#they have no legitimate government just armed soldiers riding around in humvees

[mayasaura]

The thing about Nona the Ninth that really blows my tits off is the politics.

Like up until now yeah, we knew our protags lived in an empire, and we got a few tantalizing peeks at how it worked, but it was mostly just a Fantasy Empire In Space

And then wham! Nona opens with our main girl living as a refugee in a badly destabilized modern colonial state recently torn apart by the struggle for independence and controlled by an uneasy coalition of armed militia and it's like. Oh.

So it's an empire empire.

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #this little details like.... the city's infrastructure falling apart bc no one is maintaining it in the aftermath of the revolution #new construction or controlled demolition takes FOREVER bc there's no one to step up in place of the Houses to pay the workers #they have no legitimate government just armed soldiers riding around in humvees #they can't form a legitimate government because the bonds of community and social cohesion necessary for that have been so badly broken #by decades—centuries!—of forced migration #ntn spoilers