one thing that I canāt let go of re: the locked tomb series is the statement I think it makes about identity and permanence and love. Like, I guess we all finished gideon the ninth being in love with gideonās pov and with harrow as the person she is in relation to gideon. Then we landed in harrow the ninth and we were robbed of both, and Iām sure we all felt like we lost something, and we thought the end goal would be to get to the point where we would go back to having the thing that we lost: gideonās vibrant voice and harrowās whole psyche. and then we landed in nona the ninth andā¦Ā
I donāt know for yaāll, but thatās when something in me shifted. phyrra was in the body of her most beloved adept and got to live with her longing for him and for wake redefining her identity; we didnāt care for her in the previous books, but we got to care for her now, and she was worth it. camillaās body was both hers and palamedesā and the coronation of their arc wasnāt to go back to how they were when we first learned to love them; it was to let go of both their individualities to become a whole new person, and we readers - just as nona - got to experience the pang at understanding that we were to let go of our concept of camilla and palamedes as individuals, while having to accept that that was the truest form they both could possibly achieve, that they felt no loss whatsoever, that what we perceived as loss was in fact their triumph. gideon - our beloved gideon - came back and she wore another name and we got to love her again, but names matter in this universe, and we had to deal with the pang of knowing that we could love her all the same, but she was - in fact - not the same at all, and when she antagonised our new main characters we found out in surprise that we resented her for it, that our loyalties had partially shifted. and thenā¦
and then there was nona. nona in the body of harrow, who got to be loved as a person separated from harrow because bodies are transient and the soul is what matters. nona who was born to disappear in mere months, something the people around her knew well and which didnāt prevent any of them from getting to know her as a fully fleshed individual and to learn to love her all the same. nona whom we readers too understood at one point that was a character built to fade away. we could have decided not to invest in her, then. we could have decided to be annoyed at not finding harrow in her, at not finding gideon in her. but we didnāt. well, I didnāt. I understood she was born to die, and I chose to love her all the same. because isnāt it how it is? isnāt this how love is? we are mortal things who fall for mortal things knowing full well they wonāt last. but we choose to love all the same. the impermanence of things isnāt a flaw ruining what should have been perfect; it is the very essence of things. we got to love nona even though she wouldnāt last. we got to love nona because she wouldnāt last. thatās all fine, in the end, because we got to love someone, and you canāt take loved away.
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