Bingo 9: Strange Worlds
Nona the Ninth takes place in an apocalyptic city but there are references to space travel and planets and other not-Earth realms (namely The River, but that might be a little spoiler-y); this novel definitely fits the strange part of Strange Worlds and by the final third or so starts to really get more into the worlds part.
Nona seems to be around 12 or so, but really has maybe only existed for about 6 months, at least that’s as far back as her memory goes. She has dreams that might be from another life, but she’s not sure and neither is anyone else. She was found by a couple of folks that might be familiar from the previous two novels, but one of them is kind of two people in one body. There are also maybe zombies running around (except it turns out that might be another word for something else- spoilers again). There’s some kind of scary bad war looming over everything but nothing definitive.
I liked Gideon, wasn’t the biggest fan of Harrow, and I’m kind of split on Nona (as stories, not characters; as characters, they’re all pretty interesting). This book could probably tell this story will at least 100 fewer pages; there’s so much time spent trying to slowly work things out that I was getting a little frustrated, and suddenly there’s more action and more starting to figure out who is who, what’s what, and what’s going on. Part of the problem is that there are veiled references to people in previous books (I think) but it’s been long enough and there are enough of them that I couldn’t figure out who that was supposed to be, and that was a big part of my struggle with a big chunk of the story.
This is the worlds of the Locked Tomb and there’s finally some progress with said tomb, but that context also means necromancers and dying rarely being final, and now we have potential soul and body swapping which adds to the confusion, since I might remember who a given character was but is the person using that name both the original body and soul? And whose name are they using? Their own, someone else’s, or a new one? Those turn out to be important questions with Nona too, that really only gets verified in the last few pages.
We also get some of the story about how this setting evolved from something much more recognizable many ages ago; the problem here is that while the world building context is interesting, the source is questionable (also mostly dead for nearly the entirely novel). This includes an interesting reveal about Gideon’s backstory which even she probably hadn’t known until pretty recently.
Nona herself is a really interesting character whose innocence and strangeness is probably as endearing as its supposed to be; she’s got what could be a really interesting personality and potential, but once she remembers that thing she’s trying not to, will she still be herself? That’s kind of the big question that no one else but Nona seems to care about. There’s a really sweet moment with Paul near the end, but that’s really about it.