I have now read the first two instalments of the Locked Tomb series, by Tamsyn Muir, and I am loving it. Mixing a space opera theme with Necromancer wizards is an insane concept, and it works.

As ever, in a killing game scenario where you know the characters you like most are probably going to end up dead, it’s difficult to form an attachment, yet even knowing this eventuality I still ended up really enjoying the different characters. I think more so in the first book than the second, because the first book presents the characters in a more “normal” way, if that’s the right phrasing to use. The love-hate (mostly hate) back and forth between Gideon and Harrow is amazing, and her interactions with the others are endearing and really brings the cast alive.

Though I found it incredibly difficult to follow what was going on in the second instalment, with writing that jumped about and left everything to the imagination, surprisingly I think I enjoyed the story more than the first one. It is almost a puzzle as much as it is a fantasy, I guess “non-linear Murder mystery” is another couple of genres that can be appended on to the description of the series. This one literalises the concept of an unreliable narrator.

Muir’s writing throughout is delicious, writing with as many literary words I’ve never seen used in English as she does technical words for anatomy. Either she had a lot of fun with a Thesaurus or she’s been reading dictionaries since she was a child. And her world building is fantastic, including fully fleshed out glossaries and appendices.

I am looking forward to enjoying the remaining volumes.