lightreads

Nona the Ninth

4/5. I mean, either you know what the what is here by now or you don’t. Gonzo religiosity, goth hilarity, space war, and memes. And doggos.

So this book was supposed to be the first part of the final book in the trilogy, but it grew its own story. It’s an enjoyable story, in its odd way. Our main character is very intellectually and emotionally immature, and she spends big chunks of this book wrapped up in the concerns of her (wonderful) gang of kid friends, so this book has this strange confluence of a YA foil wrapping over, you know, necromantic horror. It works.

What I’m still chewing on is the other strand of this narrative, which supplies us with an actual explanation roughly connecting a recognizable Earth to the horrifying zombie empire of these books. Including an explanation for why everyone speaks in Tumblr memes. Which, IDK man, I did not want that explained? Somehow this universe worked better when supported only by vibes, you know?

It is in keeping with this book, though. It blows the doors off the hothouse feel of the prior books, which kept the action constrained to tightly-regulated settings populated almost entirely by aristocrats. This book asserts that no, there really are actual people in this universe living their lives, loving their dogs, going to school, growing up amongst the violent horrors of war. And again . . . I don’t know if I wanted this? It makes the series as a whole much better, far less flimsy, but, how do I say this? I did not want to take this universe seriously at all. I wanted it to be a weird shell of body horror and tumblr memes over some great character work, and now it has, like, depths. IDK man, bring back the vibes.

Content notes: I mean, serious grossness with bodies, obviously. Violence. The dog is okay, though.

Harrow the Ninth

4/5. Good god grief. Um. The much gonzo-er sequel to the already gonzo Gideon the Ninth. Decadently horny for dead people and for skeletons in particular is the most accurate way I can describe this book. Which is not what I like about it – I put up with all the florid necromancy stuff and dead things horniness with sufferance at best. Insert leaves me cold joke here.

No, what I like is how this book uses fannish modes of storytelling so playfully and comfortably. I am not the first to have LOLed outright at the coffee shop AU interlude. But beyond the shuffle of quick AU scenarios we tour, part of what's gonzo about this sequel is that it – for reasons – begins telling the story at a point after an AU version of the first book, but only ducks back to fill in parts of that remix for you and otherwise leaves you to sink or swim, with only a thick scattering of tumblr references to cling to. Okay then. Challenge accepted. This book leans on a skill that I think is directly taught by time in fandom and not in traditional literary spaces: holding many versions of a narrative in your head simultaneously and dealing out a new hand at will.

Also, this book is having its cake and eating it too in the fannish sense when it comes to Gideon and Harrow's relationship. That relationship gets weirder in this book, since it sort of has to where one of the participants is literally in love with a dead person. Awkward. But this book takes that impediment into the text and, by way of various fannish iterative techniques, also indulges in their romance. It manages to contain 'they can't' and 'they totally are' simultaneously, sometimes on the same page. It's so fundamentally fannish a way of doing things, of iterating layers of a relationship, and I think it's great.

Content notes: Jesus. Um. Do not read this book while eating. Amputation, many kinds of violence, body horror upon body horror, oh and also the cannibalism incident.