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jackContinued recap. Last time covered ancient events about the resurrection, and status quo of the empire in the 10,000 years since. This time covers the events from the last generation or so leading up to the books. Next time will discuss events during Gideon's lifetime.
I think the two bits I wished were book series in their own right were the swashbuckling emotional drama of John and the lyctors flirting and feuding with each other during their immortality, and Gideon and Harrowhark's emotionally charged feuding as teens. I guess being of Tumblr, Tamsin Muir knows that everyone can fill in those parts, and skipped to writing the "ok, after the necromancer relationship anime got SERIOUS" part :)
Recentish History
Augustine and Mercymorn still resent the death of their cavaliers and become increasingly suspicious of John's version of events. They hatch a plot to seduce John, get his sperm, grow a fetus, to use to spoof the "only John ever" magic locks on the Alecto's tomb, and see what's really inside. They can't go back to the solar system themselves without risking bringing a resurrection beast so they collaborate with one of the leaders of blood of eden, Wake.
Wake wants to inconvenience or hurt the emperor in any way she can. It feels personal to her two, although AFAIK she's not immortal or anything, she just hates the emperor for being the emperor.
John doesn't know about the baby plot, but sends Gideon to hunt down Wake. Gideon's cavalier Pyrrha is intermittently awake in his mind, maybe more so over time. She periodically emerges, and starts an affair with Wake during the hunt. Gideon ends up joining the affair two, while still hunting Wake.
A lot of things go wrong with the baby plot because plots are hard to get right. Wake ends up with the sperm but nothing else, and in desperation implants it in herself and grows a baby. Gideon tracks her down and thinks the baby may be his, but throws her out of an airlock anyway. She died because the life support briefcase for the baby siphoned off her life support on the way down. I can't find a citation now but I think she didn't want that, even though everyone assumes she sacrificed herself for her daughter.
She falls down the shaft to the Ninth house on Pluto. The only thing she manages to say is screaming "Gideon" in anger, but the ninth house people assume this is about the baby. They bring the baby into the ninth house.
Wake's ghost attaches to her skeleton, which is later recycled into a regular skeleton-drudge.
Ref
As always I probably got some parts wrong. There's probably a few things which the books gestured towards which don't fit together perfectly too, which always makes it hard to be sure when you've read too much into it and when not.
If you're interested in other summaries, it's worth checking out someone's timeline: https://darkveracity.tumblr.com/post/638331299048849408/presenting-the-complete-locked-tomb-timeline and reading the fandom wiki for some of the most notable characters https://thelockedtomb.fandom.com/wiki/John_Gaius. I didn't find anywhere with a good list of "Unanswered questions and most likely answers" like there used to be for Wheel and Time and Name of the Wind, but browsing the entries reminded me of most of the confusing clues.
I think the two bits I wished were book series in their own right were the swashbuckling emotional drama of John and the lyctors flirting and feuding with each other during their immortality, and Gideon and Harrowhark's emotionally charged feuding as teens. I guess being of Tumblr, Tamsin Muir knows that everyone can fill in those parts, and skipped to writing the "ok, after the necromancer relationship anime got SERIOUS" part :)
Recentish History
Augustine and Mercymorn still resent the death of their cavaliers and become increasingly suspicious of John's version of events. They hatch a plot to seduce John, get his sperm, grow a fetus, to use to spoof the "only John ever" magic locks on the Alecto's tomb, and see what's really inside. They can't go back to the solar system themselves without risking bringing a resurrection beast so they collaborate with one of the leaders of blood of eden, Wake.
Wake wants to inconvenience or hurt the emperor in any way she can. It feels personal to her two, although AFAIK she's not immortal or anything, she just hates the emperor for being the emperor.
John doesn't know about the baby plot, but sends Gideon to hunt down Wake. Gideon's cavalier Pyrrha is intermittently awake in his mind, maybe more so over time. She periodically emerges, and starts an affair with Wake during the hunt. Gideon ends up joining the affair two, while still hunting Wake.
A lot of things go wrong with the baby plot because plots are hard to get right. Wake ends up with the sperm but nothing else, and in desperation implants it in herself and grows a baby. Gideon tracks her down and thinks the baby may be his, but throws her out of an airlock anyway. She died because the life support briefcase for the baby siphoned off her life support on the way down. I can't find a citation now but I think she didn't want that, even though everyone assumes she sacrificed herself for her daughter.
She falls down the shaft to the Ninth house on Pluto. The only thing she manages to say is screaming "Gideon" in anger, but the ninth house people assume this is about the baby. They bring the baby into the ninth house.
Wake's ghost attaches to her skeleton, which is later recycled into a regular skeleton-drudge.
Ref
As always I probably got some parts wrong. There's probably a few things which the books gestured towards which don't fit together perfectly too, which always makes it hard to be sure when you've read too much into it and when not.
If you're interested in other summaries, it's worth checking out someone's timeline: https://darkveracity.tumblr.com/post/638331299048849408/presenting-the-complete-locked-tomb-timeline and reading the fandom wiki for some of the most notable characters https://thelockedtomb.fandom.com/wiki/John_Gaius. I didn't find anywhere with a good list of "Unanswered questions and most likely answers" like there used to be for Wheel and Time and Name of the Wind, but browsing the entries reminded me of most of the confusing clues.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-19 12:57 pm (UTC)I had a momentary misparse of this sentence in which I interpreted "plot" Doylistically, so that the sentence seemed to mean "it's easy to accidentally write a novel that makes no sense", rather than the Watsonian "it's easy to accidentally have your conspiracy achieve something other than what it intended" :-)
no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 12:04 pm (UTC)I hadn't realised how that could be read :) I think that can also be true. I know some of the "doesn't quite add up" is hinting at in-character things, but I think some is "oops, I didn't realise that set-up wouldn't quite fit when I wrote more" and some is "different expectations of how interstellar travel works"
In this case, I forgot the details of how Wake ended up with no ova or incubator, whether one of the others sabotaged them, or they were delayed unavoidably, or delayed through someone screwing up, or delayed through the plan being over-complicated. But I summarised it as "things went wrong somehow" :) Now I think about it, I don't know why Wake couldn't have brought her own equipment other than the sperm sample.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-19 06:40 pm (UTC)> I can't find a citation now but I think she didn't want that, even though everyone assumes she sacrificed herself for her daughter.
HtN chapter 50 seems like the most plausible place but I can't find her saying either way. She does say she always see the job through but that could go either way: with another sperm sample she could abandon Gideon and try again, provided she was still alive. Without, better to save the baby and hope things work out (which they did!)
I think the main bit of evidence for the self-sacrifice theory (or at least, willingness to self-sacrifice if the O2 didn't hold out) is that she did actually wire up the baby's life support to her suit; that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that happens unintentionally.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-20 12:08 pm (UTC)Yeah, I looked a bit for any quotes and couldn't find any. I felt like I remembered her saying (possibly in some sort of snippet from a ghost which wasn't clearly her) that she wanted to disconnect the baby's life support but couldn't, but I can't find any mention of that now so I may have imagined it.