So, John killed everyone in the nuclear blasts but there were like three (?) FTL ships escaping. He got at least one (?) but the others got away?

I'm assuming that is where BoE came from? These folks took off to another part of the solar system and slept for 10,000 years (?) and when they came back and saw how John remade everything, were like Oh FUCK NO and have been at war ever since?

Is that...close?

And:

Since we didn't see the moment when Harrow "ate" Gideon's soul to become a Lyctor, do we assume the part she ate was Gideon's heart (she was vomming a lot in HtN)? Or did John take that? I'm assuming as in NtN, she may only be cynically joking that her heart is missing.

John, we're told, took G1deon's arm before he was sent off with the nuke and kept it for reasons I do not remember (if we were even told). Perhaps John kept Gideon's heart for a similar reason (like making a clone/copy, which is also suggested in NtN).

In fact, my first thought was that Kiriona was being puppetted by Ianthe, but seems she spent enough months around her and "dad" to have become just as hateful toward them as she was toward the Ninth, only she was more obliged to keep it hidden under an Ianthe-inspired cynicism toward everything else (while she waited for the chance she took in NtN?). Gideon appears to have lost her soul in more ways than one and only cares about Harrow (as she reminded her in GtN).

Wonder what Pyrrha would say/do if she knew how the Ninth treated Gideon?

But wait, there's more.

Little Harrow didn't need to kill anyone to enter the Locked Tomb. She had Gideon's blood under her nails and that seems like it was the main thing.

In Nona the Ninth, when they are trying to break in again (how did little Harrow and/or her family lock it up again, if it needed John's blood wards?), suddenly Gideon's blood is not sufficient, they need a dead body (bye by Crux). Still checking to see if I missed something, but not finding it.

ETA: if Gideon/Kiriona's body has been tampered with so much they can't even draw blood, how did they use her blood to open the door? I have to assume Gideon can just rend her own flesh somehow or something. Would have looked pretty silly if they got to the tomb w/Gideon/Kiriona and she couldn't produce any blood to open the thing.

Gideon, when she realizes her new super powers have fucked things:

Also: I don't think I saw anything in GtN about what happened to the families of the 200 children that were killed on the Ninth House. Assuming they were all of childbearing age even after that horror, did no one try to have another kid? I might check again, but don't recall this being brought up again. Everyone is simply described as painfully old, but what's the context? What's their idea of "old?"

It's still wild to me that Muir went with this idea in the first place: why would a religious cult that is quickly drying up and dying out kill off an entire generation, just for one necromancer? Did they absolutely positively need to kill all 200 of them? Could they have got the same result if they had killed say, ten? None of it acceptable, of course, but what an EXTREME. Harrow was right to be horrified by it.

I get the parallel with John killing off everything to start over, but did Harrow's parents (Muir?) even consider there would be no way to do that unless kids were born? The deal with Harrow becoming a Lyctor and John supplying her house with new blood feels a little tacked on: Gideon wasn't accepted and always considered an "outsider," so how would the faithful on the Ninth House feel about being repopulated with strangers from who-knows-where? An issue that could still come up.

Also:

In GtN, after the murder of Magnus and Abigail, everyone and their sister is trying to call them back, with no success. In HtN, after her "failed" Lyctorhood, Harrow is able to summon pretty much everyone from Canaan House, unconsciously. John does mention Harrow being powerful (thanks to the baby genocide), but that powerful? A measure of things to come?

Which brings up another thing: are those spirits still attached to Harrow or, now that she had "died," no longer around?

Is there also a possibility that the River is used to create alternate realities? While there, Harrow "hallucinates" where she is at a ball, some Cinderella-like tale where she is one of many vying for the hand of "Her Divine Highness," a title she would *never* have heard of at that point (as it didn't exist until John captured Gideon and re-fashioned her as Kiriona). That title existing in NtN gives some leeway that there are some dreamlike shenanigans going on, but the text doesn't really suggest it? So...a stretch.

(Aside: The Noniad is another example of a story-within-a-story and while Mattias being summoned is hilarious, his presentation is right out of Ortus' book: how did that happen?).

The text also doesn't suggest that Nona's kiss to Gideon transferred anything, either, so...? Would love some clarification on how souls exist in and around different bodies.

Moving on.

Are the "friendship" bracelets something Ianthe uses to control Gideon/Kiriona? Maybe Gideon isn't completely in charge of herself. Gideon would absolutely not have come up with that, but it definitely feels like an Ianthe touch with a hidden weapon.

Also? Why did John enhance her physically without repairing her body? He doesn't want a real kid of his own, just a tool that can go places his Lyctors can't (?) and do jobs for him (like Antioch) that he isn't about to go do himself? If Gideon were completely restored (with John's DNA), does that make her more of a threat to him somehow? There's no question that love is not a factor, something I would hope Gideon understands and is just going on with shit (after telling John to "Go to hell" in HtN) so she can find Harrow. Gideon has made very clear how she feels about Ianthe and John and isn't warm and fuzzy.

Or is it all like Magnus said: she can never come back and her revenant-self can only be sustained for a limited amount of time?

For Alecto the Ninth some stuff I'd love to see:

Gideon getting a shot at defeating Naberius (and kicking Ianthe's ass

Circling the parallels between Harrow puppeting her parents to John possibly puppeting Gideon/Kiriona: both Gideon and Harrow have experienced reversals that give them a better perspective of what life for the other must have been like, and Harrow freeing her parents and dropping the Ninth House charade should be part of that.

Harrow working with Paul and Pyrrha against John/Ianthe/Kiriona with Alecto an unpredictable factor with a not-so-obvious agenda of her own

Front Line Titties of the Fifth - for real

"Die in a fire" better not be foreshadowing of ANYTHING

Harrow *remembering* Nona

Pyrrha being the parent to Gideon that she deserved

Palamedes and Camilla reunion (in the River?)

A Great Expectations-style ending (maturity and mutual understanding and possibility of a future together for G and H).

Finding out what is beyond the River?

like I don't see Harrow - a character who feels uncomfortable with long hair, doesn't want to be seen without a whole facepaint and hates dresses - wanting to emphasize her boobs like that

Chapter 20 - Harrow the Ninth

Harrow wouldn't read yaoi because the notions of romance and sex are almost as disgusting to her as the concept of men. However, if she had to pick, she would read yaoi over yuri, because the most she would feel towards yaoi is disdain, while yuri would vaporize her on the spot.

What makes the villain the villain (inasmuch as it's useful to examine TLT characters through that kind of simplistic lens) is that when the chips are down and he has to choose, his priority is punishing the wicked, not saving the people left behind.

I would invite anyone whose engagement with their cause consists of finding the 'correct' group of people to hate, to consider whether 'evil emperor' is the next career move you see yourself taking, and if it isn't, to gently suggest disembarking from the hate train.

john renaming all his friends with fancy neoclassicist names, naming them after shakespeare, because calling them by their original names doesnt feel right.

john, when he gets the chance to name his own child, of his own blood, he calls her kiriona - maori for 'gideon'.

alecto - one of the furies who sought to sow discord during the Trojan war, all in the name of Jove, punishing crimes committed by mortals against god.

how john hates that name.

calls her annabel lee.

he named her. annabel lee, after the poem by edgar allen poe about a love that transcends death, because the name annabel is made up of two words: anna for grace, and belle for beauty/woman.

but also;

it is derived from the latin word "amabilis", meaning "to love".

"If you can do it, so can she. If she can do it, so can we" - Wait for Me (Reprise), Hadestown

This has been sitting finished in my files for months now. But I was reading The Locked Tomb and listening to Hadestown a lot around the same time and this happened.