I have some concerns!
Publisher’s short description: “Featuring Ianthe Tridentarius and Palamedes Sextus, this story was originally published in the trade paperback edition of Nona the Ninth.“
The Unwanted Guest by Tamsyn Muir is short story (#3.5), built around being a play, meant to flesh out two main characters in the Locked Tomb series. I guess it’s time for a small rant, but I’m becoming more and more suspicious that the upcoming fourth book, Alecto the Ninth (#4), while be nigh indecipherable. I was already concerned when book three of the trilogy was split into book three and four – Nona the Ninth (#3) was a padded, slow, and mostly unnecessary story, focusing once again on a new place with new or warped characters. Muir has already demonstrated a tendency to get bored of staying in one place, with one plot, and it’s making her Locked Tomb universe confusing in a really bad way. I’m already taking bets with my friends about whether Alecto the Ninth (#4) will be written in Shakespearean English.
Muir’s work has always been playful, full of memes and quips and glorious dialogue, and her writing remains that way. The series so far (especially books #1 and #2) remains a highly entertaining read, full of action and LGBTIQA+ romance and some characters that I deeply care about. And it has attracted a devoted following.
I know this review is an outlier, and an unpopular one at that, and I really hope I’m wrong about book four. But The Unwanted Guest was such a mystifying mess that I’m not holding out hope that Gideon and Harrowhark will get to explore some haunted gothic palaces again.