Book Review
Feb. 19th, 2023 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariNona the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir
I am not sure how to describe this sequel to Harrow the Ninth. It's part coming-of-age novel and part apocalyptic fiction, and very much another weird puzzle. Nona is a teenager who seems to have a rather severe case of amnesia and doesn't remember anything farther back than when she woke up about six months previous. Her body is Harrow's but no one, not even Nona, is sure if she is Harrow. Nona lives with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on a besieged planet. Nona acts as a teacher's aide at the makeshift school in her community while the others engage in shadier kinds of employment. Nona's story is broken up with episodes that tell the backstory of how this world and the necromancy that rules it came to be.
Even though there is a lot that needs to be figured out in it, this book was enjoyable and interesting to read. I really liked seeing how life was outside of the upper echelons of this society. Nona's interactions with the teachers and students at the school were really sweet and almost normal, and made a compelling contrast with what the rest of the characters were up to. It was nice to find out that I was largely right about a lot of what's going on under the surface. Nona the Ninth functions largely as a set up for the final book of the series, so it does not wrap up in a fully satisfying way, but that's okay because it is a very good setup.
Tamsyn Muir
I am not sure how to describe this sequel to Harrow the Ninth. It's part coming-of-age novel and part apocalyptic fiction, and very much another weird puzzle. Nona is a teenager who seems to have a rather severe case of amnesia and doesn't remember anything farther back than when she woke up about six months previous. Her body is Harrow's but no one, not even Nona, is sure if she is Harrow. Nona lives with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on a besieged planet. Nona acts as a teacher's aide at the makeshift school in her community while the others engage in shadier kinds of employment. Nona's story is broken up with episodes that tell the backstory of how this world and the necromancy that rules it came to be.
Even though there is a lot that needs to be figured out in it, this book was enjoyable and interesting to read. I really liked seeing how life was outside of the upper echelons of this society. Nona's interactions with the teachers and students at the school were really sweet and almost normal, and made a compelling contrast with what the rest of the characters were up to. It was nice to find out that I was largely right about a lot of what's going on under the surface. Nona the Ninth functions largely as a set up for the final book of the series, so it does not wrap up in a fully satisfying way, but that's okay because it is a very good setup.
