Bring me a stack of red forms

[bloodygranuaile]

 

I said I was going to read everything Tamsyn Muir has ever written this year and I meant it, but also I can’t find my copy of The Deepwater Bride right now, so instead I popped on over to Tor.com and scrounged up the hilariously titled Locked Tomb short story The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex. This one concerns the academic adventures of Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus when they are thirteen years old, although thirteen-year-olds with a remarkable ability to keep a straight face when confronted with a historical figure named “Doctor Sex.” 

The basic plotline here is a short mystery about a study that has been sealed for 460 years and yet, when it is finally opened, it contains--among much 460-year old academic detritus--a pair of skeleton hands that are unambiguously between 200 and 210 years old, no more, no less. Our bright young teen must therefore do some detectiving, which they do, and it is all very satisfying.

There are also lots of little tidbits and references dropped in about other things that happen in the world of the Locked Tomb, including some correspondence from Dulcinea Septimus, some tantalizing hints about the Resurrection, and a few jokes at the expense of other houses. There are also many excellent jokes about academic bureaucracy. 

Overall, a very good, if brief, read. Now I will go back to trying to find my copy of The Deepwater Bride and whinging piteously until Alecto the Ninth is published.