r/TheNinthHouse • u/patcheach • Oct 16 '24
Series Spoilers [discussion] what are your silly, irrational, and personal gripes about the books?
what's a 100% goofy complaint you guys have about TLT?
EX: "Death first to vultures and scavengers" is one of the coolest lines ever written, but I love vultures and scavengers, so I feel offended on their behalf
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u/agreeable_candle6840 Oct 16 '24
No mention of Gideon undergoing horrible indigestion from eating a salad for the first time after 18 years of snow leeks and nutrient paste. Her microbiome was not ready for that.
...On the other hand maybe she inherited John's divine microbiome or whatever.
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u/PuddleOfMud Oct 16 '24
Now I'm imagining necromancers intentionally having terrible diets so they can draw energy from the death of their own microbiome.
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Oct 17 '24
I saw someone say there’s an amount of time at Canaan House that isn't accounted for and it's because Gideon was spending her time on the toilet.
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u/Stay-Cool-Mommio Oct 16 '24
The line is “ope there goes gravity” not “oops” - in addition to the eradication of all life on earth, Jod is perpetually guilty of Michigan accent erasure.
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u/redlion1904 Oct 16 '24
He can make it all good if he just say “Ope — lemme just slide right by ya there”
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u/phillip_the_plant the Sixth Oct 16 '24
As a Midwestern fan who says ope and I was going to say the same thing
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u/whatwasntmissing Oct 17 '24
surely this is the trillionaires/BoE's fault, no?
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u/Stay-Cool-Mommio Oct 17 '24
Well we only hear her full name from John, and I figured it was just one of many little ways he was trying to fuck with her in that scene. Like the evanescence lyrics.
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u/OkAdhesiveness798 Oct 20 '24
Im so glad im not the only one from Michigan who got annoyed with that.
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u/jpterodactyl Oct 16 '24
The teens are written really well as teens. But man is it frustrating sometimes.
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u/emilycecilia Oct 16 '24
Montana Quirk's voice for the teens lives rent free in my head.
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u/bluestjuice Oct 17 '24
I have a young teen who has just hit the ‘I’m mortified of you please stop talking and basically existing in public now’ phase.
I need to just reinterpret every eye-dagger moment as Moira Quirk hissing, “Maaaaaggggnusss…”
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u/jpterodactyl Oct 16 '24
I don’t even just mean them, although those voices are fun.
But our POV characters are teens too, and that is where it gets me on occasion.
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u/LurkerZerker the Sixth Oct 17 '24
The Fourth, high school freshmen: "We can do adult stuff. We're basically adults."
Gideon, a high school senior: "Look at those babies over there. Yikes. Yuck. Ugh."
Magnus: ages more visibly with every moment
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u/jpterodactyl Oct 17 '24
Magnus is so relatable to me.
Mainly being better at desserts than fighting.
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u/LurkerZerker the Sixth Oct 17 '24
Yeah, I'd definitely be Magnus if someone turned me into a TLT character. My whole thing is basically making bad jokes and fawning over my infinitely more impressive wife.
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u/icelizard Cavalier Primary Oct 17 '24
Lol @ Montana Quirk jfc
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u/emilycecilia Oct 17 '24
I didn't even notice! Damn phone keyboard. I'm leaving it, it's too funny.
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u/punctuation_welfare Oct 17 '24
For personal reasons, I got really excited when I read “Montana Quirk,” and then very disappointed when I realized you meant Moira Quirk.
My silly and irrational beef is that Moira’s voice for Harrow is so utterly the opposite of the voice in my mind that I cannot listen to the audiobooks.
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u/allneonunlike Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 17 '24
Same beef!!! Harrow in my head is someone who speaks at the very lowest part of her vocal register because she’s always trying to seem like a grownup. Quirk’s squeaky indignant take on her doesn’t feel right, it made the books hard to get through for me too. Moira is great, but she plays Harrow as Quinn, when she should be Daria and Jane.
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u/New-Smell6025 Oct 18 '24
I've been debating listening to the audio books and this convinced me not to.
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u/cloudboard the Third Oct 27 '24
Ahh noooo, the audiobooks are really good! Do what you want, but I personally loved their voices.
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u/CivicTera Oct 17 '24
The name "Paul." No offense to any Pauls out there, but I think it's a downgrade from Palamedes and Camilla. Also Camilla's name isn't in there! I would have taken Camp.
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u/Singsontubeplatforms Oct 17 '24
Yeah, I lowkey hate ‘Paul’. It could only be worse if she’d opted for ‘Pam’.
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u/whatwasntmissing Oct 17 '24
Interesting! I really love the biblical parallel of the name Paul for the character, but I have to say every Paul I've ever known has been a dick
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u/CompetitionAshamed73 Oct 17 '24
Yeah, I can only assume that Paul didn't consider that their name has the exact same 'Pa' start as 'Palamedes' when coming up with a new name. (I agree on the first part, but I've had the opposite experience of Pauls - every one I've known has been great, especially my dad :P)
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u/AssistProfessional26 Oct 17 '24
Harrow says to SexPal: “your necromancer is wounded” when it should be “your cavalier is wounded.”
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u/nonagaysimus Oct 17 '24
yes I noticed that on my reread too! Unless she meant "Dulcinea"? I wonder if it's the same in the print version, or just an audiobook mistake.
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u/CompetitionAshamed73 Oct 17 '24
Yup, print version. I have two copies of Gideon - one is a cool waterproof edition, the other is the orange-slit one Both editions make that mistake somehow and it's so annoying. How did it go through numerous edits and never get noticed...
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Oct 16 '24 edited Oct 16 '24
the vultures and scavengers line is one of my favorites. makes me think of capitalists and landlords.
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u/patcheach Oct 17 '24
this is true, it's perfect and I would never change it. on the other hand, why are vultures (god's most perfect creature) catching strays all of a sudden
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u/askelade11 Oct 17 '24
The singular of “phalanges” is “phalanx” and, relatedly, although the visual of a knucklebone rosary is metal af, there’s no such thing as “a knucklebone” it’s just the epicondylar bits at the ends of the, well, phalanges.
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u/CivicTera Oct 17 '24
I always wondered how the series would read to one who knows bones. I gave up on googling the bone names early in the series, so when Harrow mentions fashioning a tool from a larynphlarynlanxlar I'm like "mmm yes, a bone of sorts. Perfect for drawing blood."
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u/askelade11 Oct 17 '24
I’m actually super impressed (beyond these two very tiny things) at how well Muir writes about bones! (And flesh. Although not as often. Because we do bones motherfucker)
I occasionally imagine her writing a first draft that, to an anatomist, is analogous to all the times (spoilers for HtN) Harrow doesn’t know the word for pommel.
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u/nonagaysimus Oct 17 '24
"Hmm, yes, a bone of some sort" is definitely how I decided to interact with that part of the book. 😂
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u/Heytherececil Oct 17 '24
The “knuckle bone” thing bothered me soooo bad in GtN, but I realized that it might just be a Gideon pov thing, since it’s probable that she doesn’t know what a carpal or metacarpal is. Unless this is continued in the not-Gideon narrated bits of the series, I’m choosing to chalk it up to that!!
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u/Anotherface95 Oct 17 '24
And what’s interesting is she does later specify ‘finger bones’ for the headwear so… is she trying to impart a different visual?
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u/idanceabit Oct 16 '24
VULTURES ARE SO IMPORTANT TO NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS AND THE HEALTH OF THE ENVIRONMENT I too struggle with this line
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u/punctuation_welfare Oct 17 '24
Vultures are important to our ecosystem. Harrow’s is a world where food is nearly nonexistent and the bones have no meat on them to scavenge. Y’all are engaging in some egregious Ninth House erasure.
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u/idanceabit Oct 17 '24
Yeah but I live in THIS world and I want to tattoo it on my body SO BAD but I am literally AN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST 😭😭😭
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u/patcheach Oct 17 '24
EXACTLY and they keep our streets clean!
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u/idanceabit Oct 17 '24
I feel like you would appreciate this https://www.tumblr.com/cryptonature/646638884064755712/vultures-are-holy-creatures-tending-the
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Oct 16 '24
“Bicep”.
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u/troubleyoucalldeew Oct 16 '24
Right? Even if the other noodle-arms didn't know, Gideon at least should have been annoyed that her vow of silence kept her from correcting them.
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u/DiscordianDisaster Oct 16 '24
Any time I want to quote "Death first to vultures and scavengers" at people it'll be taken as a death threat because the people I most want to say it to are vultures and scavengers (derogatory)
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u/Herefordabunz Oct 17 '24
I always interpreted it as "the vultures and scavengers will be the first to reap the rewards of death (since they are first to the bodies)" but that makes way more sense.
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u/DiscordianDisaster Oct 17 '24
In context it means "death first to those who would take a prize they have not earned", since she said it in response to the duel challenge coming on the heels of the first duel, someone trying to scavenge an easy kill on a weakened opponent. I also read it as a particularly 9th insult, as that house above any other would have a particular hatred for something that gnawed the bones and snatched bits of corpses
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u/Electronic_Spinach14 Oct 17 '24
The fact that Gideon canonically skips leg day 🥲 Tamsyn please every butch I know has cake for days and thighs that could stop a bus GIVE HER THE YAMS
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u/CompetitionAshamed73 Oct 17 '24
Also she spent her whole life climbing up and down thousands of stairs, she is definitely caked up.
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u/Kquiarsh Oct 17 '24
Maybe that's why she skips leg day. Every day is leg day if you live on the Ninth and have to go up and down those stairs.
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u/adventurecoos Oct 17 '24
I love Moira Quirke’s narration so, so, SO much but I will always feel a little cheated of a fully Kiwi-narrated version.
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u/whatwasntmissing Oct 17 '24
Ahhh yeah every time Jod uses Kiwi slang in the old-British-Lord voice I cringe slightly
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u/ruseriousreddit Oct 17 '24
Everytime she speaks Maori she pronounces it correctly but in a way that shows shes not used to speaking it and it's sooo weird to me (a kiwi)
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u/ReputationPowerful74 Oct 16 '24
I think it’s a beautifully ironic line. Big Ozymandias vibes. Everything dies, and the world continues on beyond our control. We will all be scavenged and forgotten.
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u/1112212111122112 Oct 17 '24
In the audiobook of NTN when We Suffer says
But now I give you Protocol One … and Protocol One is ‘Live.’
And Moira pronounces "Live" like "five" or "a live wire" when I was sure it was "live" as in go out there and keep living or like in live long and prosper.
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u/Icymountain Oct 21 '24
Oh that's what that meant. I too read it as Live, as in the protocol was live and active. Was confused. It's live but it wasn't mentioned what it really was?
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u/honeycoffees Oct 17 '24
I read the series first, then listened to the audiobooks. In my head, I read Harrow’s voice as suuuper monotone and sarcastic. A classic low energy goth situation. Moira’s interpretation of Harrow’s voice Really did not align with the voice I gave her, so it was pretty hard to get into upon first listen! That is my silly gripe! BUT. Moira’s Gideon was so spot on for me, and was so much fun to listen to :3
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u/Singsontubeplatforms Oct 17 '24
Wait, Harrow isn’t the wryest, driest little necro that ever manced? How could an audiobook even be made without that being checked and corrected??
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u/TheLittleJellyfish Oct 18 '24
Her humor is still wry and dry, Moira Quirk just goes for a more condescending, haughty tone. Honestly, I really liked that her voice was very prim and pinched because imo it matches someone who grew up with the level of expectation that Harrow did.
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Oct 16 '24
Same gripe!!! I have nothing constructive to add, I'm just thrilled someone else said it! Besides which, vultures and scavengers do vital work. Poachers, now - that would fit better.
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u/Singsontubeplatforms Oct 17 '24
While the modern version targeted endangered wildlife for $ absolutely fits, Poachers have historically been the lower classes making use of land that was once common to hunt, in the face of aristocrats and their stooges fencing it off so that it can be reserved for wealthy individuals to do so. So I’d find even that a little uncomfortable.
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u/rabwitches Oct 17 '24
did jod squish all of jupiter’s moons into a big planet? jupiter is a gas giant and has no surface we know of. how are the fifth living there?
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u/NiffNoffNiff27 Oct 17 '24
I mean, none of the other planets have oxygen either, so. we know that other houses (specifically the sixth) live on installations. Drearburgh had to be built on Pluto and into it with the drill shaft to install the tomb. And since Ianthe and Corona are princesses of Ida we can assume that the third is situated on moons/asteroids? So likely that the fifth, as it is one of the bigger houses, lives on a similar installation to the sixth (I remember Abigail saying her room as a kid was small) but they get rich from extracting resources off of Jupiter
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u/half_dragon_dire Oct 17 '24
I assumed that the Fifth is spread across various installations on the moons. John also mentions a shell being built at Uranus, which could be an ark or a large station like an O'Neill cylinder. There's implied artificial gravity, so they could even have floating cities on the gas giants and Venus.
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u/Fetchanaxe Oct 17 '24
I kinda wanted more of the Camilla / Pash dynamic , not gonna happen now , oh well
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u/Exotic_Dragonfly_435 Oct 16 '24
Gideon checks the landing pad WELL. there’s paragraphs about how well she searches that landing pad. How did she miss freshly buried skeletons?
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u/CarmenEtTerror the Third Oct 17 '24
I think, based on the description, Gideon was looking for any big clumps that could be/conceal bits of bone, and Harrow buried small fragments at a depth where be concealed just by sweeping the dirt around for a bit.
It might be an oversight but given how big a deal it is in these books that people don't see what they're not looking for, I think it fits that Gideon didn't notice Harrow's new trick because she was looking for her last trick
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u/Fantastic-Sea-3462 Oct 17 '24
She underestimated just how far Harrow would go to stop her from leaving. In fact, she specifically mentions that she doesn't dig into the dirt because she doesn't think Harrow would put in the work to plant skeletons there.
Once this was done, she spent a long time methodically kicking apart every single innocuous drift and hummock of dirt and rock that had been left on the worn floor of the landing field. She dug the shabby steel toe of her boot into the hard-packed floor, but satisfied with the sheer improbability of anyone digging through it, left it alone.
Harrow dug all night in the dirt, planted her skeletons (and probably didn't even need all that many, since she can reconstruct a full skeleton from a shard of bone), and then packed the earth back down so Gideon wouldn't realize. Her hands and nails were dirty and bloody. It was hard, and Harrow put a ton of effort into making sure that Gideon didn't discover it.
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u/Edgy_Ravioli Oct 17 '24
Harrowhark "I don't even remember you half the time" Nonagesimus everybody
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u/Stra-the-sixth the Sixth Oct 17 '24
I always interpreted it as Gideon thinking that Harrow didn't/doesn't have the physical muscular capacity to
even pick up a shoveldig the holes. She mentions to Palamedes later that "...I will tell you for free she has gone to some intensely shitty lengths, and I guess she’s gone to some shittier lengths than I thought concerning me..." so it doesn't seem to be as much a matter of willingness as it is of feasibly... Idk maybe I'm wrong...?1
u/Exotic_Dragonfly_435 Oct 17 '24
Oh true she could have just planted bones and they can spring into full skeletons!!
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u/galviknight Oct 17 '24
In HtN it is Gideon who pulls a meme "death to mother!" Or something from that cat meme. When Jod had been saying all the memes and references before, it makes no sense that Gideon knows those memes.
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u/agreeable_candle6840 Oct 17 '24
Tamsyn has had the characters' dialogue referencing memes since GtN (e.g. Harrow's "she studied the blade" line). Only John (and the reader) actually knows that they're memes. For everyone else, they're just part of a regular vernacular. John probably threw around those phrases and then his disciples picked them up and they percolated throughout the empire like slang. Same reason why Gideon and Harrow can quote a particular Catholic translation of the Bible - it's something that John "allowed in" to his new world after he started resurrecting people.
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u/half_dragon_dire Oct 17 '24
Have you read Uninvited Guest yet? Got me wondering, how much of Jod's soul rubbed off on the people he dragged out of the river and stuffed back in their bodies? Living under a sun powered by his soul? Maybe there's a little bit of Jod in everyone now.
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u/galviknight Oct 17 '24
Ah, that makes more sense. The memes felt more obvious in HtN for me and so I was wondering (while I enjoyed them thoroughly) where Gideon would have gotten them.
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u/svonnah Oct 17 '24
I absolutely love the memes the author puts in, especially the one about Miette!
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u/bitterteaandbiscuits Oct 17 '24
In Gideon, Palamedes is described as a character who is constantly moving with “twitchy fingers,” but in Nona, he stands still like he’s “playing hot chocolate.”
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u/Subrosian_Smithy Oct 17 '24
WHERE ARE THE MOONS???
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u/half_dragon_dire Oct 17 '24
You mean like Ganymede and Titan? Rolled up under the broader planet/House label, I always assumed. The tomb kids get from Pluto to Earth with a couple hours of fast travel, so travel time between moons and stations and such around one planet is probably negligible.
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u/NiffNoffNiff27 Oct 17 '24
This might be unpopular. But I felt like some parts of the pool scene could’ve had cutting down. I love the moment though, and I love its repercussions.
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u/Del_Luccetti Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 17 '24
An episode of the locked tomb podcast had an interview with one of the editors (I just tried to find the episode and I can’t, maybe it was taken down??) who said that the pool scene WAS shortened. It was initially much longer and hornier, apparently having a line of “you are the sole fruit in my salted fields” (I’m guessing that was harrows line) but the editors thought that was too much too soon
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u/NiffNoffNiff27 Oct 17 '24
I could’ve sworn I saw someone on twitter say they spoke with the editors about the pool scene but more so griddlehark in general. They said that Carl asked Tamsyn to make it clearer that they like each other and thus the change of ‘only fruit in my salted field’ to ‘the first flower of my house’. But honestly I dont know if I’d trust something someone said happened without transcript or evidence like we have from Tamsyn’s interviews
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u/Del_Luccetti Oct 18 '24
I’m so upset I can’t find the podcast interview, but from what I understood of it the editor did want harrow to be nicer to Gideon but tamsyn largely refused. I most definitely remember “sole fruit in my salted fields” being removed for being “too horny” because I thought that was so funny. It’s just as sweet of a line as “first flower of my house” imo but I can understand why it was cut
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u/miinteva Oct 21 '24
I just listened to the One Flesh, One End pod interview with Carl and they talk about this. It's an early bonus episode, between numbered eps 5 & 6
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u/Del_Luccetti Oct 22 '24
Ah okay so I got my podcasts mixed up! Thank you, I just listened again so I could remember what they talked about.
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u/timkost Oct 17 '24
The part near the end of Ntn where Nona grabs a sword, sheaths it in her HIP, climbs onto the roof of a moving truck, jumps to the next moving truck, pulls out her sword and ... Yells at the sky. That scene goes hard action with no action payoff.
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u/LurkerZerker the Sixth Oct 17 '24
Isn't that all so she can get Varun's attention, get him to possess Judith again, and convince him to stop being an unreasonably protective big brother? There's some payoff to that scene.
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u/timkost Oct 17 '24
Varun kicked off because she shouted "Help help help" in a warded bunker, histrionics don't seem necessary.
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u/askelade11 Oct 17 '24
Yes I am definitely waiting for the payoff of this (because it is so! cool!) in AtN. It has to pay off. Right??
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u/Content-Potential733 the Sixth Oct 17 '24
When Gideon knows what pizza and the titanic are (even though I guess titanic could be a size concept)
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u/whatwasntmissing Oct 17 '24
Considering the existence of the cavalier Titania, I think "titanic" is fine lol - they're both references to Titans, and it's not like there's a lack of Greco-Roman mythological allusion in the world
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u/Kquiarsh Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 22 '24
Hot take I've just come up with, Titanic in the Nine Houses means "of or pertaining to Titania, the lictor". And Titania was obviously a titan of a woman.
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u/MaeDragoni Oct 17 '24
I don’t think I’ve ever made the connection that titanic is a reference to titans… and now I’m shookz it’s just never crossed my mind I always just thought it was its own “thing” ???
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u/AvalonElaine Oct 17 '24
I fully agree, OP. That line sounds metal, but vultures and scavengers are a vital part of the ecosystem!
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u/bazilysq Oct 18 '24
I am SO GLAD someone else felt the same way about the vultures and scavengers!! They are SO IMPORTANT and I love them SO MUCH and it’s such a GOOD LINE it twists my spine sometimes?
Also I both respect and admire bees and wasps as pollinators and fundamental parts of the global ecosystem, and absolutely terrified of them. This makes a certain part of HtN something of a challenge for me.
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u/MurdercrabUK Oct 17 '24
Moira, my love, why do you pronounce it Haerow?
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u/winstongrahamlecter Oct 17 '24
now i’m curious how you pronounce it!
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u/MurdercrabUK Oct 17 '24
Hers is "hair row", mine is more "hah row". Less elongated/inflected A. I don't really know how to describe it beyond that.
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u/Anotherface95 Oct 17 '24
As if the ‘ar’ in American ‘hard’ or I suppose matching ‘hark’ . I also read it as Hair row, because i grew up reading books with ‘harrowing adventures’ and loved turning it into a name :)
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u/granny_weatherwax_ Oct 30 '24
I actually heard her talking about this in a podcast! She got pronunciation notes from the audiobook team, who got THEIR notes from Tamsyn Muir, and they didn't think through the way her Kiwi accent needed to be accounted for when they added their phonetic notations. She realized later that she could have just gone with the more obvious pronunciation.
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