The Locked Tomb reading order (Gideon the Ninth, 2019)

Do not start with Nona. Do not start with the Sixth House short. Do not start with Harrow because someone told you it is “the real book.” Harrow spends capital you only have if you have already been in Canaan House.

This is a four-book argument. Three novels are out. The fourth is not. Short fiction fills gaps; it does not replace a novel.

The novels

Publication order is the only honest first read. Chronology is not a separate on-ramp here; the later books are doing things to the earlier ones.

Nona is not optional

Nona the Ninth looks, from the outside, like a detour: new name, new daily life, a city that is not the Mithraeum. It is still book three of four. Skipping it to “get to Alecto” is skipping the book that has to happen before the last one can.

If you bounced off Harrow, that is a taste problem, not a license to jump. There is no gentler middle volume.

Short fiction

Muir’s site lists three shorts. None belong in the numbered novel column.

Some later Harrow printings also include a short “Blood of Eden Memorandum for Record.” Treat it as extra material in that edition, not as a missing novel.

House rule: if your hardcover of Harrow or Nona lacks the extra, you have not failed the series. Check the paperback or the Reactor copies later.

Do not read the Sixth House prequel first. It is a locked-room school story that assumes you already care who those two are going to become.

Common mistakes

• Starting with Harrow or Nona because the titles sound sequential and you picked the one in stock.
• Treating Nona as a novella or a palate-cleanser you can skip.
• Reading The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex as book 0.5 homework.
• Waiting for Alecto before starting. The first three novels are already a sequence.
• Using a “complete” list that quietly includes every extra memorandum as a numbered book.

What to read next

1. The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) — If the voice was the addiction: a narrator who would rather watch media than admit a feeling, in a smaller room.
2. The Books of Babel (Josiah Bancroft) — If you want another climb through layered institutions, with a protagonist who keeps rewriting what competence means.
3. The Spear Cuts Through Water (Simon Jimenez) — If you want mythic voice and a frame that refuses to sit still. Gideon’s nearest neighbor is not more necromancy.
4. Imperial Radch (Ann Leckie) — If the empire-as-body problem was the hook, without Muir’s joke density. Start at Ancillary Justice.
5. The Craft Sequence (Max Gladstone) — If dead gods as infrastructure felt like home, and you want contracts instead of cavaliers.

FAQ

Do I have to read the shorts?
No. As Yet Unsent is the one most worth slotting after Harrow if you have it. The others are texture. Start at Gideon the Ninth (2019).

Can I skip Harrow?
No. The later books are in conversation with it.

Is Nona a spin-off?
No. It is book three.

When is Alecto?
Forthcoming. Do not invent a date.

Should I wait for the last book?
No. Three novels are already a sequence.

Sources

• Tamsyn Muir, The Locked Tomb — official novel sequence and short-fiction notes. Opened 2026-09-13.