Transcript of Episode 0: Frontispiece, Dramatis Personae, and Epigraph

We know you love to read, you little Sixth House fiend!

 

~Content warning for all our episodes: This podcast contains bones, blood, smut, and swear words~

 

Episode 0: Frontispiece, Dramatis Personae, and Epigraph

Episode 0: “Frontispiece, Dramatis Personae, and Epigraph”

 

Content warning, this podcast contains bones, blood, smut, and swear words.

 

Act I. Welcome, Penitents.

 

Hannah: Hello and welcome to The Frontline Fifth, a Locked Tomb podcast where brand spanking new novitiates explore the Locked Tomb series for the first time, while a couple of dried out bone witches cackle over how little they really know. We'll be reading the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir a couple of chapters at a time, starting, of course, with Gideon the Ninth.

But before we all get caught up flexing our thanergetic theorems and pining over the Crown Princess of Ida, please allow me to introduce our cast of characters!

I'm Hannah, and today I'm joined by my co-host, a research witch and warden of the Sixth House in her own right, it's the Midnight Haggette who conceptualized Frontline Fifth, Marie! Marie, if you were part of a human skeleton, what would you be?

 

Marie: I would be the iliac crest because I am known for my hips.

 

Hannah: I mean, she is, and that's a sexy answer. That's a third house to seventh house answer in an odd way. I like it. I like it. Marie, how many times have you read the Locked Tomb series?

 

Marie: I…..uh… redacted. I'm on my fourth or fifth reread this year.

 

Hannah: And that's all you do. You don't go deep on Reddit threads or anything like that.

 

Marie: No, no, of course not. I definitely haven't done that.

 

Hannah: How would you rank your understanding of what's actually going on in the world of the Locked Tomb?

 

Marie: Judging by Reddit, excellent.

 

Hannah: This cracks me up because I, on the other hand, feel permanently confused. I'm like very excited, but constantly my eyebrows are up, my suspicions are raised, my hackles are like *dying animal noise*.

So real quick, if you were going to give a 30 second elevator pitch to someone new, someone who literally knows nothing about this series, and they're only listening because we held them at sword point.. What's your 30 second pitch?

 

Marie: This is a locked-room haunted-mansion murder mystery à la ‘And Then There Were None,’ like Agatha Christie style.

There is necromancy. That's the magic style. There are swords, of course. Everybody is super gay. And your main narrator is a butch lesbian who is pissed to be there.

 

Hannah: Fucking incredible. I'm sold. I don't know about everyone else, but it's okay because we can actually ask some people who are new to this series.

We have today two Ninth House virgins on the podcast who have agreed to read with us through the morass that Marie just described. So allow me to introduce two stunning little buds of thalergy untainted by knowledge of the River.

We have the born Third House brilliance of Brooke and the classic Fifth House comedy and camaraderie of John.

So Brooke, why are you here?

 

Brooke: Well, for context, when Hannah and Marie promoted this book and were asking for some novices to read along with them, they did not provide such an excellent 30 second pitch. They gave us “lesbian necromancers in space.”

 

*Marie and Hannah cackling in the background*

 

Brooke: While that's, you know, pretty attention grabbing it's more in a novelty way than something that can really get you excited.

 

Hannah: Hard to imagine a plot from there.

 

Brooke: But luckily, Marie has been providing me very excellent book recommendations for many years. And so when somebody is re-reading books that many times and is so excited about them, that tends to get you pretty excited, too.

 

Hannah: Amazing. So have you ever done anything like this?

 

Brooke: No, I've never even taken part in a book club, which is surprising because I'm a big reader, been a big reader. I was once, as an eight year old, banned from reading Harry Potter books and told to go play outside because I spent too much time re-reading those.

 

Hannah: I feel you really hard because I would take books with me outside.

 

Brooke: So this is this is absolutely my first time taking a fictional world, fictional characters, and projecting them out into the open. We'll see how that goes. Looking forward to it.

 

Hannah: Well, we're very amped that you're here. And just, you know, for legal purposes, I just want to clarify: we at no point held a rapier to your chest and made you swear fealty to the podcast.

 

Brooke: I do swear that I am here of my own volition.

 

Hannah: All right. Fantastic. John, you also here of your own volition?

 

John: Yes. This book's been recommended to me quite a few times, primarily by my wife, who's read the books and is an avid reader. Similar to Brooke, I was an avid reader, definitely when I was younger. It’s fallen by the wayside a little bit as I've been an adult, but I was also chastised by my parents for bringing the fourth Harry Potter book out to dinner with us the day it came out and reading it at the table.

 

Marie: Wait, wait, wait! Is this a common thread? Like, have all of us been told to go outside instead of read? And our way of dealing with that was to take our book outside?

 

Brooke: Oh, that was not allowed. I was grounded from the books.

 

John: No, my parents let me take it to dinner and then were upset that I was reading it at dinner.

 

Hannah: At the dinner table?

 

John: Like, you know, I feel like there was some cause and effect there.

Partially another reason that I'm here is that I want to become just famous enough to annoy my wife.

 

*gasps*

 

John: And podcasting is the closest I'll probably get to that.

 

Hannah: That’s love, you know.

 

John: So that's a dream of mine is to become just famous that my wife is mildly annoyed about it and it's a mild inconvenience for her to do anything. That’s how peak famous I want to be. I don't want to be recognized on the streets. But like if I'm out with my wife and someone looks at me and gives me eyebrows or a head nod, that would be perfect for me. Like that's that's my famous bullseye, if that makes sense.

 

Hannah: Gina would hate that.

 

Marie: Yeah, she absolutely would. And I fully support you in this.

 

Hannah: So again, just to clarify legal purposes, nobody made your skin slough off or shrivel or anything? You're here of your own volition?

 

John: I'm here. I'm here voluntarily. Yes.

 

Hannah: Okay, okay. So in general, how are how are you feeling about diving into the Locked Tomb?

 

Brooke: Marie really has ramped up the excitement level of this. When you put in a murder aspect of this, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

 

Marie: I love that murder is what got you in this.

 

Hannah: Brooke—pro-murder since 1992.

 

Brooke: It's the murder mystery aspect. This is this is exactly what I wanted. Yeah, lesbian necromancers in space, you're like, “Oh, interesting.” And then you say murder mystery and you’re like, “Yesssssss.”

So I'm thrilled for that. I've also heard it's been very polarizing. There's some people that I have mentioned I'm doing this with this book series and they say, “Oh, I hated that.”

 

John: I'm absolutely here for that as well. Like, yeah, I'm excited to get into this. And I also have incredibly strong feelings about this after reading just two chapters. We can talk about this, but I read it and then re-read it. And I had vastly different opinions the second time I re-read even just the first two chapters.

 

Hannah: That’s intriguing. All right. All right. Well, we will get into it.

I just have one last question. Brooke, John, if you were a human bone, what would you be? Iliac crest already taken.

 

Brooke: God, this is such a strange question. I think that this is going to be interesting to understand how much I hate my choice of the skull by the end of the book.

 

Hannah: I love that!

 

Brooke: Am I gonna really like reflect on my my choices here today? Not knowing what to think about, what to consider?

 

Hannah: We are all necromancers at our core. I think that's what I learned. And I love skull for you. And frankly, it's very Third House, which is what I assigned you to.

 

Brooke: *laughing* I’m so curious!

 

Hannah: John, what do you got?

 

John: Yeah, humerus. I was like, as soon as you asked that question, it's a humerus, it's got to be a humerus. It's the only acceptable answer for me.

 

Marie: Which to me, I think is a little more Fifth House. Very Fifth House.

 

John (not at all indignant): You guys keep saying this! And it means absolutely nothing. And I’m just going to like roll with it.

 

Hannah: Which is what I assigned John to too! I'm so happy about this. This could not make me happier.

For the record, I'm jawbone all the way. It's just who I am. It's mandible, not maxilla, mandible, love a jawbone.

 

Brooke: Oh, is the skull multiple bones?

 

Hannah: We're giving you the whole thing. I'm not worried about it. If you can be the rest of the skull…

 

John: There are three bones in your ear, there’s your jawbone, there’s…

 

Brooke: I'm a microbiologist! They don't got bones!

 

Hannah: Oh, God. Okay. And with that, it is time to jump into our first episode, which is just a little teaser. It's a little prepisode.

Welcome to Episode Zero: Frontispiece, Dramatis Personae, and Epigraph.

And before all five listeners come for me, I know we're talking about cover art, not about a frontispiece. But that is exactly the word that Harrow would use. It is perfectly on brand and we are all about vibes.

 

Marie: Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's the difference between a frontispiece and cover art? Oh, the frontispiece is on the inside.

 

Hannah: Yeah, it's like the inside of the leaf on the first page, basically.

 

Marie: When you didn't have books where you could put cover art on the books, because they were leather bound, right?

 

Hannah: Right! Sorry. So this is exactly the equivalent. The whole point is just to have a piece of art, and we just put it on the front now. But you're completely right. If it was bound in say, like human skin or leather, you know, whichever…

 

John: Well, human skin, human skin becomes leather after a while, right?

 

Marie: Like, I mean, it's just a title. I mean, leather is…

 

Brooke: Leathering is a process.

 

Hannah: Yeah, we should start a podcast about tanning.

Okay, here we go.

 

Act II. First Glance.

 

Hannah: All right, John, for our first episode, we're just taking a look at cover art, cast of characters, and the epigraph. So can you can you tell us what we're looking at on the cover of Gideon the Ninth?

 

John: Yes. And this is going to go into again, my vastly different opinions of this after reading it and re-reading it, but even the cover art... So when I first looked at the cover art, I absolutely hated it.

 

*general giggling*

 

John: It looks like what an edgy teenager on Deviant Art would do if you just fed them the tagline from Charles Strauss at the bottom: “lesbian necromancers explore a gothic palace in space.” It's like, oh, this is Deviant Art. Like this is like some edgy kid drawing this, and the main character is going to say “Nothing personal, kid,” and teleport behind you at some point.

And that was my read on the cover. And now, having read the first two chapters, which maybe we're jumping ahead a little bit, but I actually think it nails the aesthetic pretty well for what what she was going for.

So before I read it, hated the cover. Now I appreciate a little bit more. And I think it's well done. So that's where I'm at.

 

Hannah: I sort of love the idea that Tamsyn Muir took basically a Deviant Art/fanfic prompt and just ran with it and actually went deep and went hard and made it something completely new, because there are definitely those vibes.

 

Marie: What about you, Brooke?

 

Brooke: I mean, I think it perfectly reflects kind of what we're getting in the first couple chapters. We have a fairly androgynous figure on the front. There's a word—a phrase that the author uses in the first chapter of “greasy dark” that very much stuck with me, because it's this idea of like, something being dark, but also illuminated enough that you can kind of see the reflections of the dark and exactly how wet it is.

 

*cackling*

 

Marie: Wettttt

 

Brooke: The idea of a greasy dark. We've got this androgynous character of a sort of militant attitude on the front. I think it's so far perfect.

 

Marie: I don't think that I saw the cover art really for a long time because I got it as an ebook. And then I saw the cover art later once I'd already gotten into the book. And so I didn't have that notion of being like, “No, I would not pick this up.” But I would never pick this up based on the cover.

 

Brooke: Actually, there's a there's a guy I know who reads the Warhammer series, and he saw the cover and goes “Oh, I want to read that!” and I was like, “it's lesbian necromancers in space.” He goes, “uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

 

John: That tracks.

 

Hannah: He does want to read it, though.

 

Marie: Yes. He does. He just doesn’t know.

 

Hannah: I was gifted this book by an undergrad that I was working with— a truly brilliant, brilliant person, Fayth. And I was so touched that they had given me this book. And also similarly, I was like, “ick..” But I also, you know, I started…..Okay, you know what, we'll get to first chapter when we get to it.

Let's take a moment to talk about our cast of characters. So Brooke, lay down the law, what's in that Dramatis Personae?

 

Brooke: Yeah, you gave me a really good assignment here. I want to first talk about… I spent actually a lot of time on this particular section. It was before you had even asked me to kind of review it. So perfect job, as usual, you nailed my House, apparently, which I don't yet know yet. But we have basically all of the people that are going to be showing up in this book in their order of appearance, they say. And it is by House.

So we have nine Houses, it turns out, in total. And what we've done is we laid them out by houses. And each house has this cute little skull assigned to it.

And it's got like Roman numeral for whatever number house it is on it. And then it's got some sort of feature that I think is going to be a fun clue for kind of who they are and what we should expect in these kind of people. So the Ninth House is first. They have this skull without any mouthpiece, or mandible, is that what it is?

 

Hannah: Yeah!

 

Brooke: So the Ninth House has no mandible. And they are known as the House of the Sewn Tongue, the Keepers of the Locked Tomb, the Black Vestals; interesting little features to go with a no mandible.

We then go through the First House, Second House, Third House, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth. So now we're in order of the Houses. And each of these skulls, again, are kind of distinct.

The Second House has like a shield over. What do you call that? A face guard shield?

 

John: It has like a Roman Centurion-looking helmet on it.

 

Brooke: That's exactly what we're going for. Third House has jewels for eyes. Fourth House has a laurel that you associate with Romans. The Fifth House has some sort of potentially thorny branch crown. Sixth House is holding onto scrolls in its mouth. Seventh House has a rose coming through its eyeball. And Eighth House has its eyes covered with bandages. So each of these are kind of cool.

One of the things that I picked up on is that most of these Houses, One, well, I guess Two through Seven are related to something that belongs to the Emperor. Oh, I should say that first!

The First House is our both Emperor and King and Necromancer. He's got quite the title, Necromancer Divine, King of the Nine Renewals, Our Resurrector, the Necrolord Prime. Necrolord Prime, that feels like a troll. I don't I don't know where we get that from.

 

*giggles abound*

 

Brooke: But Our Resurrector, I think, is a interesting thing, because I don't… if I were to say this is Our Resurrector, does that mean that I'm dead or does that mean he does resurrection for me? Could be either. Up for interpretation at this point.

And then house Two through Seven are his Strength, the Emperor's Mouth, His Hope, His Heart, His Reason and His Joy. So, things that kind of make him whole, they take on bits of him.

And then Eight and Nine are different. They're keepers. We have keepers of the Tome and keepers of the Locked Tomb.

 

Hannah: So this is fascinating, because I don't think I picked up on that. I really don't think I did. But you're right. It's a very different vibe to be part of the Emperor versus to like have a task assigned by the Emperor.

 

Brooke: To be keepers, right.

And then there was one last thing that is kind of cool here. And it takes somebody who is an absolute nerd to notice this. In the ninth house, everybody's name has a little nine prefix. We should talk about pronunciations a little bit. Harrowhark Non-nay-juh?

 

Marie: Nonagesimus.

 

John: We're doing Latin pronunciation? This is going to be so much fun.

 

Marie: I don't think it's spoilery— At the very end, and I would not read it yet, Tamsyn has an explanation on her names. And they're very definitely, even though it doesn't seem like it, if you look at all of the Houses, they all have a naming convention that has to do with numbers.

 

Brooke: Yes. So the Ninth House, we have Nona-something, like a nonagon, nine sided. We have Novenarius. I think you can hear that in November. I'm not sure about Nav too much, but it's similar.

 

Marie: I think that one's like Welsh or something.

 

Brooke: Oh, we're just going all over the place.

 

Marie: Yeah, it's like Britain or Welsh. So it's a number name that doesn't sound familiar, it's a number name somewhere, probably.

 

Hannah: Right. If you Google it, it'll be a number name somewhere because they all have that shit going on.

 

Brooke: Yaaassss.

 

John: November used to be the ninth month.

 

Marie: Right. It used to be the ninth month. That's Romans.

 

Hannah: Is that true?

 

John: Yeah, when we shuffled, when the Christians shuffled the calendar around, a bunch of things got moved. But yeah, Sept is seven.

 

Brooke: Sept, Oct.

 

Marie: Nov, Dec.

 

John: Yeah, they were supposed to be seven, eight, nine, and ten.

 

Hannah: I think I have to give back my PhD.

 

Brooke: But yeah, so these are the kind of cute little things. We've got Deuteros and Dyas in the Second house. We have Tridentarius in the third house. We have Abigail Pent in the fifth house. So yeah, you can pretty much pick out where somebody's going to be if you have extensive knowledge of roots related to numbers.

I think that this actually really lent itself to studying it even more than I normally would have because it has the visuals.It's fundamentally those little skulls that are like, oh, that's going to tell you something. And then the poem that Marie will talk about kind of forces you to also go back and care about it for a second more. I think it was done very well.

 

Hannah: Oh, hell yeah. All right, Marie, give us the poem.

 

Marie: Okay, I love the poem.

 

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.

 

*Oooooohhhhhhh…spooooooky*

 

Hannah: Vibes, vibes, vibes.

 

Brooke: I think the comments about the dead are kind of interesting for a book about necromancers. It feels like a very normal feeling death situation. Five for tradition and debts to the dead. Sparks some curiosity about how the necromancers really interact with the dead.

 

John: Yeah, I was curious when I read that, like what style of necromancy the magic system was going to be because you’ll have like they'll raise them as like soulless ghouls, you have raise them with like remnants of their personality, or like fully back to life kind of…I don't know. I'm excited. I was excited to see where it would go based on that poem.

 

Hannah: This all, you know, doesn't give us a lot to go on, but there's some exciting hints here of what is to come. I'm basically tantalized out of my skin.

So, Brooke and/or John, do you want to drop any like we're talking unbelievably wild, random suspicions and predictions and projections based on no information whatsoever. Do you want to make just like an out of the blue call right now?

 

Brooke: I have no idea.

 

John: Yep, same.

 

Marie: What do you want out of a necromancy book?

 

John: Bones.

 

Brooke: I don't know. I think the fact that this is sci-fi really throws a wrench into my ability to predict what's going to happen. Now I'm very zeroed in on the fact that this is going to be a space thing. And it's hard to mesh it with these very sort of monarchistic feeling Houses. And the necromancy… I…. I'm at a loss.

 

John: I blame the writers of Game of Thrones for absolutely ruining the phrase ‘subversion of expectations,’ because I feel like every time you say that now, it just means they couldn't figure out what they were doing and they just threw it into a giant trash heap. And this feels like an actual well done subversion of expectations, where it's like, oh, it's sci-fi, but it's got…it's a blending of genres that seems to be, at least initially, well done, as opposed to just like, “Ha! We're subverting your expectations because we're subverting your expectations. Middle finger, middle finger, we're going to go work on Star Wars,” kind of thing.

 

*Marie cackling*

 

Marie: Not bitter at all.

 

John: No, not at all.

 

Interstitial. “Some various followers, cultists, and laypeople.”

 

Hannah: Well, my dear listeners, you've made it to the part of the Frontline Fifth where we play a game.

This week's delectable selection is a Third House classic party game. It's Fuck, Marry, Kill or Resurrect. Today, we're playing with a bunch of characters that Brooke and John know nothing about because Marie and I get joy out of their confusion.

 

Marie: Yes.

 

Hannah: We’re going to force our newbies to make choices based on name vibes alone.

So, Fuck, Marry, Kill or Resurrect, Dulcinea Septimus, Palamedes Sextus, Abigail Pent, or Colum Asht.

 

Marie: One of you's got to go first.

 

Hannah: I really wish y'all could see Brooke's face right now.

 

John: Hold on. Wait, can we get the characters again? Characters again here.

 

Marie: Dulcinea Septimus.

 

John: Kay.

 

Marie (correcting Hannah’s pronunciation): Palamedes. Palamedes. Palamedes Sextus.

Abigail Pent and Colum Asht.

 

Brooke: Okay. Well, for some reason, Abigail Pent sounds like somebody I would not get along with. I don't know. Pure name.

 

Hannah: It's intriguing.

 

Brooke: It’s the Pent. Hard P. So, I'm going to kill her.

Really harsh.

 

Marie: Okay. Abigail's out.

 

Brooke: Abigail's out on my list. There's something about... I don't know who Colum Asht is. This sounds like a male name. It sounds like he probably wields a sword. And so, I'm going to resurrect him. Maybe that's a useful sort of thing.

And then we've got two other characters. Dulcinea Septimus. What a sibilant name. Oh, it sounds so nice.

 

Marie: It does, doesn't it? It's so sweet.

 

Brooke: Feels like somebody you would marry with that such a sweet sounding name. And then Palamedes Sextus.

 

Marie (correcting the pronunciation again): Palamedes. Palamedes.

 

*A brief fist fight breaks out here over the pronunciation which we have carefully deleted for our more sensitive listeners*

 

Brooke: Palamedes. Yeah, last name is Sextus. So, I think we fuck Palamedes.

 

Hannah: I get it. I get it. Okay.

 

Marie: Okay. Okay. Okay. John?

 

John: Uh, as the token straight white male, I think I have to fuck the only one that seems like a... I guess Abigail is who we're fucking? because... Okay…it could be... Yeah, no. And then we're marrying Palamedes. Oh, God. This could go really poorly.

 

Marie (exasperated out of her skin, correcting the pronunciation again): Palamedes.

 

John: Palamedes. Sorry. Like, it's a calamity.

 

Brooke: Palamedes sounds like calamity.

 

John: Yeah, exactly. We're marrying Calamity, we're killing Colum, and we're resurrecting Dulcania. What is it?Dulcanius?

 

Marie and Hannah: Dulcinea.

 

John: Oh, God. Dulcinea. Yeah.

 

Hannah: These were some intriguing, intriguing choices. Marie, do you have a set for this one?

 

Marie: Um, I'm marrying Abigail.

 

Hannah: I marry Abigail, too.

 

Marie: I... Oops. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, shit. Oh, no, this is awful.

 

Hannah: Yeah, it's a hard one.

 

Marie: No, no, no.

 

John: This means nothing.

 

Marie: This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. No, actually, this works out great. This works out great. I marry Abigail, I fuck Palamedes, I resurrect Dulcinea, and I kill Colum.

 

Brooke: Uh-oh.

 

Hannah: I am very similar, but weirdly, I resurrect Colum, who I feel like does not get nearly enough credit.

 

Marie: Then who do you kill?

 

Hannah: Dulcinea.

 

Marie: Ah!

 

Hannah: All right, all right. Well, we can, you know, dig into the psychology of this more in a bit, but let's do once more with feeling.

Fuck, Marry, Kill, or Resurrect: Ianthe, Tridentarius, Coronabeth Tridentarius, Naberius Tern, or Protesilaus Ebdoma. John, do you want to go first this time?

 

John: All right, we're fucking Coronabeth, marrying Naberius, resurrecting Ianth, and killing Protesi— Protesa—Protesi…Oh God, we're killing that person.

 

Hannah: What's your reasoning, John, behind any of these?

 

John: Honestly, I don't know. I'm just throwing shots in the dark here. These things mean nothing to me, so I'm not sure.

 

Hannah: Okay, Brooke, do you want to try it out?

 

John: I do like tridents, though, so like, you know.

 

Brooke: Yeah, okay. I'm about to out myself, I think, as having read some of these terrible Sarah J Maas books. Ianthe is a terrible character in one of those series, so she is gone. We are killing Ianthe.

 

*Marie dying laughing in the background*

 

Brooke: You know, Protesilaus, I think there's like a Latin root for protect in there, or at least part of it, so we'll marry him. We like a protector.

Okay. That leaves us with having to resurrect or fuck Coronabeth and Naberius. Coronabeth feels like a good fuck. Don’t know why.

 

Hannah: I think we're all there.

 

Brooke: And that leaves us resurrecting Naberius. I think that's comfortable. Naberius feels important. We're sticking with it. Final answer.

 

Hannah: Strong choices. Strong choices. Marie?

 

Marie: Um, I am just going to heartily agree with Brooke and just leave it there.

 

Brooke: Wow. I did so bad on the first one, and I nailed the second one.

 

Hannah: I murder the shit out of Ianthe for sure. And I definitely fuck Coronabeth, but no, I agree with Brooke too. Okay, I agree with Brooke and Marie. Standing for it.

All right, we're just going to do exactly one more. Just one more. Big breaths to everyone. Fuck, Marry, Kill, or Resurrect, Silas Octakiseron, Magnus Quinn, Judith Deuteros, or Camilla Hect.

 

Brooke (without pause): Oh, we're fucking Magnus Quinn.

 

Hannah: Tell me more, Brooke.

 

Brooke: He's Magnus.

 

*literal screams of laughter; a Ninth House monk has a heart attack in the background*

 

Brooke: This is excellent. We're gonna... the rest of this I was not prepared for.

Let's go ahead and fuck a Camilla. No, wait, wait. I already fucked Magnus. Shit, okay, we're fucking Magnus.

 

Marie: Fuck them all!

 

Brooke: We're fucking Magnus. We'll marry Camilla. She's a queen.

Judith. Judith. Oof. We gotta kill Judith. You don't keep Judith's alive. And that means we're resurrecting Silas.

And, you know, not super committed to these choices, but comfortable enough.

 

Marie: Okay. Okay. Comfortable. Comfortable. John?

 

John: All right. We are 100% killing Silas, because I always... This is one of those...Silas the Virus from Con Air, one of the finest Nic Cage movies ever made. I just assume everybody named Silas is always a bad person. So we're 100% killing him.

We are marrying Judith. I just feel like that's always the wife name in Nickelodeon. And I was Googling furiously trying to figure out where I got that association from, and I think it's Judy Neutron from…

 

Hannah: Jimmy Neutron?

 

John: From Jimmy Neutron. But when I hear “Judith,” I'm like, oh, that's the mom or the wife.

 

Hannah: Mah wife.

 

John: Exactly. We're resurrecting Magnus. And then that leaves us with….Oh man, Magnus Quinn sounds like somebody definitely killed that guy and probably needs to bring him back. He's just got like a name that's just like, oh, yeah, they killed Magnus Quinn; he got killed offstage.

And that leaves us with... I guess we're fucking Camilla.

 

Brooke: That's a good choice. I say that knowing nothing.

 

Hannah: I feel like this is a really hard set for me.

 

Marie: This one is not hard. This one is not hard. We are going to kill Silas, fuck Magnus, resurrect Judith, and marry Camilla.

 

Hannah: I understand those choices immediately. And I respect them. And my hatred for Judith is like disproportionate. I don't know what my fucking deal is with the Second House. I cannot. I can't.

So, oof, so I have to kill Silas for obvious reasons because he's the fucking worst. But it's hard for me not to kill Judith. I want you to know that.

I'm going to fuck Judith, but it's going to be a hate fuck.

 

*Marie cackling*

 

Marie: Got it, got it, got it.

 

Hannah: I'm going to marry Magnus Quinn because I think he is perfect. He might be me. Do I just want to marry myself?We're going to have to do some, you know, psychotherapy after this. All right. I marry Magnus and I resurrect Camilla because I just want her to live forever and ever. I resurrect her forever.

That about wraps it up for our little game. Thank you for joining us for Fuck, Marry, Kill or Resurrect.

And now it's off to bed for our little kiddies while the grownups discuss matters of great import.

 

Act III. General Cackling.

 

Spoiler warning. This portion of the podcast is 98% spoilers and like 2% snickering.

 

Serious spoiler warning. Seriously, we will spoil anything and everything in the series up through Nona the Ninth. That's not what you want, turn back now.

 

**everything in the spoiler section is in white font-- to see it, you simply need to highlight**

 

Hannah: Before we get too deep into it, I want you to explain to our listeners why you thought of this structure for a podcast, because I think it's fucking brilliant.

 

Marie: Oh, it's because what I truly wanted was somebody to read these books and then live text me their thoughts as they were going. Like basically, I wanted to interview them as they were reading it. And I was like, that's not a reasonable ask.

 

Hannah: It is a shame that we did not read at the same time.

 

Marie: Yes, yes, it is. But luckily, we do have friends who love us enough to do a podcast.

There are two fabulous podcasts out there, but they're both rereads. You want to hear somebody's perspective for the first time so that you can talk shit behind their back and be like, “They don’t know!”

 

Hannah: When I read this book, when I read all these books for the first time, I was texting my husband with updates. And he was like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I don't know who any of those people are.

 

Marie: I cannot imagine getting updates about this book with no context.

 

Hannah: No, no context. But it was because I needed to tell someone. I desperately needed to be like, “what the actual fuck just happened?” And actually, after I finished Nona, I waited until my little sister and one of her friends had finished Nona as well. And we all did a Zoom with an internet whiteboard so we could create like a murder board of how we thought things were connected and what was really going on. So I'm very excited to be doing this podcast with you.

Is there anything that we want to talk about with just the cover art? Little like hints in the cover art or the Dramatis Personae?

 

Marie: Something that is interesting. In the Dramatis Personae, it says “in order of House appearance,” but this isn't in order of House appearance.

So, you do see the Ninth and then you go to the First, but you don't meet the Second house first.

 

Hannah: No, you meet the Seventh actually.

 

Marie: So, what I think it is, it's now in order of how the Houses were founded.

 

Hannah: *gasp* Ooh the order of House appearance in real life, in real time. The Houses appeared in this order, right?

 

Marie: Right, so the Ninth house, because the Ninth actually houses the body of Alecto, who is actually the soul of Earth, is the original. And the First house as it is now is, you know… like the Ninth came before the First house, but the First house is the First.

And then the Houses are named that not in order of like their planetary position in the system, they're named in the order that they were founded.

 

Hannah: I love that because we know both that they are… we know to some degree, which planets are associated with which Houses. So we do know that it doesn't go in order out from the sun.

We also know the order of the saints. And we know that that doesn't go in order of house Two through Eight, right?

 

Marie: Right, because the Houses were already founded by the time Lyctorhood was happening.

 

Hannah: Right, by the time they were becoming saints and actually becoming Lyctors. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is really intriguing.

The other thing that I think is like kind of fun that I've been thinking a lot about, we mostly only meet royalty from these houses, right? Like we don't meet like the common people who are hanging out. Aside from I guess, like Palamedes and Cam.

 

Marie: Like the end of Nona.

 

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. But like, I think like as a general rule, it would be so interesting to be in a House that was supposed to have these values. And like, what happens if you're just a really fucking like Gloomy Gus on the Fifth or the Third? Or what happens if you're just like a lazy douchebag on the Second?

 

Marie: Well, yeah. But isn't that also like why like there is some immigration, but not very much, but like, that's basically like, that was my impression, is that the only way that the Ninth House has people and part of the reason that it is so old is because you only get influx into the Ninth House if basically, you're a pilgrim, and you go to become Ninth from the other Houses, right? And it's usually older people who've already had their kids and their families. And there are very few…

 

Hannah: You got to get a lot of inbreeding, man, in all of these Houses, but especially the Ninth where it's so small, basically, everybody has to be related to everybody else.

 

Marie: Well, isn't that… I think that's in one of the short stories, like Cam and Pal are cousins. And there's a discussion in one of the short stories about how it's kind of hard on the Sixth because it's almost like the Iceland problem. You have to be super sure that you aren't fucking your cousin, because that's going to be real bad for the population.

 

Hannah: This is like Fallout, you know? You can fuck your cousin, but you can't get you know, pregnant. That would be crazy.

 

Marie: Exactly.

 

Hannah: Um, yeah, it's like, so funny to think of these Houses being introduced and these characters being introduced so long before you ever get a taste of it. Because we're gonna stay in the Ninth for the next two chapters, at least. I think it's chapter five or six that they actually get into the First.

 

Marie: It's not until it's not until the next Act.

 

Hannah: Oh my god. Well.

 

Act IV. Until We Meet Again.

 

Hannah: Well, that wraps up our first mini episode.

 

We will be back next week chatting about Gideon the Ninth, Chapters 1&2. If you want to follow along with us, our reading calendar is available on our website, frontlinefifth.podbean.com, and you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok, which are all linked in the show notes.

 

If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends and give us a five star rating anywhere you can. And of course, you didn't enjoy the podcast, feel free to lie.

 

And with that, I'll just remind you not to unlock any tombs or enter any doors without permission because you know, ghosts. Bye.

 

Frontline Fifth is a locked tomb podcast starring Marie Adomako, Hannah Grunwald, Brooke Anderson, and John Ryan. Our cover art was designed and created by Marie Adomako, who also edited this episode. Our fabulous music was composed and recorded by Blake Anderson.

 

The Locked Tomb series is a completely dope-ass book series by Tamsyn Muir, who does not know we exist and is in no way affiliated with this podcast.