Three months later: I’ve had some time to adjust. This book is still wild, and while I’ve come to terms with most of it, there’s one thing that’s still bothering me. I’m hoping it will be resolved in the last book. No idea how she’s going to manage it, but she somehow managed to pull Harrow and Nona out of her butt, and they are both weird and mad genius in their own special ways, so I’m sure she’ll manage it, but I will not lie, I am ANXIOUS about it.
Just as Harrow the Ninth is much different tonally and structurally to Gideon the Ninth, Nona the Ninth takes another left turn and instead of a protagonist who is brash but lovable and foul-mouthed (ILU Gideon <3) or a protagonist who is barely coping with a descent into madness but is secretly a badass, here we get a protagonist who is innocent and curious and kind, and who has only six months of memories. She’s occupying a body that is not her own, and despite living in a shitty apartment in a war zone, she loves those around her, and she loves her life. She is a gem. Oh, god, there’s a runner in here about SPOILERS her eating inedible objects like dirt and pencils and sand END SPOILERS and it killed me EVERY TIME.
I’m not usually one for trying to figure out what’s going on in books. Usually I just like to sit back and let them happen to me, taking reveals and twists as they come, but that is virtually impossible to do here, for whatever reason. The whole book I was trying to figure out what the eff was going on, and who was who, and whatever else. I was compelled to do this against my own inclinations.
I will of course be re-reading this in preparation for Alecto next fall, and I look forward to seeing what I will think about it then. I know I will still love all the stuff about love and friendship, and I will still love Nona, but if SPOILERS I don’t get the real Gideon back in full, I will THROW THINGS VIOLENTLY END SPOILERS.