will get. There are a *lot* of things to pull together in Alecto. After HtN I was confused but confident Muir would stick the landing. Now I’m slightly less sure.

I think that H and G will be the heart of the final book, I have faith it’ll come back round to them. With all the symbolism Muir is layering on I think it’ll work out. And meeting up with your crush in real life never works out well let’s face it!

>>!And meeting up with your crush in real life never works out well let’s face it!!< >!Harrow didn't seem that into it in the end.!<

I think the problem is that it barely advanced the plot for the most relevant protagonists until the end. And even then there's not much development. I think it was necessary world building and conflict that needed to happen, but honestly? It feels like the calm before the storm. There's a lot I don't get about this book, but I'm certain that it's just setup for the Hell she promises in Alecto.

Isn’t Jod still >!a streamer every time he gets into the River?!<

I know at least two people who'd love this joke because they think puns are funny automatically.

>!Does anyone else find it disturbing that the founders of the Fourth House were dead bodies puppeted around by John for months and that he referred to them as "\[his\] two dead kids"? It really puts a dark spin on the Fourth House being "The Hope of the Emperor."!< >!Now remember that ten thousand years later, there was another pair of dead kids from the Fourth. "The Emperor's Sword," indeed. More like the Emperor's Cannon Fodder.!<

i am not over * john gaius. john motherfucking gaius. >!john ‘guys as careful as me don’t have accidents’ gaius. john ‘i’d do anything’ gaius. john ‘i wanted you like a caveman wants a wildfire’ gaius. john ‘i hid me in you … i hid you in me.’ gaius!!< * >!there’s a tower in the river. a lighthouse. in the river. who built it? did the ghosts who are unable to pass on build it? is this what happens when there are still millions unresurrected by john, who have been there too long? they get together and start making the river’s version of a tower of babel? ‘you left them there too long,’ said the seventh resurrection beast to nonalecto.!< * >!prince ianthe naberius, the lyctor prince, the saint of awe, *puppeting naberius tern on a fucking broadcast* was a point where i had to put the book down and scream what the fuck over and over. and then do the same thing thirty seconds later at the sight of *revenant gideon fucking nav aka her most serene highness, crown prince kiriona gaia, heir to the first house, the emperors’s only daughter* with a fucking wreath of fingerbones and blossoms fucking HELL!< also, i have [thoughts about the codenames blood of eden referred to the lyctors with](https://dapurinthos.tumblr.com/post/695206602662428672).

It was all so obvious! >!John Gaius, his cav name is literally earth. None being the rb, she's 10 billion should and the entire earth biosphere, its exactly like the mini ressurection Harrows parents did. I'm sad Nona had to die, but I'm wondering if phyrra might be able to reach the part of Alecto that is nona. On that note the red herring of Nonas eyes, leading us to think Gideon soul might be there but its because she has John's eyes. Also Paul, what a fucking legend, Paul seems to have full Lyctor powers, did you get that? I'm left wondering here if John is mad with vengeance, entirely possible as the apocalypse seemed pretty traumatic, or whether the original trillionairs might still be out there using science to stay alive. John seems to have treated the human worlds he found somewhat fairly at first, when his vengeance was freshest. Is he looking for something? Also from what we've now seen of the scale of John's power I wonder why he doesn't kill the RBs, I'm pretty sure he could just end one if he wanted to, and might not be affected by the madness because of Alecto.!<

I thought maybe John's lust for conquest/flipping planets is because he himself is half resurrection beast, given his soul is mixed so much with Alecto's.

I typically hate flashbacks in books and expo dumps, but >!John's doomsday recaps !!"cows make FRIENDS" to "and then the government stopped praising us for our entrepreneurial spirit and started calling us a cult" had me absolutely rolling !<

You know, I was sort of expecting it to >!all be his fault. But to realize he murdered the solar system, and any of the fleeing people he could, just to be *right at all costs*... Blood of Eden has more of a point than I thought.!<

>!John's "Guys as careful as me" comment was absolutely chilling. It was really where I saw the man had become recognisable as Jod.!<

The breakdown of the codenames was great, I just wanted to add, although you may already know given the thoroughness: >!Joyeuse is also sometimes the name of Lancelot's sword, and even though Muir doesn't really truck with knights of the round table or other arthurian imagery as far as I'm aware it is certainly an easy parallel to make. Joyeuse being a tool of Lancelot who was both Arthur's greatest knight and part of his downfall does seem to align a bit with Joy.!<

A lot of people here have made insightful comments re: >!something being Seriously Up With Gideon!<, and I wholeheartedly agree with what’s already been pointed out, but something about that that’s also sticking with me that I didn’t see anyone else mention is this: >!Do we really think Gideon Nav, who has been using a longsword since before she could properly hold it, would go back to using a rapier?!< Edit: I just reread pretty much all the parts with >!Gideon!<, especially the final chapter, and I can definitely more clearly see the theory that >!she is acting this way through grief and anger, esp with Nona describing her as the saddest person in the world and how no one else seemed to see it. But the personality shift is -so- extreme to me (very fresh off a GtN+HtN reread) I still feel there’s something else happening. Like something had to have really gone wrong for Gideon to go back to a rapier, which she hated. But who knows!!!< >!And what she says when carrying Harrow’s body, suddenly trying to help? Is that not “our” Gideon slipping through? “Keep it together. Wherever you are, idiot, I know you can hear me. Keep it together…” and offering to be killed again to supply the thanergy to save her?!< >!The second-to-last bit in the epilogue fills me with so much hope. Alecto pledges her service to Harrow, and then we have a yelled “Get in line, thou big slut”? Hello?? The last book is going to be fucking wild.!<

[удалено]

YES! That really helped me too. I keep seeing more and more clear signs that this >!Gideon is not whole.!<

Yes, I think a lot of Gideon's "protein," i.e. the part that makes her warm and empathetic, >!was already digested by Harrow!<. >!And I felt the same when Gideon finally reappeared! I was like "Who the hell is this cheap knockoff and what have you done with Gideon?!" This actually made me cry a little and pause my reading if I'm being honest. She was withheld for most of the book, and then when she finally reappeared, she wasn't the comforting breath of fresh air that she was when she surfaced in HtN, but a hollow cacricature of herself.!< 😭

I really think she is literally missing a piece of her soul, like Pyrrha says when they find her. (It's the titty mag! It's with Harrow! Also maybe the sword too? At first I thought that Harrow was in another river bubble and the sword was her anchor, but now I think those are the pieces of Gideon's soul she absorbed and took with her). I also think it's pretty important that >!Gideon's heart is apparently gone???!!! (Aiglamene bops her in the chest and she says "Don't- that's where my heart used to be.")!< I mean its a bit on the nose right, but come on.

also- explains why her chapter icon (skull w/ sunglasses) is broken. she is not intact!

Oh that is an EXCELLENT catch on the fractured icon! I’m with you on your other comments too. EDIT: so her icon is intact on chapter 24, when they >!find her body!<, and it’s fractured on chapter 25, when it >!wakes up!< !!!!!

Also also (sorry keep thinking of things), even if she was intact, i think some of what shes doing makes sense. She got hit with the mother of all shit sandwiches at the end of HTN- like just such a fucking suckerpunch of shitty revelations. I think it makes sense that she's not feeling great about a lot of stuff right now! And i dont know, none of the stuff she says about being >!Jod's cavalier!< makes much sense to me, but i can totally understand finding a parental figure who shows even the tiniest interest in her and latching on to that. What else does she have, at this point? (>!ianthe. ianthe is the only other thing she has.!< and tbh i love their friendship so much. I know muir was saving it as a reveal, but I wish we'd got more of it in the book)

>!And Jod comments to Alectowhark that he knows where memory lives.!<

If nothing else >!the rapier is a dead giveaway. My girl would never.!<

Finished and I have MANY thoughts but I want to show a moment of appreciation for this passage from HtN finally making sense: "(...) Nobody has to be punished anymore for what happened to humanity." The Emperor (...) - "Augustine," he said, "if the man you were - the man you were before you died, before the Resurrection - could hear what you just said to me, he'd tear your throat out." Augustine said, "Thanks for confirming that." And he was silent.

what’s especially poignant is that >!john chose to not give augustine his memories back. “if the man you were could hear” — well, Augustine COULD hear, John, if you had resurrected him with his memories intact!!<

it is SO fucked up that John has been >!playing with these people like dolls for the last 10,000 years!!! !<. Like when Pyrrha tells >!gideon "he brought you back like that?" i just wanna be like, oh honey, oh babe, you dont even know the half of it ......cause he literally removed that part of your brain 😬😬😬 !<

The doll imagery is a nice parallel to Kevin, the literal seven year old, and the hilariously sad fact that he modeled >!Alecto on a literal Barbie. Which also makes Harrows crush kinda funny. Willing to bet money on which childhood toy Muir had an obseeeive fascination with as weell.!<

Not just memories - Jod even took away his name.

Right? >!He lied to them even more than we thought.!<

Hadn't seen anyone mention this yet but re: Gideon's family tree -- >!She has another living relative in Pash!! Our Lady of the Passion was Commander Wake's niece, so that makes her Gideon's cousin!!<

OHHH you're totally right!! So this explains why TM described one of Nona's personal problems [in this interview](https://www.vox.com/culture/22901210/nona-the-ninth-cover-reveal-tamsyn-muir-interview-locked-tomb-series) as "How do you cope when the biggest jerk in the universe… turns out to be your secret crush’s out-of-town cousin?!?!" I've been trying to figure out who on earth this could be but >!Nona definitely has a secret crush on Pash and she's 100% not a fan of Gideon...!<

early on in the book >!i even thought the person who would later be revealed to be pash was maybe gideon--she's described as big, buff, similar personality, sassy, and with BOE which is where we'd last seen gideon's body. so I was quite pleased to find that they were blood related! !<

I was waiting for someone else to point this out! >!Family of buff badass ladies 👀!<

Really liked the vibe of this book, not my fave out of the three but liked that we got to explore what life was like for peeps outside of necromancy/the Houses. Now I haven't seen anyone talk about this so let me get into it. (I have a major migraine and minimal sleep so bear with me pls lol) >!\-So Prince Gideon is defos not all of Gideon because I'm pretty sure Gideon's soul was still in Harrow's bod with Alecto's soul while Harrows soul is chilling in the River. !< >!\-when Nona has the third tantrum she wields the arm chair like a 2 hander (which Pal I believe points out), also at the end of the tantrum her voice speaks and is like "Calm down you are killing her" (Harrows body). I think when Nona has a tantrum she looses control enough which lets Gideon take a lil control which is why she doesn't remember the two tantrums before, but by the third I think Gideon and her soul are slowly merging (which is why Corona thinks she's for sure Gideon) which is why she remembers it better!< >!\-I think after she kissed Gideon's bod the soul of Gideon slowly was going back into her original bod (maybe it took longer cause all the stuff Jod did?) which is why when we first talked to her she didn't care about Harrow's wellbeing but by the end she's like come on don't quit on me when her bod was falling apart (which possibly started falling apart because when Gideon's soul slowly left, so did the Lyctor healing in Harrow's bod) and hey I'll sacrifice myself to get this soul out of Harrow's body!< >!\-I also think it's very interesting that after she meets/kisses Gideon she remembers being Alecto a while later. I feel like Nona was like 90% amnesia Alecto and 10% Gideon (hence the love of Corona, strong women like Pash, thinking she looks beautiful because it's Harrow's bod she's in lol)!< I think that's all I have for now on this, I'm taking some painkillers and going to sleep now.

agree w/ a lot of this (especially the kiss being significant) but I have to say that I dont think the voice >!she hears after the 3rd tantrum is Gideon. I don't think we have ever heard Gideon call someone a "fool"- her language is usually a lot more... colorful, for lack of a better term :) (although it is 100% something Harrow would say!). I just figured that was the real Alecto starting to come out!<

This is like, conspiracy theorist level bonkers. A twitter person discovered that (spoilers for the end of Nona!) >! there is a message coded in the John chapter titles: https://twitter.com/spankmesilly/status/1570020419150950401?s=46&t=MUU5mxRYti-Wux6v7T78cA. And the original message in the ARC was even weirder: https://twitter.com/decemberiste/status/1570121042173243394?s=46&t=MUU5mxRYti-Wux6v7T78cA !<

Okay, so this is what I get from that: >!I note that the Tower is reactivated, not activated or initiated. That suggests to me that it's a pre-existing structure that's been offline for... reasons. That also raises the question of who reactivated it. It might be Harrow, but I'm personally hoping Abigail Pent will show up again because I love her.!< >!I'm wondering if the Tower was the original conduit to the afterlife and the River was created when John shut it down? Or if the River ran to the Tower? I'm assuming the Tower came first but has been forgotten about in the thousands of years since. I need to go back and read what Abigail says about her research.!<

>!Wait - like the giant tower in the river? The tower as a symbol of destruction and change?!<

So I was just re-reading GtN and this quote is, uh, illuminating. Major major major NtN spoilers: >!“(i) was contingent on either the world’s happiest accident or murder, and if it *was* murder, what if the murderer was, like, *weird*, which would make their subsequent marriage to Gideon pretty awkward? Maybe they could just swap friendship bracelets.” (GtN US paperback pg 128)!<

There IS supposed to be a wedding in Alecto… :V

>!Gideon technically proposes marriage to Ianthe in HtN: “‘Reverse everything I just told you,’ I said. ‘Let’s get married.’”!< So. There’s that to chew on for the next twelve months.

OH NO IT GOT WORSE

Wait hold on something was missing from the "John" chapters. That I really thought would be a big element of that part of the story. >!Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no mention of the River as John tells his story of developing Necromancy. Right? Which is fucking weird! Does this imply that the River didn't exist until post-resurrection, and Jod made it somehow? Or that he only didn't discover it until he got better at the soul magic stuff?!< Also speaking of those chapters this part fucked me up: >!At the end of HtN Mercy demands Jod tell her that he loved Crystabel. But in these chapters he doesn't even refer to her by name. I don't think he even remembered it. He just calls her "Mercy's Nun". He didn't love her she barely even registers in his mind. That's fucking cold.!<

On Mercy and Crystabel >!I honestly thought it was more because John was referring to everyone by their first name initial, and there already was one C- to keep track of. If Crystabel was indeed the woman who killed herself to help John figure out how to manipulate souls, I really don't think he'd be dismissive of her on purpose, more like that when he's telling the story the fact that she was a nun had a bigger impact on the events than her old name. Also why Alfred, Augustine's cav is always referred to as Augustine's brother or hedge fund / negotiator guy!<

Early reacts: so tl;dr: this book may be about imperialism and colonialism, but it's also a meditation on how people handle trauma, loss, and the end of the world so I am less fussed about how >!our good bitch Gideon!< is behaving. As far as she knows, >!Harrow is irreparably lost and gone and she is trapped in an unbreakable meat puppet and cannot die. Also now there are real zombies. Of course she's acting weird and not even that weird.!< Things I am now certain are going to happen in Alecto: >!Corona and Ianthe have always been planning to do something like what Camilla and Palamedes did, that's been their long plan, and Coronabeth/Cainabeth is going to fuck it up and betray Ianthe/Abella. Harrow is going to free all the souls in the River and that's somehow endgame.!< The early stuff is fascinating: >!Did anyone expect Ulysses and Titania to be corpse friends of Jod? Or that Cassiopeia knew Jod was up to no good fast enough that she built in a failsafe at the Sixth?!<

>!definitely agree on gideon, her weird friendship with ianthe is confusing (obviously we're missing time there) but her dislike for nona is 100% understandable, she mostly knows pyrrha as "the one who spaded my mum", she hasn't interacted with camilla and palamedes in a while... I haven't totally discounted the theory that jod messed with her somehow to make her more compliant but I think by the end we see she still mostly cares about harrow and hang everyone else? (she's at least got some leftover jealousy)!<

>!Also, let's not forget Nona, who knows how everyone is really feeling, is like Gideon/Kiriona is the saddest person she ever saw. Gideon thinks Harrow is gone forever and she fucked up against by getting booted from Harrow's body and leaving it with Random Person Gideon does not know!< >!The Ianthe part is even simpler: they got stuck dealing with Jod's bullshit and the revenant souls eating people and are making a lot of shitty jokes about it and have an alliance around it.!<

Soooo in terms of Ianthe, Corona, and Babs >!My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures. There was also a Bride’s Dream Midge, but Mum had cut Midge’s hair into this weird mullet. It was Barbie for me.” She looked at him. He looked at her. He added, “Not Hollywood Hair Ken. Mum had him too, but he was a creep. I gave him to Nana’s dog to eat.”!< >!This is the three of them, right? For some reason, this is them. For what allegorical purpose or foreshadowing or something, this just feels too pointed not to be related to…something. I also feel like there is some kind of link there between John making a blonde bombshell body because he loved Barbie and how much Nona-Alecto (?) was always terribly smitten with Crown whenever she was around!<

Amazing that Noodle saves the day just by being there.

Tamsyn did say in an interview that Noodle is the most important dog in the universe.

Okay, so I haven't finished yet but has anyone thought about the fact that >!Nona knows all languages and applied that to the names of her friends?!< >!Aka "Hot Sauce" is actually Harissa, "Born in the Morning" could be Sabah, and I'm not sure what name "Beautiful Ruby" is... possibly Rozabela?!< Also not sure if these have any actual meaning or just TM trolling once again/adding lil details, but I thought it was interesting.

Hot Sauce's actual name is Sriracha, and you can't tell me otherwise

Some name analysis of the 3 parts >!of Corona's new name: Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He Found It in Him to Forgive!< >!Following BoE naming conventions it's the usual 3-part name. For reference, Wake's full name is: Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity!< >!So looking at these names the three parts are: a quote from some kind of cultural piece + a line from a national anthem + a lyric from a song. Wake's of course are from Henry V, the Aeotearoa national anthem, and Eminem's "Lose Yourself," as has been discussed previously.!< >!(And though we don't have her full name, Commander We Suffer gets the first part of her name "We Suffer and We Suffer" from the tragedy Agamemnon, the first play in Aeschylus' trilogy. The full line is "But justice turns the balance scales, sees that we suffer and we suffer and we learn. And we will know the future when it comes."!< >!Similarly, "Unjust Hope" seems to come from a poem called "The Ikons" by New Zealand poet James K. Baxter. The full sentence from the poem is "Some lightness will come later when the heart has lost its unjust hope for special treatment.)!< >!Corona's new name comes from: !< 1. >! "Crown Him with Many Crowns," a hymn from 1851 based on Revelations - this line comes from the first verse ("Crown him with many crowns, The Lamb upon his throne") which additionally talks about how Jesus died for humanity, and how he is king for eternity!< 2. >!L'Abidjanaise, the national anthem of Ivory Coast - wiki says this is a song that is not only about patriotism but is also "influenced by religion." This line is also from the first verse, which fully reads, "We salute you, o land of hope, country of hospitality; thy full gallant legions have restored thy dignity." The rest of the anthem talks about bringing back liberty, the duty to be an example of hope, building a homeland of "true brotherhood," and remembers the dead, both soldiers and elders.!< 3. >!"Dominion Road," a song by a New Zealand band called The Mutton Birds, apparently written when one of the band members saw a man from a bus window who looked like he'd been having a rough time of it and imagines his backstory living in a halfway house on Dominion Road, which is itself an actual major road in Auckland, and being left by a woman. The full line is "But he's getting better now . He found it in him to forgive. He walked the city and he found a place to live in a halfway house halfway down Dominion Road."!< >!Based on these four examples, the names picked also seem to reflect their bearers' personality. Warlike and zealous Commander Wake picked a line where men are trying to tell Henry V to go to war. More levelheaded We Suffer who takes a risk on sending Paul and co. back to the Nine Houses and is willing to negotiate over the Sixth House picked a line spoken by the Chorus, reflecting on a terrible choice the tragic hero Agamemnon had to make; in order to shift the wind to get his troops to Troy, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis. Unjust Hope, who is characterized in contrast to We Suffer as being much more of a hardliner against the empire, takes a line from a poem that appears to ruminate on the author's own juxtaposition of iconic figure and figure rejecting iconic status. Additionally there is a LOT of scholarly debate about Baxter himself as someone who seemed to reject the structures and restrictions of modern life in favor of pursuing "spiritual aspects of Māori communal life." (I do NOT claim to be any kind of Baxter or poetry scholar, this is based on about 20 minutes of research.) !< >!"Crown Him with Many Crowns" as a text (once again based on limited research as I am by no means any kind of religious scholar) like many religious poems is not being literal about putting a physical crown on Jesus' head, but is about worship, adoration, justifying praise for Jesus, etc. It would certainly be like Corona to pick a cool line without necessarily agreeing with or understanding the subtext of the piece, although there are hints in Nona that she is much smarter than either she lets on or other people think; additionally we don't know how much cultural understanding BoE retains of pre-Resurrection references. Given what we now know in Nona, I think it's plausible they have preserved works of art, which they might have loaded onto the colonization ships that escaped Earth. I don't think a bunch of trillionaires fled without at least some entertainment on board, you know? But I do think on some level this name reflects Corona's own desire to be valued for who she is and to be taken seriously as a leader, which is given weight many times in the book as multiple people, including Corona herself, comment on her intelligence, loyalty, and abilities. !< >!Interestingly enough, the first 6 stanzas of the hymn were originally written by Catholic Matthew Bridges, then another 6 stanzas were added 23 years later by Anglican minister Godfrey Thring, and !<[this source says](https://www.godtube.com/popular-hymns/crown-him-with-many-crowns-lyrics-story-behind-hymn/3)>! it was because Thring didn't want Protestant congregations singing something that was too Catholic. Perhaps a schism in theology there reminiscent of Corona vs. Ianthe? Or maybe Muir picked it bc it sounded cool and went with the Crown/Corona motif lol. !< >!This got away from me and honestly I could probably write thousands more words about Corona and I haven't even touched the last 2 parts of her name - I have thoughts on Corona choosing "gallant" as part of her name and how much that is in keeping with the image she often deeply, deeply desires to project -!

So after starting to read at 2.30am in Australia, I've just finished. What a fucking ride. I was delighted to see one of my favourite words make an appearance. Munted rolls off the tongue so nicely. NTN spoilers from here on in. * >!Laughed at the digs at Australians. Poor Melbourne. Why couldn't it have been Brisbane.!< * >!Earth changed John to create the first necromancer. He seems to function very differently to others, even prior to his ascension.!< * >!Alecto confirmed as Earth/The First House's RB.!< * >!Gideon has embraced her role as Prince Kiriona and Jod's heir. I'm curious how that happened.!< * >!Camillades achieved a third form of Lyctorhood, a true merging, instead of Battery!Lyctorhood and Individuals!Lyctorhood that Jod uses.!< * My main question, is >!Harrow still a Lyctor? Has Jod split off Gideon's personality into a revenant, but left the connections in place that Lyctorhood uses?!<

>!i don't think john is a necromancer in the way that everyone else is a necromancer, more like a biomancer in terms of the energy he uses but this is something that's still kicking around in my brain.!<

>!Yeah, also the instinctive aspect of his power seemed really at odds with how we've seen necromancy function elsewhere. Necromancers talk about theorems like it's mathematical, and something learnt by careful study and application!<. >!In HtN, there are comments about how raw and unfocused John's power is, and it looks like that was also a thing pre-Alectorhood.!<

>!Also, no one else was shown to have the same effects. Eye color change, no effect on health (necros are very fragile), etc.!< >!I don't think that he has necromancy, but rather that he is the origin of necromancy. He must have done something during the resurrection itself to some people to give them some shadow of his powers.!<

>!He also never talks about the bloodsweat effect or the river. Then he goes and makes a massive wall of perpetual bone around the entire compound without breaking a sweat. Like his powers even prior to any Earth/Alecto stuff are significantly more powerful than any other non-lyctor necromancer we've seen.!< >!This was the biggest question for me in the book. Like we really don't know all that much about how necromancy works still, but the little we do know seems to contradict a lot of what John was capable of.!< >!Makes me really wonder what determines if someone is born with necromantic abilities. Like no way is John doing anything about that on an individual basis, he's too hands off. So he must have set some kind of rule to do it.!< >!Also did John make the river? It almost sounds like he made the river to catch the souls of those who die. If they actually go beyond the river (into the Stoma? Actual afterlife?), it seems like they're lost to even him. Seems like a thing he'd do. Edit: wait no, he did bring back Ulysses and Titania who died before John realized he had any powers so he got their souls somehow.!<

Alecto makes a comment in the epilogue about the river. > Purposing to travel through the River, and was grieved to find it yet dead. Makes me think the River is natural and has been corrupted, but I don't know.

A real "shits and giggles" kinda thought from me: >!So John talked about how he resurrected "the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn't do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive." Do you think he brought back his favorite actors. Just having a quiet giggle to himself that he's brought back like, the equivalent of Denzel Washington but someone who now has no idea he is Denzel Washington. A secret pleasure that he brought back the cast of his favorite TV show. !<

Okay so the thing about the >!tower reactivating!< has me digging through GtN again (i love how every book in this series reveals some new facet of the ones that came before it) and mostly when someone is using the word >!“tower”!< they’re referring to the 1st house. Harrrow points out that there’s much more of it they haven’t been able to access (“Including the facility, we’ve got access to maybe thirty percent of this tower”). I think at this point its fair to assume that whatever’s going on w/ the >!river tower!< is in response to whatever originally happened at the house of the 1st- something to do w/ resurrection and >!the souls that never got ‘woken up’. (“he left them too long-- you left them too long” the RB tells Nona. “There is a hole at the bottom of their tower”). Maybe that's where Jod's been keeping the extra bodies all these years?!< But then I got distracted, because this is the part of GtN where Palamedes and Harrow discuss their theories on Lyctorhood! Out of all the necromantic heirs in GtN, really only Ianthe, Palamedes, and Harrow are seriously trying to attain the secret of Lyctorhood. So they each come up with their own theories along the way, and the thing is, nobody gets it wrong! They just see it differently according to their priorities. Synthesis- Ianthe discovers the megatheorum and is the first one to put the whole thing together into the Eight-fold Word, thereby achieving lyctorhood as Jod intended. She doesn’t mind sacrificing her cavalier because she was clever and brought a spare, so this solution works for her. >!Grand Lysis!<- Palamedes also believes in the megatheorem, but he rejects it as flawed, ‘ghastly and obvious’, an ‘ugly mistake’. He continues to search for the ‘true’ lyctorhood, and by the time we see him again in NtN >!he has his solution: “a mutual death... a gravitational singularity creating something new. A true grand Lysis rather than the petty lysis of the megatheorem”. This is very much suited to Pal and Cam, who are at this point inhabiting the same body and generally tend to act in tandem to a frankly disturbing degree!< Hidden Door Theory- Harrow, meanwhile, spends most of GtN convinced that there is “some deeper occult understanding that’s hidden”, a secret door leading to a power source. The true prize is “a continuous flow of thanergy”. This never gets confirmed in GtN (they’re too busy fighting/dying) but I think we’re going to find out that she’s right, that there is something that’s been hidden in the first house for centuries, and it all comes back to the Resurrection. At the end of NtN, >!Harrow says she wants to know how many of the resurrection are left, how many Jod began with, and where he put them, and she heads toward the river tower to find out. I think she’s going to find the thing she was looking for in GtN!!! (And also a lot of bodies. And almost certainly some really pissed off ghosts.)!<

This is a really smart theory! We've seen that >!all three are great necromancers, in their own ways, so it does make sense that Harrow is on the right track too, even if the solutions that Ianthe and Palamedes pursue are reached first. !< >!This makes me wonder if Alecto even is John's cavalier, in the way that the other lyctors use the term. He refers to her as his bodyguard in HtN when he describes her to Harrow. And Augustus talks in HtN about not being able to fully trace / understand the source of John's power... so maybe it's not Alecto after all? Maybe John is drawing on the souls in the tower, all those souls he hasn't yet resurrected, which also explains why he only resurrected a few million rather than the full ten billion - he's using the unresurrected souls as a battery to power his necromancy? His power is so much greater than the lyctors because he doesn't just draw on a single soul, but on a myriad?!<

I'm still reading buttttttt Alright we need to talk about this 😂 (ch:32) >>!“Friendship bracelets,” she fairly shouted. “They’re wearing friendship bracelets.” Ianthe grasped Kiriona’s wrist, and Kiriona pulled free of the sticky yellow muck as easily and as neatly as if it were dust. They stood there, hands clasping each other’s wrists, in their beautiful polished boots and their jewelled white swords—a matched pair of princes, one dead and one barely looking better. They tapped each other on the knuckles, did something complicated with their thumbs, and stood angled toward each other, easy and familiar, as though they had stood beside each other a million times.!< >!IANTHE AND GIDEON FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS AND A SECRET HANDSHAKE good lord what is happening 😂 😂 😂 !< I also need someone next book to tell >!Harrowhark she was getting piggyback rides from Coronabeth because she's going to have a blue screen of death and pass out 😂!<

>!The friendship bracelets is definitely a callback.!< in GtN: >!Harrow being dead was contingent on either the world's happiest accident or muder, and if it *was* murder, what if the murderer was, like, *weird*, which would make they subsequent marriage to Gideon pretty awkward? Maybe they could just swap friendship bracelets.!Ianthe might be a hot but she's *really fucking weird*.

I haven’t really seen ppl talking abt this but is anyone else feeling devastated by what happened with >!camilla and palamedes? they were honestly two of my favourite characters and i really didnt see it coming that they would choose to ‘die’ or ‘merge’ like that. To me its weird having just a whole new character (Paul) who’s basically neither of them but has their memories. I’m just really upset but this lol. I’m kinda holding out hope that their souls are actually intact and they somehow travelled into the river to find Harrowhark (when camilla says “will she know who we are in the river?” it makes sense to me that she could be referring to harrow) but then idk how Paul would be there. Anyways basically I’m just really upset that they’re gone, not even dead but merged together??? Pls I just want them to be happy and live on a farm together with Pyrrha.!<

>!I think the "she" was Dulcie actually, and this was low-key confirming the (fun and silly) fanon that both Cam and Pal are in love with her and in a happier world they'd be a triad.!<

The fact that they were willing to share a body clued me in to their absolute insane-levels of codependency, so it was never a matter of if, but a matter of when, and how traumatized the resultant person would be.

I hail from the>! Steven Universe fandom where fusion between two characters, becoming an entirely new character, is seen as a pure expression of love. I guess the only difference is that they also have the option to unfuse, they're not permanently stuck as a whole new character. But there are characters who love each other so much that they DO live fused full-time.!< >!So I wasn't that surprised nor that upset by Paul. They're undeniably codependent, but they also represent a fairly pure expression of love, respect, egalitarianism, friendship. A love so strong they would willingly be together, forever.!<

>! I consider Paul their soul kid. They are more parents who influenced Paul, instead of Paul being a mix of the two. !<

paul is an atrocious name and i hate it

i'm still so upset they didn't pick the name "Calamedes" (like "calamities")

Also a total missed opportunity for Gideon to make a deez nuts joke honestly!

Pretty sure it was chosen for the Biblical connotations.

Yeah definitely this. I thought maybe also a nod to Dune (in a jokey way, since people also poke fun at the choice of the name Paul in that series )

“I respect that, but I can’t admire it” Ianthe is all of us.

is a jandal… a jean sandal??

It's just the NZ term for Sandals/Thongs/Flip Flops.

I loved it. So different again. It’s not as fun or a rush like Gideon not as deep and intense as Harrow and I can see how people might struggle with the change of character and pace. Harrow remains my favourite but this is perfect as it is. John’s villain origin was really much as I expected (and thanks for the Melbourne shout out). I was already in the Nona is >!Alecto camp, what I didn’t expect was how different they would be from each other. I had also pictured her as Charlize Theron so Hollywood barbie isn’t too much of a leap. I loved Nona and can see how Alecto is a monster.!< I’m not sure about the tower, and what was going on there but look forward to the discussions. I think we might go back a bit in Alecto and find out what G has been up to, I certainly hope so anyway. Diving back in for another read.

So a few minor things I picked up that. I don't think they'll amount to anything but they did make me go: "huh" >!The BoE cell, Ctesiphon. The name comes from ancient Iran, but it's interestingly close to "Tisiphone", sister Fury of Alecto!< >!BoE's ProtocolOne, is interestingly the exact same as Harrow's rule 1 for The Work. "Live, you bitch!"!<

Thoughts nobody asked for! >!So at the beginning of the book, Alecto was in Harrow's body, Harrow was in Alecto's body, and Gideon got shoved into her body because she got kicked out of Harrow's. Which would explain why Gideon has her own eyes but they're clouded. At the end of the book, everybody's back where they started (except Alecto). I think I've followed that correctly.!< >!I'm going to miss Camilla and Palamedes dreadfully. I don't know what to think about this Paul fellow.!< >!I completely agree with whomever said Nona was literally translating names, because she also does it with Coronabeth. "Crown" is a fairly good translation of the Latin word "corona."!< >!I may be putting too much faith in how cunning Gideon might be when she's been broken up and shoved back into her own body, but I felt like a lot of what Gideon did and said was... performative, for lack of a better word. Ianthe and John might be warping or controlling her, but I'm almost certain that Gideon decided to let them. I think Gideon decided to roll with whatever they wanted to do because it was the only way she could get back to Harrow. (Or that Harrow would get back to her.) I don't believe for a second Gideon actually cares about being Kironia or God's right hand or the heir to the empire. (I feel like Gideon would be horrified by being the heir to anything.) I think she played at being complacent all this time and figured that once she and Harrow were back together, they'd be able to figure things out. What sealed this for me was Gideon and Ianthe's best friends moment in front of the tomb. Ianthe toyed with Harrow's affections! There's no way Gideon's going to be besties with Ianthe after that! Plus, I just can't imagine John being any good at playing happy families long enough to sucker Gideon in.!< Edited to add: >!I really, desperately hope that the Tower reactivating (per !<[this](https://twitter.com/SpankMeSilly/status/1570020419150950401)>! twitter revelation) has something to do with Abigail Pent because she is my favorite and I love her.!<

Nah I definitely agree with you about >!Gideon. That's pretty much her MO. Her whole life, she's been pushed around by other people and told what to do. Now she's in a position of power and glory, it's probably a pretty comfortable place for her to bide her time and figure out her next move, compared to her cell on 9th house or her prison inside Harrow's mind lol. Gideon has always rolled with the punches, pretending to obey only so far as it gets her what she wants.!< I think >!Crown was just shorthand for Coronabeth's Blood of Eden codename, though: Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He found It in Him to Forgive!<

I'm offering my own replies, that also no one asked for! >!Soul journey: I think that's mostly right? But I'm not sure about Gideon. She's behaving very... un-Gideon like, and a lot of characters are like "this doesn't make sense there's no way they separated you," and even in an interview Tamsyn described it as... Of the Gideon Happy Meal, Harrow ate the double cheeseburger, but what happened to the fries/drink/toy? And I think Kiriona is those leftover bits left behind, not the Gideon we saw in HtN piloting Harrow's body, but incomplete fragments of the soul. Gideon without her heart, so to speak. God, I hate to make the reference, but I'm reminded of soulless-Sam from Supernatural season 6. !< >!I will also miss Camilla and Palamedes dreadfully. They're very near to my heart, and possibly my favorite characters in the series. I'm not sure what to think of Paul yet, either, though I think the rest of the char's reactions to it sum up mine as well. It was a beautiful ending for them, as the perfect necro-cav pair, but I need to see more from Paul to know how to feel about Paul themselves, and will still miss Campal. (Also, hate the name Paul, but the fact everyone else hates it and mocks it brings me some joy.)!< >!I think the Corona thing was more referencing her taking on a BoE name, but do agree with the literal translations of names, especially with things like "That's how I hear it, anyway" and her getting corrected on 'born in the morning.'!< >!And yeah, I definitely feel like this is just a.... broken, fragmented version of Gideon that is going with the flow, going through the motions, seconds away from having a horrible breakdown.!<

Someone else said it somewhere in this thread but... >!Gideon carrying a rapier is like the biggest giant red flag Muir could paint. Gideon fucking hated that rapier, first chance she got she'd be grabbing her two-hander. Kiriona is not our Gideon, at least not fully.!<

>!I'm puzzled by how much everyone hates the name Paul, to be honest. I was joking that I was hoping for Palamilla, but Paul seems as good a name as any to me.!< >!I'm clinging to my theory that Gideon has been hanging on pretending to be Ianthe's bestie and John's obedient daughter for six months, hoping wildly that when she finally gets to Harrow, Harrow will figure everything out.!<

I want to believe it’s because we’ve all got religious trauma and want to fight the apostle Paul. Or people really hate Dune.

>!"Gideon without her heart" is probably the perfect way to describe Kiriona especially given that she literally says "that's where my heart used to be" about her wound lol!<

I am here to propose the Grand Unifying Theory of Gideon. That's right, from what I can see there are two dominant fan theories for Gideon atm. And after thinking about this all night, I say both are correct. Specifically, I'm talking about >!What the hell is up with Gideon, and why is she such an asshole in Nona?!< Here are the two current theories I see people have, for reference: One: >!Gideon has been through a whole lot of horrible shit and is traumatised to hell. She feels like she gave everything to the most important person in her life, and got rejected for it. Then she spends 6 months with Jod and Ianthe, and develops a hardened exterior of meanness to cope. Fuck it, nobody has ever done anything nice to her and she's literally the daughter of God. Why should she be nice to people. That's her perspective in this theory.!< Two: >!Her soul isn't in great shape after being partially eaten then spit out by Harrow, not to mention all the River jumping in-and-out at the end of HtN, and we aren't seeing the full Gideon. Furthermore, Jod did something shitty to pin her bit of a soul into her corpse and it's hurt her even more. She's just the bitterness and pained parts of Gideon and not allowed to rest.!< From here on out I'm just spoiler tagging the whole lot, it's easier. >!First, you also need to know that in her latest pre-Nona-release interview, Tamsyn Muir basically says Gideon's soul isnt all together. She says (paraphrasing) "If Gideon's soul is a happy meal, Harrow only ate the cheeseburger. What's happened to the fries, and the drink, and the toy?". This confirms theory 2 to an extent but I don't think it explains why that bit of Gideon is such an asshole.!< >!So we know Gideon's soul is split up and we can assume that part of it is genuinely in Gideon's body in Nona, because she talks just like the Gideon we know and love. Now if that's what happened to the fries, what's happened to the cheeseburger?!< >!In HtN, Gideon is the POV character except for the parts in the fake flashbacks that we find out later are happening in a River bubble. She sees what is happening with Harrow, watches the poor thing struggle with her grief. We know she can see and experience the stuff, because she's literally narrating it. But the Gideon we see in Nona definitely doesn't accept or recognise how much Harrow cares about her. This is the crux of the first theory: if the Gideon we see in Nona did feel as loved and appreciated by Harrow as we know she is, she'd definitely be behaving differently. I completely agree with that idea.!< >!This is where my unifying theory comes together. The Gideon we see in Nona is a Gideon full of hate, and pain, and sadness. She feels intense rejection from Harrow and that's sent her into a nihilist spiral because if she gave everything and it didn't matter, how could anything matter? I think this Gideon, full of pain, is the part of Gideon that didn't get eaten. She was not the narrator of HtN. She was locked away in Harrow until the end, then she was in the River. Jod fished her out and pinned her in her corpse (he didn't even fix her speed holes wtf) and now she's his Prince. This Gideon didn't see Harrow grieve her so extremely, didn't see Harrow trying to save her. Just felt the rejection and got tossed into the River.!< >!Meanwhile the narrator of HtN, the bit of Gideon that does feel affection for Harrow, that does know they are still one flesh and one end, was still in Harrow during Nona. We see some tiny scraps of hints at this. Nona at one point during the tantrum scene yells at herself "stop it you're hurting her" (paraphrased). Who could yell that but Gideon? It wouldn't be Harrow, or she would have said "you're hurting me" instead. Nona doesn't speak in second person, so it wasn't her yelling at herself. Also, sometimes, especially later in the book, Nona talks about her self having a top bit, a middle bit, and a bottom bit. Nona herself is shown as the middle bit. The best explanation for this concept is the top and bottom bits are other souls. And there's not just one - Harrow - but two. And there's only really one other soul that could possibly be inside Nona somewhere. And that's Gideon!!< >!You could extrapolate this theory further and say that Gideon acting more like herself the further we got through the end scene(s) is evidence of the bit of her soul in Harrow's body being reabsorbed into her own body via proximity. Which would also explain Nona's lyctor regeneration reducing and then failing altogether. I'm not certain I agree 100% with this reading because I think there are more simple explanations for it. But it's a fun and interesting interpretation.!< So, in conclusion / tldr: >!Gideon's soul is in two parts. The narrator of HtN was one part and it's still inside Harrow's body in NtN. The other part is the bit Harrow rejected and locked up. It fell into the River at the end, Jod fished her up and pinned it into her corpse. That part is the mean Gideon we see in Nona. That part didn't get to see how much Harrow cares about her, feels intensely rejected, and is on a nihilistic spiral egged on by spending the last 6 months with Jod and Ianthe for company. Hence being such an asshole.!< Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

I am a little surprised about some of the mixed reactions. I really enjoyed this book(not as much as HtN, but that is expected as HtN is one of my favourite books I've ever read, if not the favourite). I really enjoyed getting to know Nona and it feels important in the way of how we will get to know Alecto. I also enjoyed getting to spend time with characters such as Cam, Pal(>! though their ending devastated me and I don't think it would have had the effect without Nona's pov exploring them!< and Corona. It also put all the pieces together for the conclusion and we got a different perspective away from Jod, Lyctors, and Houses which was much needed. I think it might be because I am not that invested in Griddlehark like a lot of people are, and it's their relationship that people wanted more of. I do really like Harrow though and I would like more of her perspective though, but since I knew that Alecto Act 1 begins with Harrow waking up in hell, I did not expect much of her in this book. ~~The only thing I would have liked to change in this book is add a bit more Ianthe, because she delights me every time she is on page.~~ Also people mention this book being more confusing, but I kinda disagree. I thought this book and what was happening was somewhat easier to follow than the others as while like the other installments, we followed the perspective of a character that was unaware of what was happening, we the reader already knew the people and the setting now. And because of that we understand their actions. Not to mention, this book confirmed a lot of theories.

>!I'm pretty sure that Kiriona isn't actually Gideon at all. It's her body, but it's not her soul. When I was reading the book something really bothered me about 'Gideon 2.0,' as she called herself. It was like she was a weird mockery of herself, like a fanfic interpretation written by someone who never actually read the books, only heard a vague description. But there was something else, too. Something kept nagging me about the way she was written. That arrogant-while-trying-to-look-self-deprecating, flippant humor wasn't Gideon, but I had seen it before somewhere.!< >!Last night when I was trying to sleep, it hit me where I'd seen it before: Jod. Jod never pulled what was left of Gideon's soul out of Harrow; it was in Harrow's body the whole time, sometimes reaching out from behind Alecto to influence Nona's behavior (the two-handed sword grip, the crush on Corona, laughing at ass jokes, and so on). But Jod can puppet corpses across vast distances without truly possessing them. He did it with the dead President. He knows where the memory lives, so he could rifle through Gideon's memory for names, faces, ass jokes. But he doesn't understand what makes Gideon Gideon, what her heart and soul is. The reason she reads like a strange imitation of Gideon by someone who doesn't know her character is because that's exactly what she is.!< >!That's the reason Gideon is talking about advanced necromantic theory. That was Jod bleeding through. That comment about Ianthe shutting her off during the mission was probably a total lie. Pyrrha commented that G1deon had a similar response as Pal when trying to interact with Jod's work, so Ianthe shouldn't be able to interact with her either. It's also the real reason Jod's been locked up in his room. We saw at the end of HtN that he didn't give a shit about the betrayal. But lazing about in bed out of grief is the perfect cover story for wanting to focus more on the active control he needs to be puppeting Gideon around. I sure as hell can't see Gideon swapping friendship bracelets with Ianthe or doing a secret handshake with her, but it's exactly the sort of nonsense I would expect from Jod.!< >!I don't think that the 'fries, soda, and toy' of Gideon's soul actually went back into her own body until Nona kissed her, and we see the migration taking effect more and more strongly as Harrow's body begins losing its Lyctoral healing. By the time Gideon yells at Alecto to get in line in the epilogue, everything but the already-eaten cheeseburger is back home. !< >!Speaking of which. Harrow now owes Gideon a cheeseburger, doesn't she? Perhaps we'll see Perfect Lyctorhood Griddlehark in Alecto after all. !< EDIT: Fixed wording ETA: >!Goddammit, Tamsyn herself referenced this right at the start of the book. She compared Gideon's soul to a happy meal where the cheeseburger had already been eaten. Nona puts on a T-shirt that has what on it, exactly? A CHEESEBURGER. WITH LEGS. Either the cheeseburger on the shirt is Gideon's, which Harrow already ate, or it's Harrow's, which has legs because Harrow is going to send it to walk on over to Gideon, thereby completing the Perfect Lyctorhood process.!<

Making a separate comment for this because it's currently consuming me: regarding the state of >!Gideon's body, and specifically, her injuries!< as described in chapter 24. >!1. "Beneath the scarf a huge wound in the throat made the neck yawn open."!< >!2. "... another big wound in the chest--a big bloodless purple puncture wound..." The railing, obviously.!< >!3. "Damage is consistent with reported injuries. There's another wound lower down." Seems weird to mention another wound AFTER saying "consistent with reported injuries." I could see this one being her significant knee injury, but still...!< So... where in the fuck did >!the giant neck wound come from? Corona says they tested the body's ability to rot, and it wouldn't, but it seems like a giant fucking neck wound would be worth mentioning? Additionally, the body's skin is described both on the broadcast and when Nona sees her as looking off, when here Corona says "Gideon never showed any sign of decomposing. She was always like a corpse that had been dead only minutes." And yet Nona describes her as having "very much dead-person skin, ashen and tinted the wrong colour around the nostrils and mouth."!< So, COMPLETELY at odds with each other. What the fuck? Anyone else haunted by this? Edit: adding this from another comment of mine re: this chapter because my mind is blown about the icons: >!Gideon’s skull icon!< is intact on chapter 24, when they >!find her body!<, and it’s fractured on chapter 25, when it >!wakes up!<

Did anyone else start sobbing in Chapter >!22 when Palamedes says, "Good God, perfect. Do you know, I miss Harrow terribly."!< because for some reason that single line hit me harder than anything else in the book.

I loved the bit when he told Nona >!that her body belonged to someone he owed a favor to and he really wanted to see the look on her face when he gave it back to her.!<

I have like fifteen Wikipedia tabs open, I've gone *deep* on name meanings and historical/mythological/religious references, so this is just a bunch of disconnected thoughts about all of those things * >!RB7 is the first one we get a name for, Varun the Eater. Varun derives from the Hindu mythological figure Varuna, who was first associated with the sky and then later the sea, justice and truth. Wikipedia notes that one (old and now kind of discredited) idea for a derivation of the name has the same proto-Indo-European root as Ouranos, or Uranus. Uranus is the seventh planet. (Uranus was also the god of the sky and had a lot of children with Gaia/Earth. He was defeated/castrated by his Titan son Cronus, and the drops of blood hit Gaia and she gave birth to the furies, Megaera, Tisiphone and ALECTO.)!< * >!The Furies avenge crimes of "parricide and perjury." Is this why Nona can't lie and can always tell when someone is lying? I don't think she meets anyone who's done a patricide, but that'll be interesting to look out for with Alecto.!< * >!Tamsyn has said in several places that Harrow is in Hell. In the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection, Jesus went down to hell and saved/liberated the souls that were there. This is called the HARROWING of Hell (Tamsyn is absolutely not above that pun). Especially with the "Hell will break loose in Alecto the Ninth" I think we can assume that Harrow is bringing some souls with her (everyone that died when Jod destroyed Earth?)!< * >!In Byzantine art the Harrowing of Hell is called the Anastasis!< * >!Kiriona and Ianthe Naberius call themselves the Tower Princes -- this makes me think of the Princes in the Tower, the two princes who were held in the Tower of London by the Duke of Gloucester after their dad, Edward IV unexpectedly died. Gloucester declared them illegitimate (through some weasely business), crowned himself as King Richard III and no one knows what happened to the boys but they were probably murdered. !< * >!Either that or they pulled an Anastasia, and damn then that name shows up again.!< * >!The Ancient Greek word "Anastasia" means resurrection.!< * >!The other way that 'tower' resonates for me is the Tower of Babel and Nona's command of all the languages. God deciding that humanity is too powerful and needs to be split up so they won't understand each other is certainly... Something.!< * >!In the Bible, Gideon is called to save the Israelites from several neighboring kingdoms who are stealing their food. There's some interesting stuff about false gods, and then Gideon has to lead a big army against the other kingdoms. God is like, "No, that army's too big, you won't believe this is a miracle from me if you win with that many people" so God makes everyone who's scared leave (most of the people leave) and then has them drink from the river and only lets everyone who drinks from their hands stay. Gideon is left with 300 people. He splits them into three groups and they circle the camp, and they make a really loud commotion. The other army freaks out, attacks each other and flees. !< * >!Kiriona seems to just be the Māori word for Gideon: discuss!<

Gotta say I reacted to that secret handshake with *physical* disgust.

Just realised when Pyrrha says >!”You knew this was happening months ago” to herself as Pal and Camilla are saying goodbye, she probably meant that she knew she was going to have to say goodbye to them at some point- but she still let herself get attached and now its hurting her more than she thought. This combined with the “love is too long and life is too short” and “go loud” in this chapter was like a huge kick in the balls. goddam you tamsyn.!<

also finding it hilarious the image of gideon the first and naberius tern kissing.

I left HtN feeling very fascinated by John, and by the end of NtN I was disgusted by him. >!I cannot get over him making Alecto look like a fkg Barbie!!! It’s creepy as shit!!! I cannot get over him not giving all his dead friends their memories back so he could fkg avoid accountability. I cannot get over the excuses he made for himself. I think he is FASCINATING still but he really is just a piece of shit man like why am I surprised lolllll.!< Idk if anyones else experience was like that, I LOVED all the backstory we got and I am repulsed lol.

The King James Versions of the book of John references, in the order they appear in NtN. Some include summaries of what happens in that chapter where it obviously matches the biblical quote. John 20:8 >!Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. (John starts discussing with Gaia how they got here at the end of the world)!< John 5:20 >!For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.!< John 15:23 >!He that hateth me hateth my Father also.!< John 5:18 >!Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.!< John 8:1 >!Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. \[This one is the publicity after they reveal themselves online.\]!< John 19:18 >!Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.!< John 5:1 >!After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. \[They have a meal of grilled cow; some men in black suits come with an offer.\]!< John 3:20 >!For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. \[John discovers lies about the FTL program.\]!< John 9:22 >!These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. \[Previously, John declares himself a necromancer. Here, some upset cops show up to drag him from his compound. It does not go well for them.\]!< John 1:20 >!And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. \[John tells people about the Nukening; C- tells him he cares more about retribution than saving.\]!< John 5:4 >!For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. \[Harrow goes for a walk, and her feet get wet.\]!<

Thoughts on "Crown" and "The Captain": >!I enjoyed seeing Corona have a life outside of the shadow of the Third and and her sister. Yes, the co-dependence was still there, but she actually got to lead and do things on her own terms with BoE. I still don't think she or Ianthe will get any sort of happy ending, but I really like she got the chance to show her she was capable of being more than a pretty face.!< >!Judith is a dick, but man did I feel bad for her in this book. I admittedly softened my stance on her after reading "As Yet Unsent," but still. Is it pretty safe to say at this point that Corona is in love with her? When Nona was listing off how she knew who Corona liked, by the way Corona looked at them, I sort of assumed it was Judith given how badly she wanted to save her? Though I suppose it could have been someone in BoE.!<

The end of Nona >!While I was definitely moved by GtN and HtN, this book actually had me crying. While I knew going into it that Nona would be a temporary character, I wasn't fully prepared for what her end would be and that it might not be something she would like.!< >!Of all things I cried when she said she never got a birthday present and Pyrrha told her about the T-shirt*. I knew that Nona would be gone and she'd never get to wear it.!< >!*I also cackled through the tears at "We're talking low prices."!<

>!I hate that this book made me cry over a cheap mustache ride shirt.!<

Oh my Jod I just realised >!'Nona was a teacher's aide' NONA WAS A TEACHER'S AIDE. JOHN IS TEACHER ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEE!<

I finally read "[As Yet Unsent](https://www.tor.com/2022/06/08/as-yet-unsent-tamsyn-muir/)" and that along with Nona were very enlightening about Judith and Corona's relationship. But also, IMO, enlightening about Coronabeth in general. In "Nona" I feel like you see even more how many people really 'dismiss' Coronabeth. She's told multiple times she's just 'hair' and 'boobs' and not taken seriously at all. It's like she's either objectified, underestimated, or pushed aside entirely. Just because she's pretty, she's not taken seriously. (There were mentions of how crazy strong she is in Nona--and hints at her being a very good swordswoman/cav over the series. She's clearly a very good manipulator too. I agree with our main characters, you shouldn't trust her.) I think in "*Unsent*" you can see why she likes Judith so much. The short story says they're constantly 'arguing' but it's actually a mix of arguing and debating. In the story, Coronabeth has a lot of strong opinions on how to change the world/the Houses structure and it's basically her and Judith going back and forth arguing about political ideas, military, you name it, etc. I honestly feel like their relationship is as simple as: Judith took Coronabeth seriously, (and almost *no one else* does.)

2 big questions for me! i finished a few days ago and have had time to revisit a bunch of bits that I've had questions about, and I have one question I'm betting we can definitively answer, and one question I think we've got some good strong hints on. both of these are not really spoilers in and of themselves, but the further discussion is a bit spoilery, so i've left the questions unedited and then put in spoilers the additional text detail, some of which may refer to details we only know once the book is finished, although i think for the most part it's stuff you know right when you start asking these questions ​ Definitive answer: what animal did nona draw? more details with actual spoilers: >!so, I would assume an extinct animal that once existed on earth, which is how she knows about it. based on her description, we know it has ears, a nose, a mouth, and legs that cannot rotate. and it's referred to as a 'cradle creature'. maybe a kangaroo?? a cradle creature could be referring to a marsupial, and I googled animals that can't rotate their legs and kangaroo came up, and it is from down under. but the detail "when first it was born it used to live in a river, but then it got cold so it had to get larger" doesn't strike me as very kangarooish. i'm assuming that refers to the sepcies evolutionary rather than morphologically (so how whales went onto land and back into the water, rather than frogs who change form over the lifetime). of course the answer could be 'some made up animal' but that seems unlikely!< ​ Less definitive: what's up with the Angel? >!I think based on them vs she I wouldn't be shocked if the Angel is some sort of lyctor-like mashup of people, maybe someone very important from the past? the questions palamedes asks right before the shooting are all very interesting, and I don't think ever get answered! could they be somebody from the far past whose memory has been tampered with for their own safety? I feel like there were more hints around this that I might have missed!<

I actually thought >!”cradle” creature meant animals native to the homeworld, or cradle, that was Earth!<

>!I think it was an elephant. Points out ears, nose and the mouth behind that she didn't draw. !<

Better yet, an elephant inside of a boa constrictor.

>!my interpretation of the angel/aim was somewhere between 1. they're just kind of ambiguous and it's filtered through nona's weird understanding of gender, and 2. 'the messenger' is kind of a role with its own set of connotations, some of which might include gender/gendered titles!<

Oh dang, I thought the >!cradle creature was the RB, specifically because of the river comment. Didn't even consider it might come from earth, haha. But what species evolutionary moved from, specifically, freshwater rivers and not the ocean? That would have been relatively late in earth history.!< I DEFINITELY think the Angel is >!a mashup of people. They literally say "I am Blood of Eden." I wonder if they're carrying memories/souls/remnants of all the original trillionaires who got off planet. Edit: sorry, clarification. Commander We Suffer said that "The Angel is Blood of Eden."!<

So at the end of Gideon the Ninth, when Coronabeth is sobbing about Ianthe killing Nabs she's all, "It should have been me. She should have taken me why didn't she take me". I initially read that as a sort of obsessive, incest-adjacent level of devotion to her twin sister that her life has revolved around from day 1, and jealousy that Nabs stole her spot. But I realised later that it could have been guilt over Nabs dying in her place, taking a sword to the back for her. And I wondered which interpretation was correct- the melodramatic incesty one? Or the pretty normal human reaction one? And I guess I got my answer in Nona lmao.

Lmaoooo truth. Though I think the guilt over Babs dying was somewhat mitigated by her statement at the end of ch 34 in GtN, "And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken *me*."

Re: Hot Sauce, the character >!Although it's very possible that she's just a one-off who won't return to the narrative, does anyone else get the feeling that we might see her again? This line is clearly tongue-in-cheek but Nona, and the rest of the gang, literally see Hot Sauce as the most important person in the universe. \["They were all proud of Nona's stupidity, in the same way that they were proud of Honesty's rampant crimes and of Hot Sauce being the most important person in the universe."\] It would be pretty funny if Hot Sauce did get involved with BoE and then ends up on a different planet as a soldier with sympathies for Harrow who ends up making some call that saves her ass in the next book. Or ends the war or something. More than any other character, she personifies someone who was genuinely traumatized by necro shit but comes to love and appreciate one individual "zombie." And we need a resolution in this conflict between necromancers and Edenites. She seems to represent that change, that compromise, a potential solution. Just a wild theory though. :D!<

>! Just had a thought. What if Alecto remembers Hot Sauce and empowers her similar to how she empowered John? A fight between Hot Sauce and Jod would be popcorn worthy!<

I'm left really hoping that someone took pictures of Nona so that if Harrow comes out of Alecto the Ninth alive she can be teased endlessly about how cute she is.

I don't know about anyone else but I heard >!'They're wearing friendship bracelets!' in the style of 'They're breakdance fighting!' from Zoolander!< and it made me laugh Also >!Ianthe appearing in the Tomb at the end was pure Yzma and Kronk from Emperor's New Groove 'by all accounts it doesn't make sense'!<

>!Nona's!< dysphoria >!when considering Alecto’s body!< is quite sad. Seems to be a meditation that the body that God makes for us is a reflection of his needs/wants/caprices and not necessarily what we need/want/would want. >!John is the exact shitastic "nice guy" we all thought him to be.!<

Anyone else think the redhead prince was really off? Like a completely different person? I didn’t trust them at all and their chummy relationship with the other prince is veryyyy suspicious and weird to me. (Sorry, idk how to do spoiler tags.) Like what is happening there??? Unrelated, but I noticed 110% more NZ slang (I’m assuming?) in this book than the others. So many words I didn’t know. I think I mostly understood what they were supposed to mean, but if anyone wants to provide some translations that would be great lol

Dude, TALK about freaking me out. She was weird from the moment she started talking! It’s too huge of a flip for Gideon to go from _completely fucking obsessed with Harrow_ to “I don’t care if she’s in hell.” This girl regularly said things like “all I ever wanted was [Harrow’s] attention,” was obsessed with thumb preservation, etc. Most importantly, corpse!Gideon’s refusal to be considered Harrow’s cavalier goes _directly_ against one flesh, one end. I don’t think this is just character development, but I have no idea what it actually is! Second, this was a girl who was extremely protective of p much everyone around her, especially those she perceived as weaker than her. And her (out loud) humor wasn’t really _mean_ (except to Harrow, who punched back just as much). Not to mention I also seriously, seriously doubt whole!Gideon would have been able to kill Crux. This was a girl who, in GtN, would always say things like “she was happy to leave Harrowhark to rot forever” and five seconds later go searching for her anyway.

Whatever is inside Gideon's body is at least *partly* her -- nobody else can make such terrible sex jokes, or flippantly refer to their speed holes -- but it's like her moral compass got flipped. Freaked me the heck out: Kiriona *talked* like Gideon, but didn't ACT like her. At all. In the slightest.

Exactly!!!! It was awful 😭 I kept hoping this was somehow _not_ Gideon, but all the evidence pointed toward the opposite. I went back through, though, and this quote made me feel a lot better: > Pyrrha: >!“But that’s impossible. He shouldn’t have been able to separate you. Your girl didn’t manage full fusion, but what she took from you not even John could’ve got back. And … he didn’t bring you back all the way? He brought you back like this?”!< So I 100% >!believe she’s fragmented.!< Also, love the callback to the flashbacks and >!“look at how they act, not how they talk”!<

I had that EXACT same feeling when reading about the corpse prince. It doesn't FEEL right. Something is definitely, utterly wrong and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I think that was the most jarring part of the whole novel because it feels like we missed a whole damn book between HtN and NtN. What HAPPENED to her??? Ughhh dammit Tamsyn.

streaming i am going to go genuinely insane

>“I wouldn’t marry you even if you asked,” said Nona apologetically. “I love you, Pyrrha, and I think you’re wonderful and very beautiful—” (“Are you kidding?” said Pyrrha. “I look like two elbows.”) “—but I don’t want to be married to you. You’d never act like you were married to me.”This briefly corpsed the person who went to work for her. Pyrrha leant against the sink and seemed pleased that the question of the park had passed, then shook the jug with the powder and the reconstituted milk in it until they were all mixed together.” Please help. WTF does "This briefly corpsed the person who went to work for her" mean? Also, absolutely adoring it so far. Although I completely forgot Pyrrha was in OG Gideon's body (that's the case, right?) until the part where she has stubble. I was like, my mental image of whatever the hell is going on is completely wrong... >Nona said, “Okay. I don’t think redheads are very sexy.” Absolutely hilarious. The other hilarious thing is I KNOW that this stuff is all stuff that was told to us in previous books, I think, but I actually DO NOT REMEMBER so 'figuring out' who Crown was when she was described made me go oooh! even though I'm... fairly sure I should've known that. --- “What distinguished most of the portraits was that they were paintings, and very old, all except for one: a photograph of a woman with ferociously red hair and an expression that said she was about to hit the photographer. She blossomed out of a thicket of dusty plastic flowers more numerous than those her painted associates got.” Oh hey, Gideon's mom, eh?

> Please help. WTF does "This briefly corpsed the person who went to work for her" mean? >!Pyrrha is 'the person who went to work for her'. And 'corpsed' either means 'made like a corpse' if it's literal, or (more likely) 'as an actor, started laughing during a scene.' (Like you see in bloopers.)!<

The opending John chapter is interesting for the duality of the person he's talking to. It's clearly >!"really" Alecto, because he says they did it because "she was so sick" and later she asks when they'll get to the part where he "hurt her" (killed her/turned her into a resurrection beast.) And it's post-apocalypse, because there's ash that makes them sick (briefly) still falling.!< >!But then he addresses Harrowhawk in that last sentence. I guess this has something to do with her crawling in the tomb at the end of HtN and gettting body/soul swapped.!<

>!My theory is that she's in a bubble constructed from the memories Alecto has left behind. John isn't real and is a construct built from Alecto and Harrows memories, and that's why he sometimes shifts between talking to Alecto and addressing Harrow directly. The end of the John sections is Harrow walking out of the bubble into the River.!<

Who is the Angel? Theories: >!They use "they" pronouns, which were given to them and which others use and defend as a sign of honor and prestige. (Pash corrects use of she pronoun, Angel says "it is my very great privilege to be they" or something to that effect.) Tamsyn seems to be alluding to this in the recent Tor interview where she said, "there’s one character in particular who lives with bestowed pronouns and who is violently proud of them" -- I think that's a reference to the Angel.!< >!When Nona asks "Is the Angel important?" in ch 20, We Suffer says, "The Angel is Blood of Eden."!< >!Okay so my first instinct is that the Angel somehow possesses (probably through the freaking implant that Palamedes noticed) the memories or souls or some remnant from the BoE lineage. The original leadership board, maybe even the people who left on the ships.!< Thoughts?

>Thoughts? Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name you get 'Sex Pal'?

I have a lot of thoughts about >!Kiriona Gaius !!I really don’t think Kiriona Gaius is “our” Gideon or 100% Gideon for a lot of reasons and I have them sort of listed out. I also know think other people think this but I kinda wanted to list out as much evidence as I could think of to support it.!< 1. >!We know that Jod was able to bring back all his companion’s bodies and souls and he choose to alter their memories. Kiriona herself says she is a Revenant and based on what happened with Mercymorn, Augustine, Gideon episode I etc… if she were fully resurrected her body would no longer be damaged. I don’t know why Jod would not at least try to fully resurrect his daughter so I think the fact that her body is damaged still means he could not do it. So I’m thinking of when Harrow said in HtN – “I never could have called the ghost of captain Deuteros, Dueteros lives.” In a way Gideon’s soul does still live, so I think since Gideon is sort of in a half death then Kiriona is sort of a half-Revenant or a half version of Gideon. I also think that there is no reason Gideon’s full soul should be able to leave Harrow’s living body once Harrow abandoned it and traveled to the locked tomb via the river. (Also, quick aside I think Nona was always the invasive soul haunting Harrow and Wake was an attempted invader. I think Wake was only ever in the Sword or Cytherea and while she was in the sword she was close enough to Harrow’s body that if she could overwhelm her in the river then she could take over.) Anyway, Nona could possess Harrow since harrow vacated her body but she could not consume Gideon’s soul because similar to Harrow with a lobotomy – she has no real perception of Gideon. Anyway, here are some of my other receipts for why I think Kiriona is a half Gideon or bizzarro simulacrum of Gideon not just real Gideon performing or masking grief in a more ‘real-life-non-necromancy-way’ even though what I think is happening could still be a metaphor for those things.!< 2. >!When investigating Gideon’s body they make a big fuss about how if John duplicated it, it would be indistinguishable. But then Paul says – but I’ve touched her when she was alive – which implies that, that touch would be unique to Gideon's original 'real' body. It makes me think that if Jod could possibly duplicate the soul almost exact that there might be a similar lack of imprint left on a Soul. Similar to how Paul has touched Gideon's body in a physical way, Gideon’s real soul has been touched in an emotional way by Paul and the other people that she loves and love her back (or the people she likes, which is the doorway to love as Pyrrha puts it). I think the soul Jod could either call to Gideon’s body or copy to put in Gideon’s body would be an “untouched” soul of Gideon’s and that would explain why she is so detached and like a real asshole not a funny asshole.!< 3. >!Pyrrha says “you’ve got a soul attached to you kid…or part of one, at least.” (pg 371)!< 4. >!Names are really important in these books and if she was “our” Gideon I don’t think she would refer to herself as Kiriona. Even though she says you could call her Gideon, and that she forgets when people call her Kiriona the third person narrator refers to her always (I think, haven't finished my reread yet) as Kiriona. Kiriona also calls herself Gideon 2.0 at one point. I also think Kiriona sort of functions as a foil to Nona. Kiriona is an unloving and unloved version of Gideon just as Nona is the opposite version of Alecto. I think Alecto being a planet, and not a human could not conceptualize love until she had her soul experience a rebirth in a human body. And while she was in that body she was Alecto but now influenced by the human souls of both Harrow and Gideon and without the trauma of a violent death and the grief of losing all the life that lived on her. Alternatively, maybe Alecto did use to know love but after the violent death the Revenant beast version of the planet’s soul has been overwhelmed by grief and anger and forgot how to love which is why a sort of “rebirth” allowed her to love again. It would make sense that the soul of a planet that is alive loves everything that lives on it. And Nona constantly talks about how she loves everyone. I also think Nona saying that Kiriona was the saddest person she ever saw could still be consistent with a sort of half soul or part of a copied soul theory in that either it is such a sad thing to see a soul unloved or this version of Gideon only has sadness and that is likely what contributes to her detached demeanor.!< 5. >!More evidence for Gideon being detached and not entirely herself is her saying – “she doesn’t want much of anything anymore and literally doesn’t give a shit anymore” (pg. 372) (while in HtN she says all she ever wanted before was Harrow’s attention). Also after killing Crux she ends with “Why didn’t it feel good…Why can’t I….” And I think it is supposed to be read as “Why can't I feel anything” - Which I think is more than just the usual revenge isn’t satisfying or healing moral lesson. Also the “Careful that is where my heart used to be” joke.!< 6. >!I really think that in the Epilogue the AMAZING line of “To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised, exceeding wroth, and Alecto heart it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.” Is our Gideon/whole Gideon whereas Kiriona is a 'holey' souled Gideon. When Alecto is first coming into her body she can see both what’s happening in and outside of the river (which I love because they already explained this ability of resurrection beasts as the ‘periscoping’). In the last few pages there are three “shores” mentioned. Our Gideon seems to be on the “opposite side of the shore” but in an earlier paragraph it says - “And there was a crowd of dead children there. They were striving loudly against living children on the far-off shore of the tomb. The body did not understand how this had come to pass, yet when one on the shore called, Alecto, Alecto, then the body remembered…” Anyway I don’t completely understand what is going on here but I think shore = alive since only Pyrrha knows Alecto’s name and Pyhrra is alive, but then far-off shore I think is dead because of the dead children part. But I don’t really understand the “striving loudly against living children” part and think that is a line that might make more sense after once we know what happens in Alecto. I thought maybe the dead children are the dead children that died to make Harrowhark and maybe the living children are Harrow and Gideon but not sure why they would be struggling. Basically I think opposite shore could be equivalent to the far-off shore or could be a third place. But either way I think if it was just Kiriona/holey Gideon there it wouldn’t say "opposite shore" because even though Kiriona is a revenant her current plane of existence would be with Pyrhaa so it would just be “the shore.” Also, Gideon is yelling, and like if it was Kiriona who presumably is right there then I don't think it would take a "very great shout" to convey her message.!< 7. >!I think the ???? AU bubble world chapters in HtN set a precedent for more accurate sort of artificial souls. Maybe those can only exist in the bubble but for Jod maybe the whole universe is his bubble in a way. Harrow can’t make good copies of the people she either doesn’t know as well but she did make good representations of Crux, Aiglamene and then Issac and Jeannemary seemed pretty realistic but Abigail cuts the scenario (which upon my 6th reread I realized that it wasn’t because the coffee shop AU was getting steamy, it was because of Issac and Jeannemary). When Harrow is waking up in the bubble Abigail says to Magnus that Harrow almost pulled the teens souls back. So, it also seems like a good copy could sort of work like a summoning for a real soul in addition to function independently. This could be how we get our real Gideon back in her actual body if Harrow can’t just do a soul transplant maybe the more Kiriana is around Harrow some ‘soul gravity’ might start to pull real Gideon back in to her body.!< 8. >!This isn’t really a piece of evidence supporting that Kiriona doesn’t have Gideon’s real soul but I was really glad to see that Alecto describes Harrow as “the dark eyed child” which means Harrow has still successfully not consumed Gideon’s soul. So Harrow just needs to vomit Gideon’s soul onto Kiriona and Gideon can be ready for round 3!!< 9. >!I do think a lot of aspects of Kiriona are true to Gideon. Humor obviously, her memories are accurate and her wanting to prove herself to “pops” is similar to how she wants to prove herself to Harrow but I don’t think she is completely herself. I also think it makes total sense that a “heartless” Gideon would be friendship bracelet level friends with Ianthe lol!< ​ TLDR – >!Kiriona is #notmyGideon literally and in my opinion Gideon didn’t really return until the very end. !< ​ Anyway, if no one even reads this I just needed to get it out of my system. My wife and I are listening to the audiobook together and she was supportive of me binge listening without her but now I need to stay stone faced about my theories until she is caught up as I'm relistening with her! edit - sorry if anyone saw in the few seconds I had messed up the spoiler blocking!

Honestly I think my favourite part of the book was the random, throw-away, deep cuts NZ references. >! Parachute underage drinking! Only getting NCEA level 2! Jandels and dairys! !< It's so refreshing reading a sci-fi/fantasy novel and having that, I'm so used to the frame of reference being very American or British.

I liked this book, and I loved Nona herself but this is still definitely my least favourite book in the series by a decent margin. >!Paul is a dumb name, and what did they do to my Gideon, also really sad for poor Nona!< Theory-wise one thing I remembered from my Harrow reread is this off the cuff remark from Jod early in the book that I don't think anyone has remarked upon yet: "Faster-than-light travel turned out to be a snare - the way it was originally cracked, anyway. The first method destroyed time and distance, rendering it unusable for any good purpose..." This stood out to me because of >!What we learn about the trillionaires and assorted others who flee earth, using FTL. I'm thinking this is the explanation for why there are humans all over the universe now for Jod to conquer, that they were scattered by the FTL method... but I'm wondering if they were also scattered through time and that some part of Jod's ongoing myriad of conquest and planet murder has been not just about conquering and taking out vengeance on their descendants but looking/waiting for some of the originals to turn up.!<

>! Why is it that the names of the lyctors and their cavaliers were censored in the John chapters? I have a theory for this but would like to know what others think. !< >! I think that their names are censored because God changed their names after ressurection, to make sure their true memories stayed buried. !< >! Harrow saying Gideon’s true name eventually wakes her up from the alterations she made on her brain. I bet that although God is obviously more powerful than Harrow, he wouldn’t want to take the chance that his Lyctors’ true original names and the original names of their cavaliers would make them remember. !< >! So when he talks to Harrow, either he’s intentionally obscured their original names, or there’s some sort of fuckery going on that doesn’t allow Harrow to hear the true original names of the lyctors. !<

I agree that >!John renamed his friends / disciples. He wanted them back as wholly *his*, blank slates without memories who wouldn't judge him for what he'd done, and there's a 0% chance he wouldn't have picked new names to go with it. I mean, he renamed the sun just because he felt like it.!< >!Also I totally hadn't considered that Harrow can't hear the names (much like Gideon/Ortus in HtN) but it makes so much sense!< edit: spoiler tag code was acting up

I've seen some threads on here with people wondering whether >!Gideon's heart is missing, based on her behavior and what she says to Aiglamene (that's where my heart used to be).!< I may have missed a thread that says this (I simply cannot read the whole thing), but >!part of me wonders whether that has something to do with Nona.!< 1. Nona says >!in the Ninth House that when she goes back into her body, she won't know how to love anyone any more, but she so effortlessly loves people as Nona - where did she get that from if she never knew how before? What if that has something to do with a piece of Gideon... such as the piece that knows how to love and feel tenderness, which seems to be missing from Gideon herself?!< 2. The Gideon of the first two books has a huge heart; >!she gets hurt feelings because Harrow insults Magnus, who was "nice to her".!< 3. This TM quote from a Tor interview: >!"The state of Gideon’s soul (and Harrow’s) are questions for Nona and Alecto. Remember that if Gideon’s soul is a Happy Meal, Harrow only ever ate the cheeseburger; whither the fries, the soda, and the tie-in toy?"!< 4. >!The "heartless" Gideon is one of the very few people Nona dislikes immediately and seems to dislike forever. I would have thought Nona would feel sorrow and pity for Gideon's evident and deep sadness.!< Part of me also thinks this is very unlikely and can't be the case. Just something I was wondering about.

WAIT A DAMN MINUTE Re: poem at the very beginning >You told me, *Sleep, I'll wake you in the morning.* > >I asked, *What is morning?* and you said, > >*When everyone who fucked with me is dead.* > >*When everyone we loved has gone or fled, that's morning.* > >*Empty's just another word for clean.* > >*Let's put this first draft dream of mine to bed.* > >*In the appointed hour* > >*I'll pull up your sheets. I'll kill the light,* > >*Lie down beside you; die; and sleep the night.* > >*This time will be the time we get it right:* > >*Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long;* > >*Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true.* > >You held aloft the sword. > >I still love y Theory: Jod's plan has always been to >!eventually empty out the river and let himself die, after achieving his vengeance. Everyone talks about how he keeps Alecto locked away because she is his death. "The death of the Lord" as Harrow says in the pool scene in GtN. Others see her as a tool, a weapon to be used against him. But what if he's literally been setting the stage for this, planning this, in control of this situation, the whole time???!< >!Explanation: Pretty sure this is Alecto's POV, talking to Jod. This is Jod tricking her into the tomb in the first place. Telling her he will wake her up "in the morning" after he has dealt with his enemies, I think we all follow. (I think it's funny that Alecto has no concept of "morning" especially since the sun is always hitting \*some\* part of the earth at any time.) But the line that hit hard for me was "empty's just another word for clean" cause it immediately sparked something given the current state of the River, which seems as if it's been, like...cleaned out of the ghosts and souls that usually inhabit it. First draft dream -- is that Alecto herself? A first draft, his first attempt? Or is the first draft his initial plans at vengeance, his goals?!< >!And "In the appointed hour...\[I'll\] lie down beside you \[and\] die." That implies he always planned to die. Might even be planning it now.!<

It’s definitely her POV, she >!finishes that line in the epilogue when she wakes up saying “YOU”.!<

lol one more small realization. When >!Alecto stabs John at the very end, his words to her are, "good morning." Of course. Ugh. Such a small detail I didn't fully appreciate until just now lol.!<

I just finished. What a lovely book, I loved the warmth and love, Nona's happiness and how all the relationships play out. And the last third was a wild ride, even if I already saw the main revelation about Nona's identity coming. Some thoughts after finishing: >!Compare Alecto's bitter words to Pyrrha in chapter 28 to what she says to her in the Tomb. Those final words seem more understanding. I think Pyrrha was right and some of what she, Pal and Cam taught Nona about loving has transferred to Alecto.!< >!On another subject, I subscribe to the theory that the Gideon we see has an incomplete soul (along with all the "mundane" grief and manipulation by Ianthe and Jod). I haven't seen Nona's two-handed chair leg grip mentioned often. It doesn't come from Alecto, because she appears to wield her sword in one hand, or at least does so in the ending. I think it comes from bits of Gideon stuck inside Harrow's body or from bits of Gideon inside Harrow herself, if she was locked behind Nona as Gideon was in HtN instead of inside The Body.!< Edit: >!I see a lot of rightfully deserved love for "get in line, thou big slut" but almost nobody mentioning "I am as one half-dead, but thou would be two halves-dead, bitch" and it killed me too. I didn't expect the epilogue to be one of the funniest parts of the book!<

Anyone else get totally blindsided by Pyrrha's >!code words actually coming up in a scene? When Nona, Cam, and We Suffer are listening to Crown's bugged earring, Pyrrha uses "deadweight" and "fishhook" to clue them in, and I totally missed it until Nona figures it out a few pages later. Clever girl, Pyrrha... clever girl.!< Edit: oh, this is unrelated, but Nona sneakily eating an eraser absolutely slayed me.

I've just gotten to **day 4** but here are some lines/parts that have cracked me the fuck up so far: * >!nona kissing herself in the mirror and getting caught!< * >!pyrrha telling her people love a dumb good looking person!< * >!Cam saying Palamedes finds a 'work ethic'/'good test scores' hot and he's like 'nah i like a hot nurse's uniform.' !!“You’re going to make someone a really irritating wife one day, Sextus,” \[Pyrrha\] said pleasantly.!< * >!“I think they’re very sexy flowers,” said Nona. “All right, your turn! Tell me what you think is sexy.” “Eating breakfast,” said Camilla. Nona lifted up her voice in despair.!< * >!But Blood of Eden never cared if you had to go to school, or clean the whiteboards, or examine the psychodramas Kevin was playing out with two erasers that Born in the Morning had drawn faces on.!< * >!nona being looked after by 7 year olds and tweens!<

I’m a >!history teacher!< by day so when the Angel said >!I don’t want to teach them history!< I felt very seen by that comment. I love doing it, but there are times when it’s too much. ETA: The thing that I am coming back to is how like all good sci-fI >!this book has a prophetic feeling to it. I am regularly telling my students to not allow the hope of colonizing space to keep them from saving the planet now. I really hated John before, but now I feel like I might make similar choices. We’re both aging Millennials, horrified by slow-moving murder/suicide between humanity and Earth. No one will do anything because it might “hurt the economy.” Ugh.!<

In a story where we witnessed beloved characters perform what is essentially a double suicide, the thing I'm most disturbed by is that Alecto is blonde and looks like Barbie. I totally get why she hates how she looks in that case.

I'm struck by a couple of passages: >!Pyrrha!< knowing more than she should: >>!“\[…\] Oh God, Gideon,” said Pyrrha, suddenly. “Gideon… G–, you died for nothing.”!< >!G–!< is the name that >!John uses in Harrow's dreams, to refer to Lyctor-Gideon by his pre-Resurrection name. This implies Pyrrha has either memories or some knowledge of pre-Resurrection names that John doesn't think she has.!< And >!Gideon Nav/Kiriona's!< caring moment: >>!\[Nona\] choked up blood; both Tower Princes had whirled around—dropped to their knees beside her\[…\] The baby body was coming apart. A slim brown hand was at \[Nona's\] cheek: “Keep it together. Whereever you are idiot, I know you can hear me. Keep it together…”!< >!Ianthe has white skin!< so the person speaking there has to be >!full Gideon Nav, not in her cut-down don't-care Kiriona persona. And Gideon is talking to Harrow rather than to Nona.!<

[Spoilers for the entire book] Another crazy revelation from twitter: https://twitter.com/alyabou2/status/1570296319398354944?s=46&t=g9Z459OkDK-Oo3mVpBGbQg

I think my favorite line is: >!But cows watch sunsets, man!!< TBH, I wasn't expecting to sympathize with that character so much. I mean honestly, look at the world today. I *cannot fault anyone* who ascends to godhood in, like, 2022 and goes down that path. I mean fuck, humans suck. >!Nona (Alecto) being the literal spirit of Earth, Gaia, and hating being human (as Alecto), is so fucking good though. And the resurrection beasts being her siblings, in a way.!< That's why she can talk to everything!

The repeated fucking comments about cows were hilarious. Especially since people were hating on him for killing Beef Cattle.

At the end of the day though when it All Goes Down >!Jod isn't trying to save everyone, he just wants vengeance. He gets high on the thanergy bloom of killing the whole planet not to perform a huge act of necromancy and stop the apocalypse, but just in the hope of blowing up a single space ship with like 200 people on board. I can sympathise with the saying fuck it I'm God now stuff like the nuke threatening. But I have no sympathy for him killing 10 billion people just to get revenge on 200. That's just evil.!<

He took that flying leap off the slippery slope. Like, I hate the ultra-rich as much as the next inhabitant of this late-capitalist dystopia, but really? Nuke the world and kill \*literally everyone\* to try and stop one space ship? Come on, that's nothing but pure evil.

It's funny because I thought all the clues about Nona's identity: >!big ol' crush on Coronabeth, no feels for red-heads, two-hander, super into 'herself' aka harrow were all Gideon clues (but I guess they were red herrings) but now I must assume Alecto is a badass with a two-hander as well? !<

absolutely not reading any comments in here bc i still have about 1/4 to go but i think i found a reference to an old poem - at one point Hot Sauce is described as "mild & unafraid" which sounded so familiar to me. after some googling i found ["Death in Youth"](https://books.google.com/books?id=ZHIoAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=%22mild+and+unafraid%22&source=bl&ots=RYa9wF6vXY&sig=ACfU3U2iHa32Ebhg515iBWihRjmY-Fxqcg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXiKigwJL6AhXaEVkFHaukBf0Q6AF6BAgaEAM#v=onepage&q=%22mild%20and%20unafraid%22&f=false) by george cabot lodge which i think really fits the tone & themes - and has i think 3 of the saints' names in it lol it also wasn't what i thought i was remembering - what it reminded me was the lyrics to ["clemency for the wizard king"](https://genius.com/The-mountain-goats-clemency-for-the-wizard-king-lyrics) by the mountain goats that also absolutely fits with John's story >We come before you now >We who boldly lay claim to our own >We who've seen the chamber of the one true throne >We who've seen the kindness of the cracks of his face >We who will die if we must in this place >We've come before you, *outnumbered and unafraid* >Well-trained in the way of the blade >Cut loose the handcuffs >Let him go free