Back in its day, at least, it would have been a monument to wealth and beauty. In the present it was a castle that had been killed.
The Emperor of the First House (King of the Nine Renewals, the Necrolord Prime) has issued a summons to the other eight Houses. The heir to each House (the necromancer) and their sworn comrade-in-arms (their cavalier) will come to Caanan House as applicants to become Lyctors, first Hands to the Emperor himself.
When all the necromancers and cavaliers arrive at the mostly abandoned and crumbling Caanan House, (and the shuttles that brought them there vanish) the information they receive about how to become Lyctors is…nothing. No instructions, no training, no hints.
No rules.
Two is for discipline, heedless of trial;
Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile;
Four for fidelity, facing ahead;
Five for tradition and debts to the dead;
Six for the truth over solace in lies;
Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies;
Eight for salvation no matter the cost;
Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.
The solar system that Tamsyn Muir has created for her debut novel (debut, good God, expect me to mention that more than once, because damn) was resurrected by the Emperor ten thousand years ago. “Resurrected” of course also means “formerly dead”, so the most important power of each the Nine Houses revolves in some way or another around death. And none of the houses are more steeped in death and decay than the House of the Ninth, Keepers of the Locked Tomb, House of the Sewn Tongue and known by many – most especially Gideon Nav – as the shittiest place in the universe.
Castle Drearburh is about as far as you can imagine from a romantic Gothic fantasy. The planet is tidally locked with no atmosphere; everything is underground caverns and black stone and freezing cold. It’s a place that has animated skeleton workers, hateful blind nuns, and a vindictive shaved-headed heir who’s magic makes her bleed from her pores and who’s been animating her dead parents for seven years to keep anyone from finding out that the House has been leaderless ever since they committed suicide.
It also has Gideon, who has to be one of the most pissed off characters I’ve seen in a long time. Her mother arrived at Ninth House inexplicably and then died mysteriously, leaving Gideon an indentured servant ever since. And she hates Drearburh, almost as much as she hates the seventeen-year-old heir, Harrowhark, who’s been making it her life’s work to torment Gideon ever since she was old enough to walk. At the start of the novel Gideon has made eighty-six attempts to escape, and attempt number eighty-seven ends when Harrowhark works all night and literally shreds her fingertips to the bone just to thwart Gideon in the most humiliating way possible. At eighteen years old Gideon is made up entirely of sarcasm and rage.
And she’s an amazing character to read. There’s no subtlety to her, zero. Most of her escape attempts have been about as complicated as walking out the front door. If it’s a choice between making a smart-ass comment and not getting backhanded by her swordmaster, then she’ll take the backhand and make another smart-ass comment with blood on her teeth. She actually bites Harrowhark at one point, literally chomps her fingers for trying to put the traditional Ninth House deaths-head makeup on her, and the only response is for Harrowhark to shake her fingers while swearing because of course Gideon bit her.
She has zero interest in helping Harrowhark – a teenager with almost as much “fuck you back” attitude as Gideon – become a Lyctor, and in what’s just the most recent example of her life not going at all the way she wants it to, she ends up being bullied/manipulated/bribed into traveling to the First House as cavalier to the heir of the Ninth House anyway.
“I would have thought you would be happy that I needed you,” she admitted. “That I showed you my girlish and vulnerable heart.”
“Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,” said Gideon.
“That’s not a ‘no’…”
There are many, many things that surprised me about this book, but the very first one to catch my attention was the style. The setting is almost Lovecraftian, but the style is down-to-earth, sometimes earthy and often downright gutter-profanity. It’s the language of a conversation on Tumblr or Twitter. “Ass” as an adverb. “Nope” as a verb. And it absolutely works. I love love love how Muir phrases things, with dialog that ends in a smirk or a snarl, or the kind of immersive description that feels so effortless because it can convey the maximum amount of detail in the minimum amount of space. An entire scene of two characters going into completely understandable and completely useless hysterics and everyone else’s patient response is perfectly rendered in, not kidding here, three sentences. If the writing didn’t have this kind of casual style then it would run the risk of being melodramatic, what with the labyrinthian ancient mansion, animated skeletons serving dinner and running around putting buckets under the leaks during a thunderstorm, and magic that uses bones. Or souls. Or flesh.
“Isn’t this the part where you give me intel,” Gideon said, standing up and flexing her stiff muscles, “tell me all you know of the tasks ahead, who we’re with, what to expect.?”
“God, no!” said Harrow. “All you need to know is that you’ll do what I say, or I’ll mix bone meal in your breakfast and punch my way through your gut.”
Harrowhark can raise full skeletons (or functioning parts of skeletons) from a fragment of bone. Other necromancers read the energy left over in a corpse, or drain energy from other humans. Each necromancer/cavalier pair is from a different planet, with a different power, relationship with each other, opinions about the other Houses, and reason for wanting to be at Canaan House in the first place. I had to make liberal use of the Dramatis Personae at the start of the book, since characters can be referred to by their name, the title their House gives them, a Latin variation on their House’s number, or Gideon’s nicknames for anyone.
(I’ll give you these for free: “the ghastly teens” are the Baron and Knight from Fourth House, and they’re friends with Magnus Quinn, cavalier of Fifth House. Octakiseron – the necromancer of Eighth House – hates the very existence of Ninth House, and Gideon has the hots for the beautiful necromancer of Seventh House pretty much from the second Dulcina collapses on the shuttle landing pad. You’re welcome.)
Things become infinitely more complicated when you take into account that nobody in Caanan House even knows what the goal is, much less what they’re supposed to do to reach it. What’s up with the keys they’re finding? Do you become a Lyctor by unlocking a door to information, or to power? Is this something that needs everyone to work together on as a team, or is it a competition? And if it’s a competition, what’s preventing people from taking or stealing everyone’s keys, or just removing the other players?
The answer to that last question is: nothing. The only reason it doesn’t become a free-for-all is because no one even knows if that will help. And it makes matters worse when some of the Houses (het hem, Second House) think they’re the only ones with the authority to make demands.
“Warden, the Sixth is the Emperor’s Reason. I asked you earlier, and I’m telling you now: hand over what keys you’ve won for my safekeeping.”
The Sixth, the Emperor’s Reason, blinked.
“With all respect,” he said, “piss off.”
The story is fascinating from the start, but things really pick up speed once the first casualties appear. There is of course no way to really know if a fellow necromancer is doing the killing or if there’s something lurking in the shadowy maze-like halls of Caanan House that absolutely does not want them there.
I had to check the wiki article about Tamsyn Muir to see if she had screen-writing experience before her first novel (I don’t think she does, she’s just that good), because she does such an amazing job of creating cinematic moments. Little things like the way the light hits a sword blade, Gideon reaching out a toe to stop a chair from toppling after someone stands up dramatically, or the sight of a distant shuttle toppling off of a landing pad into the ocean, silently, in the dark. Then there are big moments; a full-on battle with a monster made from bone, an unbelievably satisfying sword fight with someone who’s so much better than their opponent thought. There are screaming arguments – real ones where one comment is taken the wrong way and a whole history’s worth of poison comes out – revelations about the history of Ninth House, and heartbreaking final stands that are so perfect they gave me shivers.
Best of all, this book is the first of a trilogy. And there’s every evidence that as epic as book 1 was, it’s just the prologue for a much larger story. Book 2 (not gonna give you the title, it might count as a spoiler) is scheduled to come out in (checks online) seventy days. Can you tell I’m already looking forward to it?