The Locked Tomb: Tamsyn Muir's Impeccable & Imaginative Style

Subtle nuance, shock-and-awe; no two reads of these books are the same

Introduction

Welcome to my final (for now) post about Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb series; I've previously written about John/Alecto, Lyctors & Gender Dysphoria Part 1 and Part 2, Commander Wake and Harrow & Gideon. My post today will feature heavy spoilers for the series, since I'll be discussing the unique narrative structures Muir employs.

Symbols of the Nine House, by Banjoker

We're all friends here

To get ahead of everything I'm about to say about mysteries and shocking revelations: these books about bones, death, angst, gore and the cold of space are among the friendliest I've ever read. I talked a little in my first post about how author Tamsyn Muir suffuse her prose with literary references and millennial tumblr memes – here's a nice video explaining many of those in Gideon the Ninth (she also has videos on Harrow and Nona):

Alongside the irreverent tone and plain likeability of the series' cast, it feels like Muir is inviting the reader to share in the joke and enjoyment of the narrative in a way that I've rarely experienced. In a lot of ways it reminds me of a great TTRPG campaign, laughing along with friends and enjoying the strange challenges they set for you.

However, a side effect of this friendly style is that the series' narrative perspective is tightly focused on a few characters and their immediate goals/concerns. The world beyond that narrow focus is utterly unknown to the reader; part of my reason for loving Nona the Ninth so much is that we finally got to see the perspective of average humans caught up in the Nine Houses' conflict with Blood of Eden.

Subtle Incongruities & Foreshadowing

Probably the greatest trick Muir pulls on the reader is Harrow's erasure of Gideon from her mind in Harrow the Ninth, which I discussed in my previous post. That same narrow focus and lack of information helps to cover Muir's tracks: certainly the reader (eventually) recognizes that the Canaan House story Harrow is experiencing differs greatly from the one they read in Gideon, but it is remarkably more difficult to spot the "Ortus the First" incongruity also right in front of their eyes – even when other characters directly question it:

“Oh. Then he just wants you dead,” she said, with perfect unconcern. “Good luck! Not!! That man is Teacher’s attack dog... If he thinks you’re a threat then I would advise you to settle your affairs.” You stared up at the ceiling and noted the bone-strewn scrollwork between the frames of the panelling, all about the long planks of electric light. And you said: “But why does Ortus the First want me dead?” “Who?” said Mercymorn, indifferently.

Harrow's second major reveal, that she is re-enacting this Canaan House experience with the actual spirits of the dead, likewise feels obvious in retrospect but impossible to guess on a first reading. The fact that all the actual survivors (and Palamedes) now die without speaking a word is because their souls aren't available for this performance; meanwhile the departed spirits constantly confront Harrow with "this isn't how it happens," since they remember the actual events.

Palamedes & Camilla, by Dawn Carlos

Muir pulls off the double again in Nona the Ninth, where the front-and-centre mystery revolves around whose soul is inhabiting the eponymous amnesiac girl with Harrow's body. The first secret, that Nona is Alecto, feels similar to those in Harrow the Ninth with incongruous lines that we instinctively ignore on a first reading but feel obvious in retrospect: multiple times she is directly conversing with her fellow Resurrection Beast Varun the Eater, yet many readers (myself included) never put two and two together.

The second is somehow even subtler, given that I only picked it up on my re-read and haven't seen it discussed anywhere. Palamedes and Camilla spend much of the book trying to discern Nona's identity between the likeliest possibilities of Harrow and Gideon, but also raise an easy-to-miss new theory in Chapter 17 and discuss it thereafter:

“Cam, have you thought about what it means if Nona’s actually—a completed merger? One we will never actually be able to unpick, a successful soul gestalt?”

Of course at this point we have hints that Harrow, at least, is somewhere else listening to God's story, so it's even easier to dismiss this as another line of technobabble from Palamedes. Yet when we later see the pair attempt this very thing and become Paul, these lines become incredibly meaningful.

There are probably other authorial tricks like these I've missed, and I would love to hear about them! But for now, let's jump to the opposite end of things.

The Utterly Alien

For all the subtle foreshadowing and nuances that Muir employs in crafting these phenomenal books, she is by no means a stranger to shock and awe tactics.

Take the consequences of John's Resurrection ten thousand years before the start of The Locked Tomb, still being revealed to us three books into the series. He drained every spark of life in the solar system, then slowly began restoring it. Who but Muir would think to make the most significant consequence of that action the eternal ire of the undead planets themselves?

A Resurrection Beast, by Briarwick

The Resurrection Beasts slowly but inexorably follow John and his Lyctors across space and destroy all in their path, thereby forbidding God and his Saints from returning to our solar system lest it be consumed.

“Harrowhark, those revenants move through the universe, inexorably, without pause... and they feed on [living] planets as they go, like vampires... and they won’t stop until I and the Nine Houses are dead. They have had me on the run for a myriad, and they’re nearly impossible to take down.” This made very little impact on you. It had the dim and nonsensical ring of a fairy story. You said, “The Lyctors have died... fighting these things?” “Fighting them?” said God. “Harrow, I’ve lost half my Lyctors distracting them. They’re hideously complex to destroy. The ones we’ve killed, we killed through luck—they were young, and we were at full power—and then... once our numbers thinned out... by sheer accident, or by suicide mission.”

In the second book in a row where a single half-mad lyctor is an overwhelming threat to Harrow, the introduction of Resurrection Beasts is a truly powerful shift of perspective. The Beasts must be fought/distracted on both the physical plane and in the River (not unlike how Commander Wake is finally banished) and then lured close enough to the 'stoma' at the bottom of the River that it is sucked into the void beyond. Not to mention that they are living hives of smaller, deadly revenants called Heralds, proximity to which drives normal necromancers insane.

And Alecto is one of these things; the Resurrection Beast of Earth. The stuff of speculative fiction legend.

Read the full eight-panel comic by naomistares!

A few more incredible shock-and-awe moments just from Harrow the Ninth (you may sense a theme):

• Harrow prepares soup (see that comic) using her own bone marrow, attempting to assassinate Gideon the First by growing entire skeletons within his stomach

• Mercymorn's attempt to kill John, turning him into a crimson mist in what feels like an anticlimax... only for him to horrifyingly rebuild himself and snuff out his ancient friend

• Augustine's attempt to kill John by dragging him to the stoma, only stopped by Ianthe choosing to save God for her own purposes

One Flesh, One End

Part of me would love to go into more of the worldbuilding of necromancy, the River, devils and so on... but I think this is enough for now and that topic is best saved for the release of Alecto the Ninth.

I absolutely love this series (if you somehow couldn't tell), and must again recommend that you give it a try! Muir is an incredibly intelligent and imaginative author, and I'm deeply excited to see what she writes next!