It's eventually subverted, as Canaan House was meant to teach the heirs various advanced necromantic techniques with the ultimate goal of teaching the method to achieve Lycthorhood. The heirs were expecting Canaan House to be this, and are disappointed to find it is very decidedly not a school of any kind.

Academy of Adventure: Briefly discussed and parodied by Gideon.

They're also supposed to be haunted and, as Gideon paraphrases, 'chocka full of ghosts.'

Abandoned Laboratory: The locked lower levels of Canaan House contain a series of creepy, abandoned labs with the remnants of necromantic experiments.

She spends most of her time bored out of her skull. Harrow abandons Gideon immediately, leaving her to wander around aimlessly, listening in on the heirs of the other Houses, from worlds populated by more than senior citizens and bone constructs.

They are expected to somehow discover the secrets of Lyctorhood by searching through ten thousand-year-old experiments left behind by the original Lyctors. Instead of being instructed in the most ancient secrets of necromancy, the heirs of the Houses are set loose in a haunted tower with no guidance or assistance.

The First House, however, isn't quite what either of them expected. Unfortunately, there are no appropriate candidates left in the House of the Locked Tomb, so Harrow convinces Gideon to take the job instead. Tradition and propriety require her to have a personal cavalier, a sword-fighter sworn to her service. Harrow has been invited to the First House to attempt to become a Lyctor, an immortal saint of the Emperor. Gideon has been trying to escape for nineteen-odd years, despite Harrow blocking her at every turn.Īfter her latest failure, a new opportunity arises. She and Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the heir of the house, are the only children left on a planet otherwise populated by animated skeletons and dying cultists. Gideon Nav is a foundling who was taken in by the ancient House of the Ninth, last of the Emperor's great Houses, on the day she was born. Gideon the Ninth is the first book in The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir. IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD-the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!-Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

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