Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

18 reviews

jurizprudence's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

congratulations to nona the ninth for being the only fictional book that made me pull up a bible while reading it

tor and netgalley rejected my arc request because they knew i won't be able to shut my little mouth if i read this book earlier. and what a tragically beautiful book about apocalypse, rebirth and resurrection, found families, and love in its purest, most innocent, and childlike form nona the ninth is! the way it broke my heart into pieces and put them back together in a span of almost 500 pages just like the previous books did was criminal—towards the end i was so fragile that even thinking about camilla's little smiles would require me a five-minute breakdown and a lie-down on the floor of my room. nona's eagerness to give love and her desire to be loved back brought me to tears the most when i finished. she's just so sweet and endearing and too pure for this world that i can't wrap my head around how can anyone not like—even love her. 

i'm not a very articulate person, and i mean it when i say i can't describe how much i adore pyrrha and camilla and palamedes, and how much i miss gideon and harrowhark in this book. a certain prince—the saddest girl in the whole entire world!! i want to sob—got me acting unwise, and i will defend her to anyone who says something bad or mean about her i swear to god. i still admire ianthe's gall and i'm rooting for corona and judith. anyways i hate john with a burning passion and i think he is very pathetic and i want to study him under a microscope. this goes to show that muir is great in writing multifaceted characters—even awful, evil, and minor ones—that you can't help but feel attached to them. i saw readers saying that they didn't care much for nona's friends but i did!! god, i did cry and laugh for hot sauce and born in the morning and even that lying honesty—and it's all thanks to nona and her perspective. 

notice how all i've talk about are the characters? yeah. yeah because the character dynamics are the highlight of this book for me. as for the plot, ntn was obviously easier to follow than htn, and thank goodness for that because i wasn't able to fully reread the previous books. i still got lost several times, but i think i did pretty well, having guessed one (lol) important plot point. still in awe that muir refuses to explain in detail everything that's happening by writing the most unreliable narrators in this universe—and that i actually love it. this series made me realize that i do like being confused. if gideon the ninth is a locked room mystery designed like a puzzle and harrow the ninth is a psychedelic dream meant to gaslight you, nona the ninth is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fully built on love—love for oneself, friends, family, beliefs, and love for the planet that was your home. i didn't know that it would be as heartbreaking as htn was, but it is—even more so, i think. and for that tamsyn owes me therapy and a promise that griddlehark is endgame in alecto the ninth, thanks very much.


also tamsyn muir can you please stop introducing foul-mouthed and bright-haired women characters because i literally fall in love every time, yes this about pash, dearest our lady of the passion whom nona and i have a crush on, thank you

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jjjreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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relin's review

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adventurous challenging emotional medium-paced

5.0


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eleanora's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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starla's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I'm a huge TLT fan. I read Gideon for a book club a couple of years ago and became literally obsessed. I loved Harrow even more. Nona is definitely my least favourite of the three books so far, mainly because I wasn't huge into Nona as a character. The kids at school slice of life stuff felt like a distraction from the actual Events, which I know is deliberate but not what I love about this series. The reveal of who Nona is was kinda obvious from the beginning, which isn't a bad thing but it just lacked the massive set-up and payoff we got in Harrow. I guess since this was meant to be like 20% of Alecto it makes sense that not a lot happened, but I don't think it needed to be a whole novel. I still enjoyed it a lot and it's definitely worth reading, if only for the final scene, which is fantastic! (It also answers a lot of worldbuilding questions you might have been wondering about since Gideon, which is satisfying).

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iviarelle's review

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

As much as Harrow the Ninth (the book) sometimes felt like an impenetrable puzzle box on the first read, Nona's life was never particularly opaque to me. Sure, there are questions adjacent to her, in fact all of the questions are adjacent to her, but I never felt frustrated by the way the information was withheld, even though the structure is very similar to Harrow's book went.

On a related note, I think it's an incredible achievement that Muir split this book off from Alecto the Ninth, where it was supposed to have just been the first third-to-half of the book, without making it FEEL like an incomplete story. Maybe part of that is down to how different Harrow felt from Gideon, setting us up for each book to be a slightly disjointed story about different but related characters within this world. Either way, nothing about this book is a disappointment, and the split point isn't as jarring as they often are when books are torn in half like this.

It's hard to say much more than that without spoilers. I'm so pleased with how this one played out, even with the questions I don't feel have satisfactory answers yet, and I'm looking intensely forward to Alecto.

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ruthlessreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I absolutely love Nona & you will too. This book brings together the happenings of Gideon & Harrow in a way that ties the overarching story together to make sense of a lot of things we weren't clear on before. Part mystery, part found family adventure, part self reflection on how to tell who you really are--this book will leave fans of The Locked Tomb both satisfied and dying for more. 

I will write a more in-depth review after Nona is published but I have sworn on the Locked Tomb & the Emperor Undying that I won't give any spoilers. I will say that this book is absolutely worth the preorder & you should do that without hesitation.   

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uranaishi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5


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