Beat Up Books: gideon (the ninth, et al)

So, the time has come: I’ve read all three extant volumes of The Locked Tomb and Alecto the Ninth is coming WHEN? We don’t know?! And I have so many questions, but also Feelings, and that’s what this personal reflection (not really a review) is about. CLEAR AND PRESENT SPOILERS FOR GIDEON, HARROW, and NONA ahead, please stop reading if you don’t want any!

they are a mess because they are loved

I read Gideon for a shared discord reading challenge last year and was just completely blown away, but I put off Harrow and Nona for a while because I was doing other things. I could tell just by flipping through it that Harrow was going to be a non-negotiable nonstop reading binge, punctuated by me occasionally walking around talking to myself and waving my hands in the air as one does, but I got through the three books by the end of summer 2023. (Also my predictions of Harrow effects were accurate.) Nona was not my favorite but it brought me to the end of the story for now. And then, somehow, life went on.

In October 2023 I began writing a new book that included an enemies to lovers trope (sort of) as well as forced proximity, and people kept mentioning that aspects of it reminded them of Gideon, so I went back for a casual re-read, maybe a few tips, and once again obsession struck. I will tell you right now, Locked Tomb syndrome the second time around is worse. Behold my Locked Tomb merch! (Also, below this point: SPOILERS. Really. Not joking, going to get specific now.)

When I finished my (first) re-read of Gideon, I sat at the kitchen table staring into space with that echoing feeling you get in those last notes of a symphony vibrating through you. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that rewarded a re-read quite so much — there are so many mysteries in Gideon that begin to be answered only in the later books, and the side characters in Gideon take on VERY unexpected new roles — and among other things Gideon’s character is illuminated differently when you know what comes next.

The pool scene, the wavelets moving and bouncing and shivering back, and Gideon’s re-set into believing that Harrow cannot and will never love her the way that she was hoping for. Her offering herself to save Harrow’s life in the hope of staying with her and helping her forever, believing that Harrow, whatever else she might feel, would easily get over this. That Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life, because her offering was rejected and she was cast out again and now she has nothing at all left, not herself as she is now the Emperor’s construct, not even death. And how all of this may well be Gideon’s fragile self-esteem and belief in her own unlovability leading her to misunderstand from the beginning. Harrow’s brilliance and fragility and her final decision to remain entombed in the hope that Gideon might somehow live. How both of them as they’ve been separated and trying to get back to one another have grown in their griefs and their wounds and their own paths to the point where being together again might not really be possible.

The language and the structural choices are stunning. Unusual descriptive metaphors in almost every sentence, every side character and room given an atmosphere in just a few words, very clear and unique conversational patterns for every character, and an arc for nearly every named character you encounter. Gideon and Harrow and Nona’s voices as the (apparent) POV characters are completely distinct, with different things each character notices and different things they are amused by (Harrow is amused by nothing). Humor that is really tragedy. Accidents that become choices. Even though the books are each in only one POV, you may not know whose POV that is until the end — Harrow appears to be in second person but of course in the end it is first, disguised as second, and telling a story about herself when it is in third (and in the final appendix to Nona we learn about the permeability of souls, which is how Gideon is perceiving it all, I think). Nona is a character who does not know who she is, and whose forgotten story is the lynchpin of everything, but her body, which is Harrowhark’s body, still remembers Gideon’s touch even without knowing her own name. Memory, forgetting, guilt, pain, and desire shape the entire narrative arc. And the recurring theme of Ruth: whither you go I shall go, and where you die, there too shall I be buried.

Souls without bodies, bodies without souls, bodies with more souls than they should have and souls in bodies that are not theirs. One of the best things I can say about a series that’s yet unfinished is that I have no idea how it will end. I do not know if the characters I so want to have a happy ending will have one. I do not think there is any simple villain (well, maybe Wake, she’s pretty horrible, and clearly our friend John has issues.) The entire trilogy as it stands is about love and death and how the two relate to one another, and therefore I love it since it’s what I’m most interested in! Love betrayed, love forgiving, love platonic, love romantic, love of self, love of others, love of justice, vengeance, life, death. Obviously I can’t wait for Alecto and meanwhile I’m sure I’ll be re-reading the entire thing again.

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