Book Review: Ninth House
Let me just get this out of the way and say that no, I have never read any of Leigh Bardugo’s other books. If you’re looking for a comparison of Ninth House to, say, the Grishaverse books, you’ll have to go elsewhere. As I’ve said before, I don’t read much YA for a variety of reasons. But this book was trumpeted as Bardugo’s adult debut, putting it squarely in my sights. And even though contemporary fantasy isn’t usually my cup of tea, the description was too delicious to pass up.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern has come to Yale from Los Angeles, fleeing a grim past and a murder that only she survived. The offer from Yale is an attractive one: a fresh start, with a full ride, if she joins Lethe, the secret society which polices Yale’s eight other secret societies. But the societies play with dark and dangerous forces, and dangerous forces mean trouble. After a mysterious accident makes her mentor disappear, Alex must rely on her wits and her strange power to see ghosts to solve the murder of a young woman.
First of all, Galaxy is an amazing name, and it makes me a little sad that Alex doesn’t use it. Setting that aside, Alex is a very relatable and engaging protagonist. She’s the classic fish out of water stereotype; she doesn’t really belong at Yale, with its wealthy legacies and overachievers. She’s struggling just to get by with her normal classwork, let alone the extra responsibilities from Lethe. And her complicated past, full of drug use and dangerous home life, makes it difficult for her to open up and trust anyone else. That’s a recipe for conflict, even without the excellent backdrop of Yale and New Haven.
Speaking of which, Bardugo writes New Haven with the love of someone who lived there. It’s readily apparent that she herself studied at Yale, and both the university and the town come to life under her deft touch. It’s the little things that get you, the descriptions of the campus and local haunts, enough to really paint a strong and atmospheric picture in your mind’s eye. Bardugo drizzles the secret societies, their “tomb” headquarters, and an aura of creepiness over her love for the town, and the end result is simply stellar. This book is a big mood.
Contemporary fantasies are generally lighter on worldbuilding than a high fantasy, since they rely on our world for most details, and that’s true here as well. Most of the worldbuilding is focused on the eight houses and their specific brands of magic. It’s a convincing system, limited in what it can accomplish but powerful enough to make a material difference. Bardugo works in several opportunities for us to see the magic in action, starting in the first proper chapter with some casual haruspicy and branching out from there to contract magic, weather magic, and enchantments. All of this power is put at the disposal of the rich and famous, or the soon-to-be.
On top of this are the Grays — ghosts, which Alex can see without the aid of a potion. This talent is what makes her desirable to Lethe, and as the book wears on it becomes more and more apparent that this is not all Alex is capable of. There are other creatures too, demons of a kind, and it means the book has some pretty dark horror vibes in places.
You might be thinking, “seems like there’s a lot of death motifs, Danielle,” and you’d be right. This is a dark book. Trigger warnings abound, particular for domestic violence, sexual assault, and drug use. But the themes of the book are dark to match, and it all feels cut from the same cloth. This story is very concerned with how the powerful and the powerless interact, how the powerful maintain their systems of power, and how the powerless can take control of their lives.
The story is told in two parts: Alex’s section, which starts with a prologue-style flash forward then jumps back to proceed in a linear fashion, and Darlington’s section, all told in flashback before the accident that made him vanish. As a device, it mostly works. The story does feel a little slow in places at the beginning, but the parallel threads allow Bardugo to maintain suspense and work up to several big reveals (what really happened the night Alex survived the multiple murder, how exactly Darlington disappeared) while still allowing Alex to deal with the consequences of the main storyline.
That main storyline revolves around the murder of a young woman who has connections to the eight societies, and Alex struggles to get authority figures around her to believe her insistence that something is wrong. Everyone else is eager to write it off as a domestic violence incident. You can probably predict a lot of the plot just from this description, and I’d be lying if I said the story didn’t go to most of the places you think it does. That doesn’t make it bad though - Bardugo’s prose is solid, and her pacing works once you get past some of the slower bits at the beginning.
The ending is just the right kind. There’s enough resolved that it feels satisfying, like you’ve truly read a complete story, and there’s enough left obviously open for a sequel to address that you know the next book will be interesting. That’s all I can really ask from the first book in a series, to be honest.
As an adult debut, Ninth House works really well. It’s a dark, moody, atmospheric novel, with an interesting main character, intriguing worldbuilding, and some heavy themes. I can’t compare it to Bardugo’s other works, but it was definitely one of the best books I’ve read recently, and I’m very much looking forward to another Alex Stern adventure.
Grade: 4.75/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“The map still glowed above Tara. Little injuries. Big ones. What would Alex’s map show? She’d never broken a bone, had surgery. But the worst damage didn’t leave a mark. When Hellie died, it was as if someone had cut into Alex’s chest, cracked her open like balsa wood. What if it really had been like that and she’d had to walk down the street bleeding, trying to hold her ribs together, her heart and her lungs and every part of her open to the world? Instead, the thing that had broken her had left no mark, no scar for her to point to and say, This is where I ended.”
