fuck my ass...

The announcement that we have all waited for has finally come to pass!!!

1. The opening excerpt she flat out read out loud. Original post here.

"Alecto the Ninth, ACT ONE

HARROW IN HELL

CHAPTER 1

At a point in the slit she was carving through life, Harrowhark Nonagesimus woke to find herself lost in a dark wound. She had been walking when it had all gone black– any path ahead or behind was blotted out; now she was here.

A sword was laid upon her from shoulder to hip. Her feet were bare. Upon her chest, straddling the sword, there was an open magazine. The first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was a pair of tits."

Non-book-quote: "And I bet you can’t wait to find out what happens next."

2. "But I do want the same feeling of newness, the same feeling that Alecto is not just Harrow continued into another volume. Some very great trilogies have essentially been one enormous novel split across three books -- Lord of the Rings being the defining example -- but the Locked Tomb is meant to be three different novels that belong together."

So Alecto will for sure be another genre change. From Q&A with Tamsyn Muir!

3. "Can you tell us anything about Alecto?"

"Well, Alecto features heavily. Other than that… I’m honestly not trying to be coy, but there’s not much I can say without giving away important stuff. If there’s a character you like who has appeared in more than one of the other books, and who is not dead by the end of Nona, there’s a decent chance you’ll get to see them in Alecto. I am only prepared to commit to ‘decent.'"

From Nona the Ninth Author Tamsyn Muir Talks Writing "Rude" and "Dislikable" Women

4. "Nona looks pretty chill on this cover compared to the state of Gideon and Harrow on their respective covers. There are only a few skeletons, and they don’t look too menacing. Does that suggest we should expect a different mood in this book than the one we got in the previous volumes?"

"Nona is the only girl on any of these covers who is having anything approaching a good time. I’ve seen all these covers. Ranked by who’s apparently having the best time: Nona, Gideon, Alecto, Harrow."

From Why Tamsyn Muir turned her fantasy trilogy into a quartet halfway through which is unfortunately paywalled but you can bypass it using this website

5. "I’ve always known the different perspectives for all three books."

Since Gideon the Ninth is in third person and Harrow the Ninth is almost entirely in second, it seems Alecto the Ninth will be in first person from Alecto's perspective, so most or all of the book will use "I" in the narration. From Q&A: Tamsyn Muir, Author of ‘Harrow The Ninth’

6.

Quote 1:

"You’re asked to pitch Alecto the Ninth in the most misleading but technically accurate way possible… how do you describe it?"

"Fallout from a terrible house move causes generational ructions. John fries some bacon in his ute."

Quote 2:

"From u/norunaway: “I have been telling all my friends that Alecto the Ninth is going to be a heist novel. Can you please confirm this, and if so, also confirm that there will be many heart crimes.”

"I had to go back and look to see if I’d ever mentioned that I wanted a heist in Alecto, because otherwise you are 1. psychic or 2. hiding in my drywall—there IS actually a heist in Alecto. It’s not the world’s greatest heist, and is undertaken by idiots, but there’s a heist. If you’re in my house, can you tell me if turning off the boiler at night has helped the pipes? I assume you’re between the walls."

Both from Gideon, Harrow, and Mr Bones’ Wild Ride: Tamsyn Muir on Writing, Necromancy, and Fanfic

7. "Everything is different, all over again. And terrible. And Ianthe will be awful. Ianthe will reach new heights of being absolutely goddamn dreadful."

From How Gideon the Ninth author Tamsyn Muir queers the space opera which is also paywalled so I again point you to this website

8. "Last time we talked, all you would say about Alecto was, “Ianthe will be awful. Ianthe will reach new heights of being absolutely goddamn dreadful.” Is that still going to be the case in Nona? If not, where may I direct my official complaint?"

"When I said that I was thinking about one specific magnificently shitty thing Ianthe does in Alecto, just, the dumbest and pettiest thing I am setting her up to do."

But can we talk about the setting Tamsyn is in in this little video? 😂 The fact that its filmed on a potato, she's standing hooded in the dark and reading by candle(?) light from a 'The Eleventh Hour' folder(?) right next to a random twig is sending me. Like, what is even going on here? 😂

They are not medically accurate, just enough for artists to know the necessary muscles and how they work together