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'ninth house' keeps watch over bloody mysteries.

Jason Sheehan

Ninth House

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Grungy magic is the best kind of magic. Grungy, dirty, street-side magic — hard-earned, poorly understood, wild and dangerous. I have little use these days for old beardos in pointy wizard hats, for powerful ancient necromancers or prancing elves.

Give me a ritual for an unbreakable pre-nup. A glamor to cloud the minds of security guards. A haruspex up to his elbows in blood, scrying the guts of a schizophrenic stolen from his bed in a New Haven reading buy and hold orders for the NASDAQ. Give me a troubled girl (read: violent girl, ex-junkie girl, and a small-time drug dealer, too) who can see ghosts walking the streets of L.A., snatched out of obscurity, from near death by a mysterious cabal of powerful people who want to trade her a second chance at a decent life for the temporary use of her abilities — to keep watch over the bloody, mystical, dangerous activities of the secret societies who surreptitiously control the fates of nations, markets, the world.

This is Ninth House , the first adult novel by YA bestseller Leigh Bardugo. The girl is Galaxy "Alex" Stern. And where she ends up is Yale, to join Lethe, the eponymous Ninth House which oversees the rituals and gatherings of the eight other "Houses of the Veil" — the so-called secret societies that practice there — Skull and Bones, Berzelius, Scroll and Key, the rest. Because in Bardugo's version of Yale the societies all exist around a particular school of powerful magic. Some raise the dead. Some can forge unbreakable contracts. Skull and Bones can read the future of the stock market in blood and guts.

Problem is, none of them are ... perfect at it. Their rituals attract ghosts. Sometimes things go wrong. Magic escapes, snaps around town like electricity. And all these preppy monsters in their knotted scarves and top-siders need someone to clean up their messes.

That's what Lethe does, what it's done for decades. It's why Alex Stern — sans trust fund, two bras to her name, a high school dropout raised by a hippie mom in California — catches their attention. Because for as long as she can remember, Alex has been able to see ghosts ("Grays" as they're called in New Haven), which is something that no other member of Lethe can do.

PG-13: Risky Reads

Reading 'dune,' my junior-high survival guide.

'King Of Scars' Muses On The Monstrous

Ninth House is a lot of things. Its emotional superstructure is a fish-out-of-water story — the girl from nowhere trying to make it through her freshman year at Yale, where everyone is from somewhere. Alex has classes that she doesn't feel smart enough for, roommates that she doesn't feel rich enough for, the wrong clothes, the wrong tastes, the wrong past. And Bardugo lives believably in this first skin, this initial level of ugly duckling strangeness that is familiar to anyone who has ever gone anywhere or done anything new.

But then there's Yale itself, which comes with its own (very real) history and fiercely local custom, language, vibe. And the secret Yale with its own (half-real) tombs and societies, safe houses and magic. Bardugo knows the first because she went to Yale. She knows the territory she's walking us through.

The second is the place where the real and the fantastic blur, where they rub up against each other in her head. Where a simple story of a girl who sees ghosts trying to find her way in a new place that's full of them becomes a mystery, a criminal procedural, a thriller done in shades of Connecticut ice and houndstooth privilege. Because Alex doesn't get long to settle in before there's a murder on campus: Tara Hutchins. Just some girl, stabbed to death by her boyfriend.

She's town , Alex hears. Not her problem. Nothing to do with the campus, the societies, their rituals or, therefore, Lethe.

But she can't let it go. That girl? She reminds Alex too much of her friends who didn't make it out. Too much of herself, if she hadn't gotten the offer from Yale while she lay in a hospital bed — the chance to wipe out the past, get a fresh start.

What follows is a spiraling helix of a story — a twisty (and twisted) flash-back/flash-forward see-saw that balances three central and interlinked mysteries. There's the question of what happened to Tara, the question of what happened to Alex that put her on this path in the first place (a bloody and ragged little story that gets pieced out bit by bit and is nothing like you'll expect it to be — right up until it becomes obvious exactly what it is), and the question of what Alex did to end up alone, without allies, poking around the murder of some town girl. There are powers at Yale who want it to be simple, ugly reality: just a girl killed by a boyfriend too high to know what he was doing. But Alex knows better.

The stories all come together in the end — a swirl of blood and heartbreak, fentanyl and magic. But in the middle of it all stands Galaxy Stern, the girl who sees ghosts. And for all the good work that Bardugo does in crafting a believable alternate world where Yale's secret societies work powerful magic to alter the course of fortunes and history, it is Alex that makes Ninth House so readable. She is as disbelieving as any of us, as innocent, as skeptical, as furious. She is equal parts hard and soft, vulnerable and powerful. She may see ghosts, but she doesn't understand magic — real, nasty, visceral magic. And in Ninth House , Bardugo gives us the chance to see it all — the real and the imagined versions of Yale, the rich, the powerful, those they prey on — through Alex Stern's eyes.

Just another girl who doesn't think she belongs.

Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, video games, books and Starblazers . He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, but when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.

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By Choire Sicha

Oct. 8, 2019

NINTH HOUSE By Leigh Bardugo

When a writer sets a fantasy novel in our dusty old real world, the general approach is: “Everything cruddy just like it is now, except, also magic!” The intrusion of magic is then generally used to make sense of inexplicable or terrible things in our world, for example, why the stock market does stuff. And cancer. It also is used to explain the sadness that young people feel. If only there were an enormous secret lurking just out of sight, providing meaning and conveying specialness upon the knower. …

The latest entrant into the wonderful and ever-growing library of “like here but magical!” literature is Leigh Bardugo’s “Ninth House,” set on the Yale campus in New Haven, that creepy old witchland. The secret societies there, like Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones, each have an array of magical powers that rich young people have been abusing for generations. (This explains the frankly quite bizarre architecture of Yale better than “rich people sure are weird.”) In “Ninth House,” the university’s secret societies are being watched by a powerful and even more secret society, Lethe.

The newest recruit to Lethe is Galaxy Stern, who has a very troubled past and, relatedly, has the rare and quite awful ability to see ghosts. Turns out they’re all around us! She is grateful, we slowly learn, to start over at Yale. Her story and the inevitable abuses of power she encounters unfold together.

When Galaxy is first shown magic, she is like all of us, or at least every character in this genre, in her relief that “the world they’d been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that there really was something lurking in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.”

As we grow up, we may start to believe this anyway, even without the spells and the extra-secret society.

This is Bardugo’s first adult book, but her young adult novels aren’t lacking for horniness or violence (the antihero of her Six of Crows duology lustily gouges out an eye in one particularly gross passage). Nor do these young person’s books lack for quite sophisticated and intelligent craft. Bardugo’s greatest power is ushering readers of any age through big, cast-heavy books with clarity and narrative precision. She is great at crime capers and misdirection. She can move groups of characters around a made-up city or a magical New Haven with equal ease.

Given the amount of sexual assault, drugs and torture I’ve consumed in entertainment aimed at young people, I couldn’t possibly identify what makes this book any more adult. Except: In literature intended for young people, the mature reader of any age can sometimes feel a bit led around by the nose. Most writers worried about the attention spans of their youngest teenage readers hit various nails on the head a little too clangily. Not Bardugo. But in “Ninth House” she seems to feel freer to let us into her world more abruptly, with a bit more terror and a bit less hand-holding.

For any audience, Bardugo makes unexpectedly strong rivers of stories, purposed by swift currents of feeling. As you step further into the nasty and confusing dark of “Ninth House,” you feel for her caught-up characters. That’s what usually gets discarded first in these genres when writers get distracted by world-building or struggle with plot. But Bardugo’s characters feel real — and she doesn’t forget that everyone hurts.

Choire Sicha is the Styles editor of The Times.

NINTH HOUSE By Leigh Bardugo 455 pp. Flatiron Books. $27.99.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

NINTH HOUSE

by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019

With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...

Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.

Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s ( King of Scars , 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home .” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

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PERSPECTIVES

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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THE DARK FOREST

From the remembrance of earth's past series , vol. 2.

by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 11, 2015

Once again, a highly impressive must-read.

Second part of an alien-contact trilogy ( The Three-Body Problem , 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.

In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.

Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION

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clock This article was published more than 4 years ago

After dominating YA, Leigh Bardugo delivers a fantasy novel for adults with ‘Ninth House’

Already a hugely successful YA novelist, Leigh Bardugo is delivering fantasy to a new demographic. Her adult debut, “Ninth House,” is wry, uncanny, original and, above all, an engrossing, unnerving thriller. The action takes place at Yale University, where magic complicates reality. Ghosts crowd the campus, and elite clubs capitalize on the power that pervades the grounds, using it to predict the markets and peddle influence. It is up to the student delegates of the House of Lethe to keep things from going supernaturally sideways as these organizations perform the rites that build their wealth and eminence.

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is an unlikely fit for Lethe and for Yale. She has no trust fund, no prep school past; instead, she was a dropout and a drug addict. But Lethe recruits her because she can see ghosts. It’s a gift that has brought her only trouble and trauma, but it’s a talent they need. Lethe offers her an escape, even if it’s one that leaves her feeling completely out of place.

When a routine magic ritual goes wrong on the same night a girl is killed, Alex feels impelled to investigate beyond her official capacity. She identifies with the victim, a town girl whom her faculty advisers seem all too willing to ignore. Alex’s peculiar gift opens new avenues of inquiry and draws her into a tense relationship with one of the most famous ghosts of New Haven.

Review: Leigh Bardugo returns to the Grishaverse with ‘King of Scars’

The world that Alex navigates feels intimately lived-in. A Yale alum, Bardugo name-checks New Haven’s buildings, streets, restaurants and stores. Except for Lethe, all the secret societies featured in the novel actually exist. These elements create a fluid feeling of not knowing precisely where reality leaves off and fantasy takes over, creating layers of mystery for the reader.

The story unfolds (and folds in on itself) in three timelines, and a reader could be forgiven for occasionally thinking, “Wait, when are we again?” The parallel trajectories create a dramatic balance of suspense and payoff, which occasionally feels convenient. During one gripping action sequence, a flashback reveals pivotal information about Alex’s past — a past we thought we already understood — just in time to help her in the present. There is a palpable sense that the narrator was holding out on the reader for effect, but the feeling of unreliability is salvaged by Alex herself, who is wily and cagey enough to withhold important details.

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Alex is a potent mix of flinty strength and raw vulnerability and a brilliant instrument to channel the novel’s tone, which is simultaneously elegant and grotesque, eerie and earthbound.

Alex stands at the crossroads of privilege and pragmatism, and her unique point of view opens the most relatable and often the funniest windows into the story’s themes: “It was one thing to be told magic existed, quite another to have it literally give you the finger.”

Investigative momentum propels Alex through some convincing misdirection before she comes to a climactic confrontation that resonates emotionally. Alex gets answers, but they lead her only to new questions, leaving readers hungry as a hellbeast for the sequel that is sure to follow.

Ellen Morton is a writer in Los Angeles.

Ninth House

By Leigh Bardugo

Flatiron. 480 pp. $27.99

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Ninth house: alex stern, book 1, common sense media reviewers.

YA author's adult fantasy has lots of drugs, sex, violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Numerous references to poetry and poets and mythol

Seeking justice despite the risks is very importan

The main character, Alex, doesn't know everything

A drugged sexual assault caught on video with deta

Flashbacks include sex with not much described and

There's everything here and large helpings of it,

One-time mentions of foods like Pop-Tarts and othe

Drugs and drug dealing in main character's past wi

Educational Value

Numerous references to poetry and poets and mythology (Greek and Egyptian). Nicknames for main characters are Dante and Virgil. Some real facts about New Haven, Connecticut, the Yale campus mixed in with the magical.

Positive Messages

Seeking justice despite the risks is very important here. In tandem with that, a reminder that the rich, powerful, and connected shouldn't be above the law, and the lives of these people aren't worth more than anyone else. On the minus side, revenge is encouraged and the main characters often use violence to get what they want.

Positive Role Models

The main character, Alex, doesn't know everything about her heritage but describes herself as "brown" and Jewish and possibly part Mexican. She came from a hard life of living with drug dealers and taking too many drugs to become a freshman at Yale. When a murder happens, she's relentless in her pursuit of justice to the point that she'll hurt anyone in her way, even herself and her chances at a better life. She seeks revenge with no remorse. She also protects those close to her with the same fierceness. Minor characters -- a police officer and a roommate -- are African American and Asian, respectively.

Violence & Scariness

A drugged sexual assault caught on video with details about a penis in a student's face and talk of many such incidents in the past conducted by a fraternity brother/serial rapist. Main character's vivid memory of a sexual assault when she was 12. Magical rites that include a surgery on a kidnapped mental patient and the voluntary slitting of wrists -- both people survive. A mention that these events are common and not everyone does survive. A stabbing murder. Attacks with a baseball bat, fists, knives, bludgeoning objects, vengeful ghosts, and jackals resulting in deaths, multiple injuries, and devoured souls. Some gore described, including hitting a head with a baseball bat and "chips of skull and brain flying" and a broken leg with bone visible. An intentional drowning and a death by drug overdose.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flashbacks include sex with not much described and a blow job for favors. Mentions of main character seeing lots of "ghost d--k" from a young age. Sometimes playful, sometimes harsh banter and innuendo around sex. Nonsexual nudity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

There's everything here and large helpings of it, especially sexually charged language like "f--k" and "ass." The main character is the crassest, spouting phrases like "brother f--king hillbilly."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

One-time mentions of foods like Pop-Tarts and other brands. Repeated mentions of Chesterfield cigarettes and Mercedes.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drugs and drug dealing in main character's past with mentions of her being high in early teens and a friend overdosing on fentanyl. At Yale, drug use, heaving drinking (with mention that roommate was going to get "s--tfaced" on Peppermint Schnapps) and drinking of wine at parties and with friends, sometimes to excess. As at all college campuses, most of the undergrads are underage. A (magical) date rape drug, a grandpa smoking cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Ninth House is the first book for adults by popular young adult fantasy author Leigh Bardugo ( The Grisha Trilogy , Six of Crows , Wonder Woman: Warbringer ). Her teen fans will know about it -- it's marketed to them as well. If you have an older, mature teen reader already well versed in R movies with lots of mature content, this may be OK for them. There's a whole lot of drug use (the main character was a former user and dealer and her best friend died of an overdose), sexual content, and violence, especially jarring sexual violence with a date rape drug and a video passed around to add to the humiliation. A mental patient is kidnaped and cut open for a magic ritual. People are injured and die in gruesome scenes, including a stabbing and the bludgeoning with a baseball bat (described with "chips of skull and brain flying"). Language stays pretty salty as well, with frequent use of "f--k" and lots of sexualized banter, some tame and some cruel. The main character, Alex, had a difficult past and uses the tenacity she's developed to seek justice for those wronged, and she's pretty merciless about it. If this is not a fit for your teen just yet, try the similarly themed Truly Devious and Shades of London series, both a bit tamer, and both by Maureen Johnson .

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (1)
Kids say (6)

Based on 1 parent review

Great book for adults, Not teens.

What's the story.

In NINTH HOUSE, when Alex nearly dies in a drug den, it turns into her salvation, or so she thinks. She wakes up in a hospital bed with the dean of Yale sitting next to her. He offers her a place at the Ivy League school and at the House of Lethe. Her whole life she's been able to see ghosts -- or Greys, as they call them -- and the House of Lethe needs her unique skill set. Alex's Lethe mentor is Darlington, a Yale senior who knows how all the magical societies on campus work, what specialized and often bloody rites they perform, and how to oversee them so everything is safe and secret, and all the Grey energy that surrounds them is contained. Darlington doesn't have long to teach Alex before he disappears and she's told to cover it up. Just like she's told to look away when a woman from town, a drug dealer, is stabbed to death near campus. But Alex can sense this is a cover up as well, and the deeper she digs, the more trouble she courts -- from Yale's secret societies with too much to lose, and from enemies on both sides of the Veil that she can't even fathom.

Is It Any Good?

This phenomenal and mature adult debut from a popular young adult author Leigh Bardugo is more twisty-turny-absorbing mystery than spine-tingling ghost story. Half the time, the ghosts that main character Alex see are just a nuisance to deal with. She's been bothered by the "Greys," and sometimes harmed and harassed them, her whole life. She forms a bond with one ghost, reluctantly, to solve a crime she knows the university is covering up. The more she digs, the more fascinating the story gets. It takes the reader in myriad directions: to many of the secret societies, a frat house, a prison, a drug den, a professor's salon, a warded safe house with a magic library, and even on the other side of the Veil. And the whole time she's missing her mentor, the gentlemanly and chivalrous Darlington, who's disappeared. What happened to him could be even worse than what she imagined, and is yet another intriguing layer of Ninth House.

Without Darlington, and with constant threats around her, Alex has no choice but to cast off her new Yale persona she's tried so hard to cultivate. It may help her fit in, but it's the grit and resilience she learned in her drug dealing years that will save her now. This Alex is reckless and impulsive and gets things done. Readers will be scared for her every minute as the pages fly by.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can discuss the campus sexual assault in Ninth House. What's been in the news about similar scenarios (minus the magic elements)? How do the universities respond? How can teens heading to college protect themselves?

What happens with the video of the sexual assault? How does it spread? Are there videos of humiliations that you've seen? How can you stick up for someone in that situation?

Will you read more in this series? What do you think is next for Alex?

Book Details

Author : Leigh Bardugo
Genre : Fantasy
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Flatiron Books
Publication date : October 8, 2019
Number of pages : 480
Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
Last updated : April 1, 2024

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Ninth House

“The best fantasy novel I’ve read in years, because it’s about real people. Bardugo’s imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story―full of shocks and twists―is impossible to put down.”

–Stephen King

BOOK ONE of the Ninth House Trilogy

The mesmerizing adult debut from leigh bardugo, a tale of power, privilege, dark magic, and murder set among the ivy league elite..

What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbid-den magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

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5 Starred reviews

From kirkus , booklist , library journal , publisher’s weekly , and bookpage ., appeared on 40+most-anticipated & best-of lists, including time , npr , new york times , the today show , cosmopolitan , entertainment weekly, vox.

“ Ninth House is a lot of things. Its emotional superstructure is a fish-out-of-water story … And Bardugo lives believably in this first skin, this initial level of ugly duckling strangeness that is familiar to anyone who has ever gone anywhere or done anything new.” – NPR

“Simultaneously elegant and grotesque, eerie and earthbound…Wry, uncanny, original and, above all, an engrossing, unnerving thriller.” – The Washington Post

“Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House rocked my world. I could not get enough of sinewy, ghost-haunted Alex Stern, a heroine for the ages. With a bruised heart and bleeding knuckles, she risks death and damnation ― again and again ― for the people she cares about. I was cheering her on the whole way: from the first brilliant sentence of this book to the last. More, please, Ms. Bardugo.” – Joe Hill , New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2

“One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in years. This book is brilliant, funny, raw, and utterly magnificent – it’s a portal to a world you’ll never want to leave.” –Lev Grossman, bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy

“Ninth House is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. There’s so much magic here that you’ll begin to feel it seeping into the room around you as you read, and characters so real you’ll practically hear their voices in your ear. Leigh Bardugo has written a book so delicious, so twisty, and so immersive I wouldn’t blame you for taking the day off to finish it.” – Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble .

“Mesmerizing… Bardugo’s New Haven is plausible and frightening, and I was one rapt reader.” – Charlaine Harris, bestselling author of the True Blood series

“With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.” – Kirkus Reviews , starred review ★

“Atmospheric…Part mystery, part story of a young woman finding purpose in a dark world.” – Booklist , starred review ★

“Genuinely terrific…The worldbuilding is rock solid, the plot is propulsive, and readers will be clamoring for a sequel as soon as they read the last page.” – Library Journal , starred review ★

“Excellent…Bardugo gives [her protagonist] a thoroughly engaging mix of rough edge, courage and cynicism.” – Publishers Weekly , starred review ★

“Instantly gripping…Creepy and thrilling…The world of this book is so consistent and enveloping that pages seem to rush by.” – BookPage , starred review ★

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Book review: ‘Ninth House’ by Leigh Bardugo

Lots of spoilers.

This book review was written prior to this website transitioning to AI-written reviews by Buddy the BookBot. This review is the opinions of Kirstie, the human.

I personally only read reviews after I’ve finished a book, in case there are spoilers. If I loved the book, I hope the reviews can show me even more nuance for me to love – and if I don’t like the book, I hate-read reviews. For this reason, I’m going to include massive spoilers because I figure that you’re here to hate-read this book (in comparison to the seemingly endless positive reviews she’s received from ‘official’ sources).

I didn’t hate Ninth House. But I didn’t enjoy any of it either – and considering it’s around 450 pages in length (and I was reading on a Kindle which felt NEVER. ENDING.) I found myself wanting to skip whole chapters to get closer to the end.

The skill that’s shown by some of the best fantasy authors (J.K.Rowling, Shauna McClemens to name a few) is to construct a world that feels realistic, and importantly, one that has rules which cannot be broken. ‘Ninth House’ is about magic, alchemy, and mystery – and for this reason, it should have a consistent magic system.

As popularised by Brandon Sanderson, there are deemed to be two kinds of magic systems in literature: Hard and Soft.

Here are two fantastic YouTube videos by Hello Future Me which delves into these systems in detail. But here’s a brief summary below:

A ‘ hard magic system ’ has clearly defined rules, consequences and limitations that govern what you can and can’t do with magic. For example, the Law of Equivalent Exchange.

A ‘ soft magic system ’ has a vague, undefined and mysterious set of rules and limitations to being used (a good example being Gandalf in Lord of the Rings who is capable of seemingly endless magical ability, but which is never truly explained or limited)

‘Ninth House’ is a soft magic system masquerading as a hard magic system , which makes it frustrating as hell. Our protagonist, Alex has rocked up to Yale with a traumatic backstory and bad grades – the only reason she’s been given the chance to study there being that she has a seemingly natural ability to see ‘greys’ (ghosts), and her benefactor wants to use her to protect the eight houses of the Veil, which are secret societies of dark magic and the occult. She is part of the ninth house, Lethe.

What do these houses stand for, you ask? No fucking clue. I had to look them up and even then I forgot numerous times because they sound so similar: ‘Book and Snake’, ‘Skull and Bones’, etc. Throughout the book, Alex comes into contact with various students from these houses, who all seem to have magical abilities or implements that allow them to do special things. And while there is a list of the houses at the BACK of the book (useless), as the story winds on, Bardugo simply adds new magical implements to the roster with no rhyme or reason.

Suddenly, she can be pulled back from the brink of death by being dunked in a gold crucible at Lethe. Another house has a blue acolyte potion called ‘compulsion’ that turns you subservient (and of course, because it’s Yale, is used by the students as a date rape drug). Another house has a magic compact mirror (?) which shows a person the face of the last person captured. Why are these particular things part of particular houses? Still no idea. It felt like whatever hurdle Alex came across, she could simply ‘discover’ one of these magical items to save herself.

This book was pegged as Bardugo’s transition from YA fantasy (to be fair, I’ve never read her other books) to dark adult fantasy – but in my opinion, it didn’t step into those bounds at all. The protagonist is 20 years old, which appears to be the main reason for this adjustment in genre, but she acts like a young teenager in pretty much every way. The book has sexual elements – often traumatic ones – but the way it is explored feels still YA to me.

For example, this weird and unexpected encounter:

“Hey Tripp,” she said easily. “You got a minute?” He turned her way. “You want to ask me to prom, Stern?” “Depends. Gonna be a good little slut for me and put out?” Tripp’s friends whooped and one of them let out a long Ohhhh shit.

I’m not sure exactly why this gets my back up, but I think it’s because all of these highly sexual ‘jokes’ she makes are totally at odds to the rest of her character, and are ALL really unimaginative ‘quips’.

“And don’t grab me like that again. I may be shit, but I’m the kind that sticks.”

One of his hands was cupped over her breast, his thumb moving back and forth over her nipple with the lazy rhythmic sway of a cat’s tail. Alex felt her whole body flush. “Darlington,” she had snapped. “Mmmm?” he murmured against the back of her neck. “Wake up and fuck me or cut that out.”

At this point, Alex and Darlington had barely spent any time together, let alone shown any sexual interest in each other. It’s really jarring.

Alex as a protagonist is very unlikeable too, as she can be rude to her friends (Dawes in particular saves her life numerous times for little reward, and Alex lets Darlington be eaten in front of her) and callous too (enacting revenge on a date rapist by making him eat a toilet full of shit, filming it and spreading it around Yale). Which is unnecessary. But regardless of her personality, Bardugo is clearly intent on making her a ‘badass’ and ‘feminist figure’, as she continues to force metaphors of non-consensual magic and victim-blaming at the reader. Aside from the odd sexual quips, she also dispenses with really bizarre ‘wisdom’: “Even alligators have parents, Dawes. That doesn’t stop them from biting.” (???)

I would have given this book a one star, but for me the saving grace was a particular scene with Hellie. Alex’s trauma leads back to a night with her best friend who agrees to sleep with a group of men in order to obtain drugs, and is murdered. Alex wakes up in the morning and sees her friend, but it’s the moment that we also realise she can see greys. This particular scene was very well written in my opinion, and made me sad for the character:

“Hellie was gone. But she wasn’t. Her body was lying on the mattress, on her back, a foot away, her tight T-shirt splattered with vomit, still and cold. Her skin was blue. How long had her ghost lain there waiting for Alex to wake? There were two Hellies in the room. There were no Hellies in the room.”

But the rest of it I can barely explain. It was bizarre and flimsy world-building and left me really confused. You’re thrust into this undercover magical world at Yale, with no context at first (the first chapter is Alex watching a man have his intestines removed and studied to tell the future, while greys try to get into the circle and ruin the ritual) and then no real explanation of what is going on afterwards.

And the final nail in the coffin – the utter pet peeve for me and something that I’ve experienced before in the train wreck that was ‘The Last’ by Hanna Jameson (which I wrote a review about here ) – was that the mysterious killer was unveiled to be someone who had only briefly been mentioned in the book earlier. In other words, as the readers we had no hope in hell of working it out ourselves. So where’s the fun?

Apparently there will be a TV/film about ‘Ninth House’, and Bardugo is continuing with her successful YA fantasy series. But I for one, won’t be spending any more time reading her work.

What do you think? Read it and let me know – did you actually enjoy it?

Book Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I have been staring at my laptop screen for the longest time because I am struggling with how to start this review. 🖤 Leigh Bardugo easily became one of my favorite authors through the Six of Crows duology , and I was immediately excited to pick up her latest release ( and attend her author signing ahhhh!!).

However, while Ninth House was a thoughtful and intense story that explored magic, mystery, trauma, and healing, I struggled to wholeheartedly enjoy this book. ✨ Personally, despite knowing the book contained gorey and dark elements, I found the themes of this book too dark for my personal liking.

NINTH HOUSE (ALEX STERN #1) by Leigh Bardugo

PUBLISHED BY Flatiron Books ( Macmillan ) on October 8th 2019

GENRES: Fantasy , Mystery

ADD TO GOODREADS // BOOK DEPOSITORY

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

Trigger/Content Warnings: rape of a child, sexual assault under influence of a magical drug, drowning, heavy violence, gore, drug addiction, overdosing, death, suicide, blackmail, self-harm, and forced consumption of human waste (credit to Melanie)

Ninth House follows the story of Galaxy Stern, or Alex, a freshman at Yale University who was enlisted specifically to join Lethe House , Yale’s ninth secret society dedicated to protecting the secrets and magical rituals of the secret societies that rule the world. ☠️

The story follows two timelines: Winter and Spring. During Winter, Alex begins her journey at Yale, meeting her golden-boy mentor, Darlington, and beginning her training to protect the human world from ancient dark magic. In the Spring, everything has gone awry with the center of the mystery surrounding a murder that can only be connected to one of the secret societies.

“Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.”

To describe the book as hard-hitting would be an understatement . Leigh Bardugo doesn’t hold back, pointing out the unchecked privileges of the elite and exploring the traumatic aftereffects of abuse. It’s raw and unfiltered, making it so much more real .

Despite reading all the trigger warnings and knowing that the book would contain dark elements, I found myself unprepared for the very dark scenes and themes of the book. This book was very different from the happy contemporaries that have become my brand so please make sure that you’re in the right mental state before picking this up.

“Only two things kept you safe: money and power.”

The best part of the story has to be the atmospheric elements , and I was in awe with how Leigh Bardugo was able to incorporate dark magic into the real worlds in a seamless way. It’s reminiscent of the ominous mood in Ketterdam, bringing back the wonders of crime-fighting and mystery.

Overall, this book just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t bring myself to love Alex and Darlington the same way I adore Leigh Bardugo’s other characters. The atmospheric elements were extremely well done though.

“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”

Again, I would proceed with caution and recommend that you ask yourself if you’re in the right headspace to pick up this book due to the dark themes and graphic scenes.

Have you read Ninth House?

What were your thoughts.

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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Review: Engrossing epic

Ninth House , Leigh Bardugo’s impressive adult debut is an engrossing epic, a multi-layered and deeply human fantasy novel. Read my full review.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Review - Alex Stern #1

Ninth House Book Synopsis

Alex Stern, Book 1

“Bardugo’s imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story―full of shocks and twists―is impossible to put down.” – Stephen King

( Flatiron Books , 2019)

Genre: Fantasy, Mystery, Drama, Action-Adventure, Thriller

Disclosure: If you click a link in this post we may earn a small commission to help offset our running costs.

Book Review

With the sequel to this novel one of the most highly anticipated new releases of January 2023, I thought it high time I experienced for myself just what earned Leigh Bardugo’s adult debut Ninth House its worldwide bestselling status. It did not disappoint.

While I do not read a lot of fantasy, the type I most enjoy are stories tightly linked to or embedded within the ‘real world’. Ninth House ’s Yale college setting steeped in history and notable alumni proved fertile ground for Bardugo’s skilful world-building and a stage large enough for her inspiringly ambitious mystery plot to play out credibly.

But, what hooked me almost from the word go was her strikingly real characters. And, Ninth House introduces us to some real gems. (I’m resisting the urge to spoil any of the wonderfully surprising story arcs by mentioning my favourites.) Some are highly endearing, some are less so — but common to all is a strong and highly compelling survivor instinct.

“They’d made the mistake of teaching him he could survive.”

With a multi-first-person alternating narrative often told in reflection, Bardugo gifts readers time to peel back her characters’ layers; really get to know each of them in ways and circumstances that feel organic. Even the characters’ responses to the ‘magic’ they encounter somehow feel authentic.

Related Reading: 33 Books About Time Travel, Parallel Words & Alternate Universes

Alex Stern’s traumatic backstory makes Ninth House very much an adult read, as does the violence and gore depicted. She is more than feisty, or even spiky. Her life experiences have left her world-weary beyond measure.

“But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

But that has not entirely extinguished her will to survive, or even fight to right a few wrongs along the way… she has been underestimated for far too long.

The magic in Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House extends well beyond the secret societies’ antics through to this story’s execution. It ranks as one of the most layered, gritty and engrossing mysteries I have read in a very long time.

Now I join this author’s legion of fans eager to dive into the Ninth House sequel, Hell Bent .

BOOK RATING: The Story 5 / 5 ; The Writing 5 / 5

Get your copy of Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) from:

More compelling fantasy novels:.

Stranger Times by C.K. McDonnell
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
Spellraiser by Tim Hawken
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

More Ninth House reviews

“ Ninth House is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in years. This book is brilliant, funny, raw and utterly magnificent—it’s a portal to a world you’ll never want to leave.” – Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians

“With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Atmospheric…Part mystery, part story of a young woman finding purpose in a dark world.” – Booklist (starred review) “Genuinely terrific….The worldbuilding is rock solid, the plot is propulsive, and readers will be clamoring for a sequel as soon as they read the last page.” – Library Journal (starred review) “Excellent….Bardugo gives (her protagonist) a thoroughly engaging mix of rough edge, courage and cynicism.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

More book quotes from Ninth House

“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible.”

Ninth House Book Quote - I class profanity with declarations of love. Best used sparingly and only when wholeheartedly meant.

“Alex felt something dark inside her uncoil. “You’re a flat beast,” Hellie had once said to her. “Got a little viper lurking in there, ready to strike. A rattler probably.” She’d said it with a grin, but she’d been right.”

Ninth House Book Quote - All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down...

“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”

About the Author, Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy , the Six of Crows duology , The Language of Thorns , and the King of Scars duology —with more to come. Her other works include Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Ninth House (Goodreads Choice Winner for Best Fantasy 2019). She lives in Los Angeles and is an Associate Fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University. Check out her website and connect with her on Twitter .

Ninth House

Quick recap & summary by chapter.

The Quick Recap and Section-by-Section Summary for Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo are below.

Quick(-ish) Recap

Alex Stern is a student at Yale who is part of an organization called the Lethe, also known as the Ninth House. It oversees the eight ancient secret societies on campus that deal in arcane magic. Alex was selected due to her unique ability to see ghosts, known as Grays. Unbeknownst to Lethe, she's also able to possess the spirit of ghosts and draw from their power. Her mentor at Lethe is a guy named Darlington, who has gone missing recently. When the book opens, there has been a murder of a local girl, Tara.

When Alex looks into Tara's death, Alex suspects that the societies are involved, though Detective Turner first thinks it was Tara's boyfriend, Lance. Dean Sandow, who oversees Lethe, tells Alex to stand down, but Alex investigates anyway. She gets help from Dawes, a Lethe assistant.

She learns that Tara and Lance were weed dealers who were helping society members grow magic substances on the side. They grew a magic drug called Merity, which makes people compliant. They also had been growing and distilling a mushroom for use in portal magic. Allowing outsiders like Tara and Lance to have access to these restricted substances could get societies disbanned.

Over the course of the book, we also learn Alex's back story. She was an outcast since people thought she was crazy. After she was raped by ghost, she dropped out of school and began doing drugs (which dulls her ghost-seeing abilities). She fell in with a bad gang, including Len her abusive, older boyfriend. One night, a friend of hers Hellie was killed while Len was doing a drug deal. That night, Alex realized she could possess Hellie's spirit, and uses it to murder all the rest of them. She was then found in the hospital and recruited into Lethe. They taught her how to manage the ghosts and ward them off and whatnot.

Alex uses a connection with a ghost ("North") to research Tara's death. In exchange, Alex must find the killer of North’s fiancée, Daisy, who North is believed to have murdered in 1854. Darlington had also been looking into her death. When Alex finally locates Darlington’s notes, she realizes that Daisy’s death corresponds with the founding of the tomb of the first secret society. Each founding after that also corresponds with the death of one woman. In other words, it’s these deaths that create the power nexuses that fuel the secret societies, and Tara’s death was meant to create a new one.

When Alex confronts Dean Sandow about her findings, Dean Sandow admits he killed Tara (a secret society paid him to create a new nexus), but also says that it didn’t work. No new nexus appeared. Professor Belbalm then interrupts to admit that she is actually Daisy’s soul residing in another possessed woman’s body. She is a Wheelwalker, like Alex, which is why they both have special powers. Consuming human souls keeps her alive, but also creates these new nexuses. Consuming other Wheelwalkers sustains her longer, but no matter what she can’t leave New Haven without decaying. Belbalm kills Sandow, but as she tries to consume Alex, Alex draws upon all the souls inside Belbalm to use their power to fight Belbalm. Daisy’s soul is extracted and consumed, and Belbalm dies.

We also find out that Darlington disappeared into what he thought was a magic portal, but turned out to be a mouth into hell. Dean Sandow created it to get rid of Darlington because he was looking into the creation of the nexuses. At the end of the book, Alex believes that Darlington wasn’t consumed, but transformed into a demon. She recruits Dawes and Michelle (Darlington's mentor) to go with her into hell to bring him back.

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Section-by-Section Summary

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is at Yale on scholarship. She is part of House Lethe (the “ Ninth House “), which was founded in 1898 to monitor certain secret societies on campus. Alex was given her scholarship because she has the ability to see “ Greys ” (ghosts), while others need a special elixir (the “Orozcerio”) to do so. The elixir is toxic and damaging to body, though. Before the Lethe House found Alex, she was a dropout and using drugs and thought she was going crazy because she could see things no one else could. Alex is haunted by the memory of a night at a place called Ground Zero that left her in the hospital and her friend, Helen “Hallie” Watson , and many others dead.

Her mentor at Lethe is Daniel “Darlington” Arlington . He is referred to as “ Virgil “, while Alex is “Dante” (reference to the Divine Comedy). A new Dante is chosen once every three years, at which point the Dante becomes the Virgil/Mentor. Darlington is attractive and privileged, but he something had happened and now he is gone.

The secret societies were established in New Haven because the veil between life and death is thinnest here. The Lethe is concerned with the “Ancient Eight”, which are eight landed secret societies with their houses/tombs built over area of concentrated power (a “nexus”). There are 12 nexuses in New Haven. Each of the Eight Houses is devoted to studying one branch of the arcane.

At Skull and Bones , they study prognostication. That night, they gather to do their quarterly progonstication. A haruspex digs around the guts of a person, usually a vagrant or mental patient, and then gives stock tips to all the members. The person is then stitched up and sent to a hospital to recover. Alex attends to ensure everyone’s safety. Since the Lethe was founded, only one death has happened, which was a vagrant who died during a prognostication. As the ritual takes place, the Greys get antsier than usual and Alex must make sure they are kept at bay. The Greys are attracted to life and fear death, so things like bone dust will ward them off. Still, Alex knows that something weird happened during this prognostication.

Afterwards, Alex is called in by Pamela “Oculus” Dawes , who maintains the Lethe residences. She tells Alex there’s been a death, a possible homicide, and Alex is needed on site. Alex shows up to find Detective Abel Turner (“ Centurion “). The dead girl, Tara Hutchins , is from the “town” and it doesn’t seem to be linked to arcane activities. Turner says it was the boyfriend, Lance Gressang . Alex leaves after using a “coin of compulsion” (magic coin) to induce the coroner to show her the body.

Tampering with the Veil leaves a stench, so Alex grabs a shower at one of the Lethe safe houses before she goes back and has breakfast with her roommate, Mercy . Marguerite Belbalm , a professor, finds Alex and expresses her concern over Alex’s academics. But she also offers Alex a summer job.

Aurelian , one of the Ancient Eight, specializes logomacy (“word magic”) and deals in unbreakable contracts or vows. Alex recalls the first ritual she oversaw, which was for them. Darlington had taught her to ward off the Greys, but things had still gotten out of control when one of the Greys grabbed her arm, something Darlington hadn’t thought was possible.

After the incident, Alex finally expressed her anger that the Lethe knew about her abilities as a young girl and simply monitored her until they needed her, instead of helping. Alex thinks back to when she first got her period (Greys are attracted to blood) and was raped by a Grey. Afterwards, she turned to drugs when she realized that dulling her senses prevented her from seeing them. She ended up dropping out and befriending a group of older friends, including a guy Len who she begins sleeping with.

In present day, Alex is bothered by Tara’s death. Dean Sandow told her to stand down regarding this death, but she borrows Darlington’s car to go to morgue anyway and uses magic to see what happened to Tara. She sees Lance stab Tara, but notes that Tara felt no pain. Turner shows up and tells her that they were on hallucinogens, and that Tara only had one contact from the secret societies on her phone, Tripp Helmuth (from Skull and Bones), but he thinks it’s unrelated. Turner also warns Alex to stay away, since worried she’ll mess up his case.

Alex goes to Darlington’s house, Black Elm , to return the car, hoping that he’ll somehow be there. On her way back she is attacked by a creature. A Grey dressed as a Bridegoom starts fighting with it, which allows Alex to struggle back to a safe house ( Il Bastone ), vomiting blood. Dawes tells her the creature was a gluma , spirits raised by the Book and Snake (one of the Ancient Eight) to serve as messengers. Alex knows she must be getting close to something for someone to try to kill her.

(In a flashback, Alex and Darlington attend a party thrown by the Manuscript , a society dealing in glamours and tricks of vision and consciousness. A fog machine drugs Darlington and causes him to embarrass himself.)

When Alex awakes, the Bridegroom Grey is outside, and Dean Sandow shows up soon after. Alex insists that there’s more to Tara’s death that may be connected to the societies, but Sandow reminds her that it’s a “funding year” for Lethe House and they don’t want to cause trouble. (The Lethe House is funded collectively by the other societies.) Alex says she understands, but continues to investigate anyway. Alex also recalls the night Darlington disappeared. Alex had been confused about what had happened, but Dean Sandow had assured her that Darlington had just disappeared into a portal. He thought a new-moon would allow them to retrieve him.

After Sandow leaves, Alex and Dawes’s next stop is Wolf’s Head , where they deal in shapeshifting. Dawes thinks they may be able to help her talk to the dead so she can communicate with the Bridegroom. (Book and Snake would be the best bet, but they might be trying to kill Alex, so that’s out.) To induce them to help, she makes a deal with them to give them a statue that another society, Scroll and Key , had stolen from them. Their president, Salome , tries to renege on the deal so Alex threatens her with physical violence until she complies.

To enter the Borderlands and communicate with the dead, Alex needs to die and be brought back, so Alex lets herself be drowned. There, Alex and the Bridegroom strike a deal. He will find out about Tara’s death, and in return he wants Alex to find out who killed his fiance, Daisy. The Bridegroom claims that Darlington had been looking into Daisy’s death as well before Darlington disappeared. To seal the deal, they exchange names which has the effect of forming a connection between them. The Bridegroom’s name is Bertram Boyce North . He also helps Alex see that Tara’s tattoo is a line from a poem that is associated with Scroll and Key , a society that deals in portal magic.

In a flashback, we learn some of Darlington’s back story. His great-great-great-grandfather made a fortune selling rubber boots. Over time, the factory fell to hard times and closed. Darlington’s parent were neglectful and instead, Darlington was raised by his grandfather. When his grandfather passed away the estate required that it be left to his parents, but Darlington was left with a small college trust and the house. His parents told him to sell the house, but Darlington refused because he knew his grandfather wouldn’t want that. Instead, he lived there, barely getting by. He started dabbling in elixirs as a hobby and managed to brew something that landed him in the hospital and led Dean Sandon to offer him a place at Yale.

In present day, Alex talks to Tripp to ask about Tara and to try to get her address. (The Bridegroom needs an item of Tara’s in order to find her.) Tripp reveals that Tara and Lance were weed dealers who dealt to members of Scroll and Key ( Colin Khatri ) and Manuscript ( Kate Masters ). Tripp was also hooking up with Tara, but he doesn’t know her address. Alex then goes to Turner and tricks him into telling her Tara’s street name. Alex also does some research on the Bridegroom (North) and Daisy. They had been found dead in a factory belonging to North’s family in 1854.

Alex returns to her dorm room to find Mercy distraught. A guy, Blake Keely , has taken a sexually compromising video of Mercy and sent it around. In it, Alex recognizes signs of a Manuscript drug called Merity , causing Mercy to be compliant to his demands.

Alex immediately goes to Mike Awolowo , president of Manuscript, and demands to know how Blake got the drug. But he doesn’t know, and they keep it tightly restricted. She also calls in a favor (she previously helped them by not outing them for drugging Darlington), asking him to magically recall the video. Mike agrees to the ritual and also gives her a powder to make her temporarily very persuasive. With the powder ( Starpower ), Alex “persuades” Blake and his friends to delete the video. She also has Blake take a video embarrassing himself (he eats his own poop). Finally, she finds out that Blake bought the Merity drug from Lance and Tara.

With that done, Alex goes to Tara’s place to take her retainer and give it to the Bridegroom. However, right after she does, a man dressed as a mechanic appears as if out of nowhere at Tara’s place and attacks her, breaking her ribs.

In a flashback, the book takes us back to the night Darlington disappeared. Alex and Darlington had been dealing with an interruption in the magic grid at Rosenfeld Hall , the former tomb of the St. Elmo society. St. Elmo deals in elemental magic and had once brewed weather there, and now it still causes disturbances that need to be monitored. As they do their work, Darlington realizes Alex has abilities beyond just seeing ghosts. She can allow ghosts to possess her. Then, Darlington sees that someone had opened a portal down there. He goes to close the portal, but as he does he realizes he was mistaken and disappears, being left in darkness.

In another flashback, we learn more about the night at Ground Zero. Len is Alex’s boyfriend, but Len is abusive and sometimes asks her (and Hellie, who Alex is close with) to “entertain” the guys he does “business” with. Len wants Alex to go with him to a deal she wants no part of, and Hellie goes instead. Alex returns to Ground Zero to find Hellie dead. She lets Hellie’s ghost possess her and murders everyone, including Len. Hellie then guides her to the river to wash off the blood. Afterwards, Alex hadn’t been a suspect because she had no blood on her and was deemed to weak to have done it.

In present day, the mechanic continues to attack Alex. She forcibly links up with the Bridegroom/North (like she had with Hallie) so that she has the power to fight back. Then, Turner happens to shows up and stop the mechanic. He’s shocked to discover that the mechanic is Lance, who was supposed to be in a jail cell. Alex explains that it’s portal magic and tells him to take her to Dawes. Alex also notes that as Lance attacked her, he had wanted to know who hurt Tara, indicating that he was innocent.

Dawes performs some magic to revert Alex’s body to an earlier version of itself in order to undo the broken ribs. It requires bathing her in milk, which turns watery as the magic does it work. In the water, North can communicate with her because the water acts as a tie between the two sides. North tells her that when she borrowed his strength, it deepened their connection which caused the spirits of the men she had killed looking for him. Alex and North re-form a connection, and North shows her more of his story. Alex learns that North was possessed by the ghost of a man who likely died during a prognostication, who then killed Daisy.

Afterwards, Turner returns and the three of them (Dawes, Alex and Turner) try to piece together what happened. They think that Tara and Lance were growing Merity. Also, based on the chalice in Tara’s room, they think that they were using psilocybin (a hallucinogenic mushroom) to enhance portal magic.

Alex attends a party (“salon”) that Belbalm had invited her to. Colin Khatri (from Scroll and Key, who Tara was dealing to) is one of Belbalm’s assistants, and the other assistant, Isabelle Andrews confirms he was at the salon last week when Tara was killed. The next day, Alex learns that the greenhouse Tara had been using to grow Merity has been cleared out by another student, Sveta Meyers.

Alex and Turner then use a combination of magic to go question Lance in jail. Lance confirms that Kate Masters had asked them to start growing Merity, but didn’t tell them what it was. They sold some to Blake. Soon, he brought Colin to them who wanted them to grow mushrooms. Colin also gave Tara a chalice to distill them into “tab”. Tab can portal a person short distances, but they need to be at the Scroll and Key tomb to go a long distance.

The next day, there is a new moon which means it’s time to try to bring Darlington back. Alex, Dawes, Sandow and Michelle (who was Darlington’s Virgil/Mentor) all gather to perform a ritual to recall him. However, the appearance of a bloodhound tells them that Darlington is not on either side of the Veil. Instead, he was consumed, soul and all. It wasn’t a portal he stepped into, but a mouth into hell.

That night, Blake shows up and uses Starpower to get into Il Bastone, attacks Dawes, and tries to kill Alex. He’s angry that she “ruined” him. In the end, Dawes is forced to kill Blake. Afterwards, Turner learns from Blake’s voicemails that Tara learned what Merity was and what Blake was doing with it. She threatened to tell the police. However, Alex knows that when she questioned Blake under compulsion, and he said that he didn’t kill Tara.

Later, Sandow tries to reassure Alex that he’ll wrap up loose ends, but he also refuses to punish the societies, since he doesn’t want to endanger Lethe’s funding. Alex is angry and disillusioned. She heads to Hutch, Lethe’s other safe house.

After a few weeks of hiding out and recovering at Hutch, Mercy shows up along with Mira, Alex’s mother. Mercy had followed Alex there before and asked Mira to come visit to check on Alex. When Alex finally emerges to return to class, North forcibly possess Alex (who has been ignoring him) to give her a list of dates.

Alex is pissed, but looks into the dates and finds Darlington’s notes from before he disappeared. She realizes the dates correspond with deaths as well as the founding of each of the tombs of the secret societies. In other words, the nexuses of power that fuel the societies are created by deaths of various women. The first death was that of Daisy. Tara’s death was meant to create a new nexus.

Alex finds a coin of compulsion at Il Bastone and realizes Blake had been compelled to attack her. She also knows Dean Sandow just got divorced and was in need of money. Sandow is also a former Lethe knight (like her and Darlingon) and had been very good at it.

Alex goes to Dean Sandow to confront him about her findings. Dean Sandow admits he killed Tara because St. Elmo paid him to create a new nexus. However, he also says that it didn’t work. No new nexus appeared. Like Darlington, he had figured out the connection between the deaths and the nexuses, but clearly he’d gotten something wrong. He also admits to getting rid of Darlington by summoning the hellbeast (it was supposed to kill Alex, too) and to sending the gluma after Alex.

Professor Belbalm then interrupts to admit that she is actually Daisy. She is a Wheelwalker, like Alex, with the same special powers. In 1854, there was a prognostication gone wrong and the victim died. That soul tried to possess her, drawn to her power. So, Daisy forced the soul into North instead. However, it used North to shoot her and then had North shoot himself too. When Daisy died, her soul reached out to the nearest living person, Glady’s O’Donaghue (Daisy’s maid), and possessed her body. From there, she began consuming human souls to keeps her alive. The process also creates new nexuses. Consuming other Wheelwalkers sustains her longer, but no matter what she can’t leave New Haven without decaying.

Belbalm kills Sandow. but as she tries to consume Alex, Alex draws upon all the souls inside Belbalm to use their power to fight Belbalm. Daisy’s soul is the last one to be extracted and the rest of the souls turn on her. Belbalm’s body crumbles into ash.

Later, Alex and Dawes meet up with Michelle. Alex tells Michelle that she thinks Darlington’s soul wasn’t consumed. Alex thinks Darlington has been trying to communicate with her, but not as a ghost. She thinks he was transformed into a Demon, and she is determined to go into hell and get him out.

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Just read this summary to prep for Hell Bent! I’d forgotten like all of it, but it came back to me as I read!

This was an excellent summary – clear and thorough and somehow it was actually exciting, like reading the book. Like, I found myself gasping at the reveals just like I did when I read the real book. Well done!!

Thanks this was a really great summary in prep for reading hell bent!

Thanks for the summary! Perfect to prep for the next book! :)

Thanks for this. I was trying to remember some details about this to read Hell Bent and it was very helpful.

Perfect summary! Just what I needed since I started reading Hell Bent but I was so confused cause I didn’t remember much from the first book. Thanks!

Thank you! This summary is just what I needed to start book2.

I realized after reading 7 chapters of Hell Bent that I was reading the 2nd book of a serie I didn’t even know so thank you for this summary, now I know why they still weren’t explaining all those references to past events and I can finally understand them 😭

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Ninth House (Ninth House Series Book 1) Kindle Edition

"The best fantasy novel I’ve read in years, because it’s about real people... Impossible to put down." —Stephen King The smash New York Times bestseller from Leigh Bardugo, a mesmerizing tale of power, privilege, and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite. Goodreads Choice Award Winner Locus Finalist Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living. Don't miss the highly-anticipated sequel, Hell Bent .

Book 1 of 2 Alex Stern
Print length 476 pages
Language English
Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
Publisher Flatiron Books
Publication date October 8, 2019
File size 22445 KB
Page Flip Enabled
Word Wise Enabled
Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Amazon.com review.

" Ninth House is the best fantasy novel I’ve read in years, because it’s about real people. Bardugo’s imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story―full of shocks and twists―is impossible to put down." - Stephen King

" Ninth House is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in years. This book is brilliant, funny, raw and utterly magnificent ― it's a portal to a world you’ll never want to leave." - Lev Grossman , New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians

" Ninth House is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. There’s so much magic here that you'll begin to feel it seeping into the room around you as you read, and characters so real you ’ll practically hear their voices in your ear. Leigh Bardugo has written a book so delicious, so twisty, and so immersive I wouldn’t blame you for taking the day off to finish it." - Kelly Link , author of Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble .

"Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House rocked my world. I could not get enough of sinewy, ghost-haunted Alex Stern, a heroine for the ages. With a bruised heart and bleeding knuckles, she risks death and damnation ― again and again ― for the people she cares about. I was cheering her on the whole way: from the first brilliant sentence of this book to the last. More, please, Ms. Bardugo." - Joe Hill , New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2

"In this mesmerizing novel, Leigh Bardugo introduces us to Alex, a high-school dropout who gets a free ride to Yale because of a unique talent. Bardugo's New Haven is plausible and frightening, and I was one rapt reader." - Charlaine Harris , bestselling author of the True Blood series

"With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo's compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07LF64DZ2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Flatiron Books (October 8, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 8, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 22445 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 476 pages
#12 in Occult Horror
#34 in New Adult & College Fantasy (Kindle Store)
#101 in Supernatural Thrillers (Books)

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Leigh bardugo.

Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

For information on new releases and appearances, sign up for Leigh's newsletter: http://bit.ly/bardugonews.

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Ninth House

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Meets the Illuminati

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Since Galaxy Stern (Alex) can first remember, the dead have always been there – walking in the crowd, lounging at the bus stop, brushing past her in day to day life. It was years before she realized this wasn’t normal, that only she could see these butchered ghosts, still stuck somehow in a life that isn’t theirs anymore. But, a person can get used to pretty much anything, can’t they? Alex became used to it, learned to stay quite about it, until one day a ghost breached the thin divide between worlds.

The only way Alex could survive afterwards was to turn off a power she couldn’t control and slam the door between worlds through the dulling effect of alcohol and drugs. Temporary solutions, however, never last. So, when Alex woke up, shattered, broken, accused of a double homicide, with nowhere to go and no one to help, she was forced to take the last offer available, an offer that is ultimately far too good to be true. The only problem: she must let the dead back in.

The prestige of Yale is undiminished, an Ivy League status mark that adorns the rich and famous, but what really keeps this ancient empire afloat has little to do with education and everything to do with the occult. Enter Alex. Her ability to see the dead (nicknamed grays) is something that even money can’t buy, and something that the mysterious ninth house, Lethe, needs desperately. Lethe watches and patrols the rituals of the other eight houses, each ensconced in their own tomb (special, windowless buildings on campus). Each house owns a certain kind of rite, a certain power. Skull and Bones can divine the future, with the help of some human entrails and a lively round of vivisection; Scroll and Key performs portal magic; Book and Snake practices necromancy; Wolf’s Head harnesses the power of animals and can even temporarily transform people; Manuscript controls glamours and mirror magic; Aurelian uses Logomancy; and the fallen St. Elmo’s works to control the elements. They are all dangerous, all conniving, all marred with gruesome histories, and all in need of the firm guidance of Lethe House, which keeps everything suitably under wraps and controlled. Here is where Alex will come into play, trained to use her powers to see into another world under the tutelage of Daniel Arlington (D’arlington), a rich boy with no time for Alex and some big enemies.

Image by Simon Giesl from Pixabay

When Alex’s mentor mysteriously disappears and a gruesome murder takes place on campus, she begins to suspect that the societies are no longer playing nice with one another. This risks everything: the houses, Lethe, centuries of careful concealment and secrecy, and Alex’s second chance. So with everything at stake, why do the powers that be want to shut Alex’s investigation down? Meanwhile, why are the grays in town acting so strangely, and why is the Bridegroom, the ghost of an infamous murderer, following Alex and trying so desperately to communicate?

Ninth House is a powerhouse of a book: dark, broody, serpentine, filled with conspiracies brought to vivid life in a way that is both fantastic and devilishly real. Reminiscent of later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Leigh Bardugo’s first adult novel takes readers into a world of broken characters: fallen anti-heroes that seek escape, monstrous protagonists who hold blood rights and yet seek an odd sort of worldly redemption, monsters sitting just barely behind the veil, and a connection between the living and the dead that destroys everything we think we know about the world we see.

Vibing off of conspiracies, rumor mills from the netherworlds of Internet research, and Illuminati shenanigans, with some ghosts harboring unfinished business thrown into the mix, Ninth House sounds like it would be a caricature. It isn’t. Bardugo pulls it off, and before the first chapter has ended we believe in this depressing yet intensely fascinating world of amoral characters and secret societies with some seriously big name members. The more Bardugo tells us, the further we are both enchanted and repulsed, the stronger the binding magic of the book holds us, revealing the dealings of those who really hold the power not meant for regular folks to even glimpse. The premise not only works, it’s ingenious and deeply messed up in the way of all great fiction.

That’s a great transition back to Alex. Our character doesn’t – shouldn’t – be in this world of the powerful and arcane. A junkie with a record and no education, Alex is not what this snooty underworld bargained for (and certainly not what many of them wanted.) But . . . she can see the grays. Something that even with all the potions and magics the most powerful can only do briefly and with extreme risk. Alex is useful. But, is she controllable?

Image by ayoub wardin from Pixabay

Bardugo created a really interesting character here. Alex is not your shining hero. She wants to survive. If she has to kill you to do it, she will. Alex never has any qualm about the societies, about her role in all these evil things (although, she doesn’t really fancy the Skull and Bones vivisections, so that’s something at least.) She ultimately never really judges. She can’t. Her own past opens up the whys for us, and it is with intense interest that we follow the bread crumb trail to see how this harsh girl got in such a place and how she is somehow holding her own against these masters of the universe, especially when she decides to be the watchdog they branded her and solve the truth behind the killings, the attempts on her life, and a strange drug that is making the round of the campus.

By the time you get to the end, you realize that Bardugo has only just started. She’s seeded more than enough in this universe and in these nested conspiracies to keep us going long after the first reveal (which we do get). True to the nature of these societies and the things they do, however, Alex has only scratched the surface of what is really happening and what needs to be done to put things right. By the time the last page rustles into place, we’ve witnessed some hardcore situations, brutalities that are both magical and real-world, and we’re breathless for more of this no-holds-barred storytelling. We hate what all these people do – what they stand for – but we have to know more. We have to follow Alex into this dark rabbit hole and see what terrible, pulsating thing rests on the other side, what men and monsters have contrived to pull the strings behind the scenes.

– Frances Carden

Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress

Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews

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Ninth House : Book summary and reviews of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Ninth House

Alex Stern Book 1

by Leigh Bardugo

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Published Oct 2019 480 pages Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo comes a mesmerizing tale of power, privilege, and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite.

Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she's thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world's most prestigious universities on a full ride. What's the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale's secret societies. Their eight windowless "tombs" are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street's biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living. Ninth House is the long-awaited adult debut by the beloved author of Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows . Leigh Bardugo will take her place alongside Lev Grossman and Deborah Harkness as one of the finest practitioners of literary fantasy writing today.

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"With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo's compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Fantasy readers, particularly those who love ghosts, will hungrily devour this novel." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) " Ninth House is the best fantasy novel I've read in years, because it's about real people. Bardugo's imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story―full of shocks and twists―is impossible to put down." - Stephen King " Ninth House is the best thing I've read in a long time. There's so much magic here that you'll begin to feel it seeping into the room around you as you read, and characters so real you 'll practically hear their voices in your ear. Leigh Bardugo has written a book so delicious, so twisty, and so immersive I wouldn't blame you for taking the day off to finish it." - Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble . "Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House rocked my world. I could not get enough of sinewy, ghost-haunted Alex Stern, a heroine for the ages. With a bruised heart and bleeding knuckles, she risks death and damnation ― again and again ― for the people she cares about. I was cheering her on the whole way: from the first brilliant sentence of this book to the last. More, please, Ms. Bardugo." - Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2

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Leigh Bardugo Author Biography

Photo Credit: Christina Guerra

Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy . She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

Link to Leigh Bardugo's Website

Name Pronunciation Leigh Bardugo: lee bar-DOO-go

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Writer – playwright – cannot save you from the robot apocalypse, book review: ninth house by leigh bardugo.

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February 2, 2024

“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible,” (Bardugo 71).

Alex Stern never thought she’d be going to Yale. A recovering addict and lone survivor of an unsolved homicide, Alex is given the second chance to attend Yale on a paid scholarship. But there’s a twist, Yale is home to eight occult secret societies, all of which dabble in magic. Alex has been tasked to join Lethe, the ninth house, that supervises the other societies and makes sure they don’t take their practice in magic too far. But when a girl is found dead with links to four of the eight societies, Alex is determined to find out who killed the girl why they’re trying to keep it a secret.

I’ve heard so much about Ninth House and I just don’t get the hype. I think Urban Fantasy is a very cool subgenre of Fantasy and I’d love to find more books that dabble in the subject matter, but Ninth House just doesn’t deliver. It has the promise of it with secret magical societies at Yale, but readers are literally thrown into the world with little to no explanation on how magic, works or the different societies. There’s an index in the back that list the eight different houses, their mottos and specialties as well as alumni (which is hilarious) but I thought this would have fit much better at the beginning of the book rather than at the end. It’s an intriguing setting, but I needed a lot more explanation to fully immerse myself in it.

I haven’t read any of Leigh Bardugo’s works before but I know this was her first foray into adult fantasy and it feels like it. Ninth House has all the markings of a YA novel: protagonist that goes by a nickname for a longer quirkier name (Galaxy, ugh), protagonist finds themselves offered into a mysterious world/society because they are “special,” something bad that happens that protagonist is the only one clever enough to solve, protagonist is “not like other girls” and is very witty and always knows what to say. Use these tropes and make the characters eighteen plus and I guess you can call it Adult Fantasy, I guess.

Character-wise I LOVED Darlington. Fingers crossed things work out in Hell Bent . Plotwise I enjoyed the back and forth between past and present, I thought it was an interesting way to tell the story and the past followed Darlington, so obviously I preferred that. But so much happened so quickly in the ending, it felt like a bit of a mess of revelations. Too many things tied up oh so conveniently.

An intriguing idea, but I just didn’t get it. But I own an ARC of Hell Bent so I guess I’m reading this series too. Let’s see if the next one holds my interest any better than Ninth House !

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

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Book Review for Ninth House

The 2019 adult fantasy, “Ninth House,” by Leigh Bardugo, faced a large amount of pre-publication controversy after Advanced Reader Copies/ARCs of the book were passed out at the Young Adult Literary Convention, or YALC, in June, in preparation for the book’s October 8, 2019 publication date. According to an article in “Bustle” (linked below): “Bardugo says that when she asked whether this was appropriate, given that ‘Ninth House’ is not a YA novel, she was told that other adult titles were also being made available at the festival.” Early readers who acquired the book at that YA convention began tweeting out trigger warnings about the book’s content.

https://www.bustle.com/p/leigh-bardugo-wants-ninth-house-to-fck-you-up-a-little-18841924

Between June and October 2019, many readers and reviewers have reflected upon whether “Ninth House” is actually a Young Adult or adult novel. I want to answer that question myself. To me, Bardugo’s YA fantasy bestseller “Six of Crows” read as an adult novel with the YA label slapped on for marketing purposes. In all honesty, “Ninth House” reads like an *actual* YA fantasy with an “adult fantasy” label slapped on for marketing purposes. The genre conventions of the book’s ending read entirely like YA fantasy, running heavily on unrealistic silliness, melodrama, ham-fisted moralizing, villain monologues, and, most especially, the “Teens Save the World” trope that is such a standard in the genre. Not all YA fantasy features content like that, but many books in that category do, and Bardugo’s first adult book was no exception.

“Ninth House” is technically told through two alternating points of view: that of Galaxy/Alex Stern (age 20) and Daniel Tabor Arlington/Darlington, age 21 or 22. The narrative voice of the entire book, however, is truly an omniscient narrative voice, the voice of Bardugo herself. I’ll have more to say about that later, but for now, I’ll just point out that while I know that YA is supposed to have teenage protagonists, Alex and Darlington *did* read as teenagers to me. They bumble through the novel making foolish mistakes and acting clueless. Their baffling lack of critical thinking about the magic system they were supposed to be overseeing read as very childish and naïve, like they really were fifteen or sixteen years old.

Overall, I found “Ninth House” to be superbly misogynistic and massively ignorant. I also found Bardugo’s portrayal of what she has labeled an “anti-hero – not an unlikeable female character, but a straight-up anti-hero” (quoted from “Bustle” link above) to fall into heavily racist stereotypes about Latinos and Hispanics in the United States, as well as horrible stereotypes about Hispanic women and Latinas which thrive in pornography. Because multiple rape scenes in the book are described like the reader is watching a modern pornography film, and because the aftermath trauma of one rape is treated by the text as if the victim were a porn star and not a rape victim, the book draws too heavily from modern pornography for me to ignore pornographic portrayals of Hispanic women and Latinas.

If you enjoy modern pornography, ham-fisted YA fantasy, and anti-Mexican racist coding in your fiction, you might enjoy “Ninth House” a lot more than I did. Truly, I recognize that there is a big audience for this book, and Bardugo is widely known as Queen Leigh online because her fans are legion.

But this book was so misogynistic and so racist that it is the last one I’ll ever read from this author. I cannot speak any further about it without spoiling the plot, however. So please stop reading here to avoid spoilers, thanks.

**massive spoilers ahead**

“Ninth House” begins with a four-page Prologue that establishes an elliptical timeline, when a story is told out of sequence, moving back and forth between different moments in time. Elliptical timelines are not usually found in genre/commercial fiction. This storytelling technique most typically signals literary fiction, and it comes with certain expectations that the work being read will adhere to literary standards of prose much more than commercial standards.

As is the norm with elliptical timelines, the Prologue of “Ninth House” briefly summarizes the plot of the novel. But in a clear break with true literary fiction, this Prologue summary is not only extremely vague, but it covers only the first twenty-seven chapters of the plot, or the first 395 pages of this 450-page novel. The major problem with this choice is that *all* of the main action of the book begins *after* Chapter 28, when the storyline finally joins up with the scene introduced in the Prologue.

Bardugo has written a novel that is neither fish nor fowl; this book is not truly a literary elliptical timeline *or* a chronological plotline that runs on whodunit suspense. Instead, “Ninth House” is deliberately coy. Bardugo withholds crucial information that a traditional elliptical timeline would normally provide to the reader, because the plotline of “Ninth House” requires the reader’s enforced confusion to create the pot-boiler suspense of a chronological storyline. In my opinion, this book is an unfortunate mash-up of writing styles, and its execution is extremely bad. I felt sorely abused reading this book. The plot of “Ninth House” runs on the engine of what I call “Baffle the Reader with Bullshit,” as if I cannot separate an author’s deliberate obfuscation from actual literary prose.

Elliptical timelines are not employed by literary authors in order to Baffle the Reader with Bullshit. When this literary device is done well, broadcasting the book’s ending in advance takes all of the emphasis off of “what” happens in a story so that the reader can instead focus on “how” things happen. The ending is purposefully spoiled so that the reader can pay close attention to everything else as they read: the author’s thematic motifs, word choice, sentence structure, imagery, emotional stakes, subtext, and all of the other fine storytelling elements that readers often miss or pay less attention to when they are racing through a book to find out “what happens next” and “how the book ends.”

When Bardugo began “Ninth House” with an elliptical storyline, I understood, as a reader, that I was meant to play close attention to every word on the page. Literary authors are careful with their words because each word is supposed to build upon the next. Readers are largely expected to remember every minute detail in order to enjoy the story.

But “Ninth House” is NOT literary fiction. It is a clumsy, sloppy genre novel that actively punishes a close reading, because close reading exposes plot holes, mistakes, and long, lazy chunks of repetition that are not at all about literary technique, but exposing the author’s failures.

Because the first 88 percent of this novel is backstory, or narrated in flash-backs that do not join the thru-story of the Prologue until page 396, other reviewers have commented about how “confusing” the first 200 pages are, or how much the story “drags” until the action picks up at the end. For readers who weren’t put off by that, the story quickly establishes that Alex is similar to the little boy named Cole Sear in the 1999 supernatural-horror-drama film, “The Sixth Sense”: Alex sees dead people. They walk around among the living. In the world of “Ninth House,” seeing the ghosts of the dead is a rare ability that very few people have, but the people at Yale University *do* know about it. In fact, the people at Yale know so much about ghosts that they have their own word for them: Grays.

Grays are also tied up in the magic around New Haven, Connecticut. The novel never defines what kind of magic is used in the story or where it comes from, but Darlington tells the reader on page 278: “There were places in this world that magic avoided, like the bleak lunar planes of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and places it was drawn to, like Rockefeller Center in Manhattan and the French Quarter in New Orleans. New Haven had an extremely high concentration of sites where magic seemed to catch and build, like cotton candy on a spool.” These magical “nexuses” are what have given the people at Yale enormous power, and hence why they know so much about Grays.

The people who run Yale (trustees, deans, powerful professors, and all the top graduates) are truly evil, however; not only do these Yalies eviscerate homeless people and people who are mentally ill for their magical rituals, but they have kept the truth about ghosts a complete secret from the rest of the world.

Alex has suffered her whole life from an affliction that no one around her understands. Even though there might be Yale-trained child psychologists in the U.S. who could have helped children like Alex, all Yale graduates in this book are truly shitty people who keep the existence of Grays a secret, and leave these kids to fend for themselves.

Until Alex is twenty years old, no one believes that her “hallucinations” are actually the ghosts of the dead. Not only that, but Alex is raped by an adult male ghost at age twelve. This rape is described in detail (pages 122-123), and it is one of the trigger warnings people tweeted about in their ARC reviews.

Within the book community, “Ninth House” began an interesting conversation about how “the need for trigger warnings” is largely a gendered issue, impacting the work of female authors much more than that of male authors. When male authors use “the spectacle of rape” in a book, most readers never complain. But when female authors use “the spectacle of rape,” there is often an outcry and a proclaimed need for content warnings.

I agree that content warnings do seem largely gendered. Bardugo uses the spectacle of rape many times in “Ninth House.” A male author would not be “called out” on this issue as much as Bardugo has been. I agree with those who have stated that if content warnings start appearing in books, it should be an industry-wide standard for all books, and not something that is used to negatively impact the sales of female authors.

Some readers have stated that the rape scenes in “Ninth House” are not written “as spectacle,” but with “appropriate sensitivity for rape victims.” I emphatically disagree. Bardugo is no more “respectful” of rape than most genre books are, which is to say, Bardugo is not at all respectful of rape victims in “Ninth House.” This is because her narrative voice does not stay rooted within the point of view of the rape victim, but employs the male gaze to describe all of the rapes in the book. Like watching a pornographic film, the raped bodies of the women are viewed by the reader as objects, as spectacle, and within a misogynistic culture, the objectification of women is inherently titillating. In “Ninth House,” the reader is always placed *outside* of the rape victim’s body, occupying a point of view that is identical to the camera lens filming a woman’s body in pornography.

I’ll begin with the first rape in the book, the one that caused the most controversy. At age twelve, Alex begins menstruating during a school field trip. She goes into a public restroom and uses the toilet. She bunches a wad of toilet paper into her underwear. Afterward, she washes her hands at the sink. A ghost walks up behind Alex and tries to rip off her shorts. “Alex screamed, she kicked out, struck solid flesh and bone, felt the grip on her shorts loosen. She tried to shove back from the sink, glimpsed her face in the mirror, a blue barrette sliding from her hair, saw the man—the thing—that had hold of her.” (pg 122)

The moment when Bardugo focuses on Alex’s face and her dislodged barrette is one of the first signals that the scene is written as kiddie porn. No twelve-year-old girl being attacked in a bathroom is going to be looking at herself in a mirror; she is going to be fixated on the monster coming after her, and trying to get away.

As the scene continues, Alex struggles to comprehend that a ghost is touching her for the first time. “Then she was facedown on the concrete floor. She felt her hips jerked backward, her panties yanked down, something nudging against her, pushing into her. […] She screamed and screamed.” (pg 122-123)

While those sentences are firmly rooted within Alex’s point of view, the very next paragraph states: “That was how Meagan and Ms. Rosales found her, on the bathroom floor, shorts crumpled around her ankles, panties at her knees, blood smeared over her thighs and a lump of blood-soaked toilet paper wadded between her legs, as she sobbed and thrashed, hips humped up and shuddering. Alone.” (pg 123)

In that paragraph, the narrative point of view shifts completely away from Alex, and the reader is seeing what Meagan and Ms. Rosales see, looking at Alex from the point of view of a camera lens in a pornography film. Alex certainly cannot see what these two people see. She is currently “facedown” on the floor. But the scene is still described pornographically, from the perspective of a camera lens that objectifies Alex’s body. This is the definition of writing from the male gaze. When rape is written into a novel this way, it is being used as spectacle. This prose is not “showing solidarity” with rape victims. It is merely objectifying a rape victim’s body the same way pornography does. This prose is deeply misogynistic and actively promotes rape culture by mimicking pornography.

Does Bardugo have the right to depict rape through the male gaze in her novel? Absolutely. Male authors use the male gaze all the time. Sexism is extremely profitable in art. Misogyny is extremely profitable in art. Objectifying women and promoting rape culture makes a lot of money for artists, both in film and in novels like this one. It would be unfair if readers supported men making money off of misogyny, but not women authors like Bardugo.

Graphic rape scenes like this one are also a common trope within the horror genre. Horror novels (books sold strictly *as* horror) are largely written by men for a male audience. The same is true of horror films: they are largely created by men with a male audience in mind. In “Ninth House,” Bardugo is mimicking a number of genre conventions of horror that are extremely popular. Writing so many horror elements into her adult fantasy novel was most likely a conscious choice to expand her fan base to include more male readers. The market demographic for horror novels is a largely male market base, and the fact that the genre features such a heavy reliance on pornographic rape scenes is a big part of its appeal.

It is *certainly* possible for novelists to write about rape and *not* use the male gaze. Not all novels that describe rape are describing it pornographically. But all of Bardugo’s rape scenes are pornographic, especially the long description of Alex’s college friend Mercy’s rape (pg 249-250) and the multiple rapes described in a male character’s “Pussy Vault” on his phone (pg 260). All of these rapes are literally watched on video, and all are described exactly like watching modern pornography. In every case, these adult female rape victims are under the influence of a magical mind-controlling drug called Merity, and they are eagerly following the commands of their rapists. In this way, they are identical to watching porn stars, women who must eagerly follow the commands of the director in order to be paid for making the film.

Mercy also displays no lasting trauma from being raped by at least two men—and probably more, since one of her rapists states that “all the brothers” thought she was “hot last night” when he sends her a video of the assault (pg 249). After spending some time crying in her dorm room the day after her gang-rape, Mercy goes to the crowded college cafeteria for dinner with Alex and Lauren. Everyone in the cafeteria suddenly starts watching a video starring one of Mercy’s rapists, a boy named Blake, eating a mouthful of human feces out of a toilet (pg 264-265). After viewing the video, Mercy is suddenly trauma-free. Instead of feeling tired, angry, paranoid, sick, or traumatized, her appetite returns, and she takes “a big bite of her remaining cheeseburger.” Then she happily expresses to her friends that all is well with her because two wrongs have now made a right (pg 266).

In other words, now that Alex has used a magical drug to force Blake to eat human feces, Mercy is no longer traumatized by her rape. Two days later, Mercy appears in a scene with Alex and Lauren to further emphasize that everything is completely back to normal. The three friends are chatting in their dorm room about makeup, clothing, jewelry, dating, and making plans to attend a big party on Friday night (pg 362). Mercy states that she wants to go to the party, and that she wants to borrow Alex’s lipstick. Then Alex gets ready to go on a date, and Lauren calls her a “beautiful slut” before she leaves (pg 362).

None of this is a realistic portrayal of the aftermath of a rape, especially not a rape with multiple rapists who filmed their assault and immediately sent their victim the video. Bardugo treats Mercy’s rape as if all that happened to Mercy was that she broke her toe and cried a bit the next day, then received some healing magic and everything turned out fine. There is no fear of unwanted pregnancy, STDs, physical bodily harm, or any of the emotional or psychological trauma that rape victims suffer.

This depiction of the aftermath of a gang rape in *no way* holds up with reality. It is another glaring instance in which rape is used only as spectacle in the book. In the case of Mercy’s rape, it is also used as a plot device. Because Blake and his male friends rape Mercy, Alex discovers that Blake is using the magical mind-controlling drug Merity on his victims, a drug that is manufactured by the secret societies of Yale. More importantly, Alex learns that Merity, the ultimate date-rape drug, was being created and sold to Blake by the murder victim whose death Alex is investigating for most of the book. The murder-mystery plot of the book takes a big leap forward due to Mercy’s rape, a rape that has no other consequence than to give Alex more information to solve a murder case.

The female murder victim’s body, a young woman named Tara Hutchins, is also described in a sexualized way: “There was stubble near her bikini area, red razor bumps like a rash” (pg 137). Bardugo never objectifies or sexualizes her male characters in this way, whether they are living or dead. Only Bardugo’s female characters have their pubic hair, bikini regions, nipples, and naked bodies described on the page. All of Bardugo’s narrative choices reify the male gaze, in which women’s bodies are treated as sexualized objects that forward the plot.

Many reviewers expressed outrage that “Ninth House” included a scene in which a young man is forced to eat human feces. In modern pornography, women are frequently filmed ingesting feces during sex. An increasingly popular—and increasingly ubiquitous—sexual act filmed in porn is known as the “ATM,” which stands for anus-to-mouth, when a man removes his erection from a woman’s anus and puts it directly into a woman’s mouth. Many films explicitly focus on women sucking fecal matter off of men’s erections. I am certain that Bardugo had this in mind when she showcased her main character “turning the tables” on Blake, and forcing him to eat feces out of a toilet.

Of course, the biggest difference between this scene and pornography is that Blake, a habitual and brutally sadistic rapist, is fully clothed the entire time, and he wasn’t being filmed having sex while he ate feces. The humiliation factor is much higher for a female porn star than it is for Blake in that scene, but after reading so many degrading rape-as-pornography scenes, I still found it quite humorous that Alex forced a man to do something that Mercy was probably forced to do when she was raped by Blake and his friends. Rather than feeling shocked by this scene, I actually laughed. It was the only place in the novel where a male character suffered anything remotely similar to what the female characters in this book suffer.

One of the videotaped rapes Alex watches is described like a popular genre of pornography known as Latina Facial Abuse. Many academics have studied the ways in which modern pornography is explicitly racist, and Latina Facial Abuse is the genre almost all young women of color participate in (either willingly or unwillingly) when they are in porn. These films typically star a young woman of color who is on her knees with a man standing in front of her. While the woman performs oral sex, the man chokes, slaps, punches, and hits her, all while calling her racist and misogynistic slurs, and thrusting his erection down her throat to make her gag until she throws up. The woman is ordered to throw up either on the floor or into a dog dish, and then she must eat her own vomit, sometimes while other men penetrate her vaginally and/or anally. Latina Facial Abuse is an incredibly profitable and wildly popular genre of porn.

Similarly, in “Ninth House,” Alex watches videos in which Blake rapes women who are lying in pools of their own vomit. On page 260, while Alex is watching videos on Blake’s phone: “One girl was so far gone only the whites of her eyes were visible, appearing and disappearing like slivers of moon as Blake fucked her, another with vomit in her hair, her face pressed into a pool of sick as Blake took her from behind.”

Facial Abuse films can star women of any race, ethnic background, and skin color, but Latina Facial Abuse is one of the most popular forms of Facial Abuse films, and women of color are typically forced to perform in Latina Facial Abuse instead of performing in other, less humiliating or disgusting types of pornography.

Relatedly, a little later in “Ninth House,” Alex’s high school boyfriend tells a fifteen-year-old Alex to perform oral sex on a man who is “straight out of film school” (pg 289). Alex performs oral sex on this stranger while the man sits on a toilet. The scene implies that the man treats Alex like a porn star by coming on her face; after the man comes, Alex “rinsed out her mouth and cleaned up her eye makeup.” In modern pornography, scenes of men ruining women’s eye makeup with their come are wildly popular, and “Ninth House” strongly mimics the spectacle of modern porn in all ways.

The text repeatedly states that Alex has a white mother and “brown” father who (according to the text) was most likely “Mexican,” but Alex is never sure where, exactly, he was from. She repeatedly questions if her ability to see ghosts, as well as her despicable behavior as a drug addict, thief, high school dropout, whore, and mass murderer (someone who kills four or more people in a single killing event) was inherited in her blood from her brown-skinned/possibly Mexican father. Alex’s trusted grandmother says of this mysterious brown-skinned man, “He was a bad wind that blew through” (pg 404).

Alex’s physical descriptions are repeated throughout the book: she has pale olive skin, black hair and dark eyes, and falls under the category of “exotic” the text uses more than once to describe women of color. In seventh grade, Alex struggled to fit in due to her pale-skinned “Mexican” looks: “The white kids still thought she was Mexican and the Mexican kids still thought she was white” (pg 120). Right before Alex’s killing spree at age 18 or 19 is described in detail, her best friend Hellie tells Alex, “If you stay in the sun much longer, you’re gonna look all Mexicana ” (pg 292). Five pages later, when Alex kills her first victim with a baseball bat, the event is described with a description that emphasizes her assumed Mexican heritage: “She hit him again and his head gave way with a thick crunch , like a piñata breaking open, chips of skull and brain flying, blood spattering everywhere” (pg 297).

Depicting Mexican people as depraved criminals is a long-standing stereotype in the United States. By the time I reached page 297 of “Ninth House,” in which Alex smashes open a man’s skull “like a piñata,” and goes on to beat to death a group of boys who are asleep in their beds, I kept hearing current U.S. President Donald Trump in my head, specifically, his infamous lines from his presidential announcement speech on June 16, 2015 —

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

If you agree with those statements (and many people do), then “Ninth House” will affirm and reward those beliefs. Alex is a drug addict, a drug dealer, a prostitute, a mass murderer, and she takes a place on the admissions roster at Yale University solely due to her ability to see ghosts, and not because she cares about school or learning at all. She is also given a full ride to Yale, a position that a hard-working, straight-A student from an underprivileged background might have benefited from, but it was given to Alex instead. Alex is the only full-ride scholarship student mentioned in the book. She is also the only student in the book who is from an economically disadvantaged background.

I never expected that “Ninth House” would feature such stereotypical anti-Mexican and brutally classist representation. I grew up in poverty myself, and received a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious university due to my grades and work ethic. My personal history made it even more painful for me to encounter Bardugo’s racist, classist depiction of an economically disadvantaged Latina/Hispanic young woman in “Ninth House.”

If you follow news media sources that have debunked the claims President Trump made in his speech, journalists who have researched the facts, and consistently reported that crime statistics and immigrant data do not support President Trump’s words whatsoever, and if you have any sympathies for people who grow up in economically disadvantaged homes and receive college scholarships, or are such a person yourself, then “Ninth House” might be a highly upsetting novel to read. I would certainly never recommend this book to any of my Latinx friends, my friends who are fellow rape victims, or anyone who has grown up in poverty and worked their way through college.

Alex herself uses vile misogynistic and classist slurs in her dialogue. Throughout the book, Alex expresses loathing and contempt for herself as well as other people, especially other women. While she is at Yale, Alex calls herself “shit” while she is talking to a police officer: “I may be shit, but I’m the kind that sticks” (pg 146). Her statement is meant to be a triumphant moment of self-awareness and badassery, and is the closing line of Chapter 8.

Alex uses misogynistic slurs to earn more badassery points while talking to a white Yale student named Tripp. Alex needs to ask him questions about a murder victim, and begins by asking him, “Gonna be a good little slut for me and put out?” (pg 236). When Tripp’s male friends jokingly tell Alex to: “Bring him home early,” Alex responds with: “Why? You want seconds?” (pg 237). Alex threatens to “knock the front teeth in” of a student named Salome, and Alex says that if she does, Salome will then look like “a brother-fucking hillbilly” (pg 206).

Alex does not use racist slurs or anti-Semitic slurs. When her high school boyfriend, Len, calls someone “an oily Jewish prick,” Alex responds with displeasure: “Alex would squirm, thinking of her grandmother lighting the prayer candles on Shabbat” (pg 286). Alex is not comfortable using Jewish slurs and racist slurs, because PC culture prohibits their usage. But slurs against women, poor people, and Mexicans are fair game in this book.

Having read Bardugo’s bestselling YA novel, “Six of Crows,” I kept thinking of Alex as the modern-day Latina version of Kaz Brekker (who is also 19 or 20 years old), and the setting of New Haven as a modern-day Ketterdam (Bardugo’s version of historical Amsterdam), a place of total corruption and moral depravity. Kaz Brekker, however, would NEVER refer to himself as “shit,” nor would he swagger around using misogynistic slurs the way Alex does. Bardugo allows Alex to speak this way because Alex, as a woman, is of a much lower social status than Kaz. And as a woman of color, she is definitely lower in social status than he is.

What makes Alex’s use of misogynistic and classist slurs egregiously disgusting is the fact that Alex claims to have solidarity with women at the end of the book. Specifically, as Alex says: “‘Immigrant girls. Brown girls. Poor girls.’ Girls just like me ” (pg 435). The climax of the book wants the reader to believe that the protagonist, who is fine throwing out the nastiest slurs against women and poor people, suddenly feels a sense of solidarity with women and poor people. As my brother Lee would say of this plot development: “You have to be a real kind of special to believe some bullshit like that.” Which was exactly how I felt about Alex and her sudden solidarity with poor brown girls in this book.

Many academics, scholars, and feminists have pointed out that the vast majority of Western fairy tales are deeply rooted in misogyny, and focus on female villains as the root of all evil. Specifically, the figures of evil mothers and evil stepmothers are frequently the demonic Other that the heroes of the story must vanquish. The same is true in “Ninth House.” In keeping with the book’s overall hatred of women, the most depraved monster in this book (by far) is a woman named Daisy who died fairly young (around the age of twenty, approximately one hundred years before Alex arrives at Yale). Right after death, Daisy used her ghost body to eat the soul of her still-living maid (a grown woman named Gladys), and then Daisy inhabited her dead maid’s body by pushing her own ghost body into the corpse.

Daisy describes how she did this during one of the two villain monologues that take place near the very end of the book (pg 432). Some readers enjoy denouement plot contrivances and climactic mustache-twirling villain diatribes, but I find such monologues extremely hokey and melodramatic, and that was definitely the case with Daisy’s long monologue at the end of “Ninth House.” When Daisy says of Gladys, “I left my ruined body and claimed hers. She was the first” (pg 432), the description reminded me of reading Laini Taylor’s 2011 YA fantasy, “Daughter of Smoke and Bone,” when the character of Madrigal does the same thing near the very end of the novel.

Daisy herself was very similar to the character of Mother Gothel in Disney’s 2010 animated film, “Tangled,” a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale. Daisy, like Mother Gothel, is sadistic, selfish, and keeping herself young and beautiful by magic. Daisy, just like Mother Gothel, is destroyed by removing the magic that has kept her young and beautiful, which turns her into a pile of dust (pg 442). Fans of the movie “Tangled” might enjoy how much the ending of “Ninth House” echoes the Disney film.

Interestingly, I think Bardugo might have been aware that Disney used racial coding in the character of Mother Gothel, racial coding that the YouTube channel “The Princess and the Scrivener” discusses in this excellent vlog: “Tangled Part I: Cultural Appropriation and Racial Coding.” Here is the link to that video –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIIUesPEJ1M

In contrast to Mother Gothel’s racial coding in “Tangled,” Daisy is a white woman who inhabits another white woman’s body, and Bardugo emphasizes this in her villain monologue, when Daisy states of Gladys: “She was Irish, you know. Very stubborn,” and then Daisy goes on to discuss an Irish taboo against saying the word ‘bear’ (pg 432). Earlier in the book, the reader is told that Gladys’s body possesses “snow white” hair that is “set carefully on her head like a helmet” (pg 79), which is eerily similar to how Ayn Rand describes Dominique’s blonde hair in her 1943 novel, “The Fountainhead.” Daisy’s villain body is a white woman’s body, and many of Daisy’s victims are white women, a fact that is made clear in the climax of the novel, when Alex speaks the names of Daisy’s victims in order to free their souls from Daisy’s magic (pg 439-440).

The entire “Call to the missing/I know their names/speak their names” climax of the book was identical to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 2016 TED talk, “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” and the Say Her Name movement, except “Ninth House” focuses on white girls, with one black girl added in at the end of the list (pg 440). As someone who loves and supports Crenshaw’s work, and is moved to tears every time I even *think* about Crenshaw’s TED talk, I was astounded that “Ninth House” featured such a “feminist manifesto” ending (pg 435), an ending that obviously drew from Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work identifying and defining intersectionality, as well as the Say Her Name/#SayHerName movement, and then Bardugo didn’t even mention Crenshaw, her TED talk, or credit the Say Her Name movement in the book’s Acknowledgements.

Bardugo takes the time to thank many people in her Acknowledgements, and she cites a number of books about the history of New Haven and Yale that she used in creating “Ninth House.” But Kimberlé Crenshaw’s name is NOWHERE in that list. For a novel that wants its readership to believe that this book is #woke to intersectional feminism, and for a novel that even uses a “Say Her Name” action sequence in the story’s climax, this glaring omission is further proof to me that this book is NOT a feminist novel at all. Like the woman-hating pornography that this book copies aesthetically in all ways, “Ninth House” is a book by and for the patriarchy.

I would also like to point out that the only soul the reader ever actually sees Daisy “eat” in the story belongs to a man named Dean Sandow. During the big Say Her Name climax, Dean Sandow’s ghost does not exit Daisy’s magical body along with the others. What happened to Dean Sandow’s soul? And what happened to all of the other men’s souls that Daisy probably ate to keep herself alive with evil soul-eating magic? The novel doesn’t say. Sandow and any other male victims are completely forgotten and left out of the ending because the book was too busy copying Crenshaw’s TED talk.

“Ninth House” frequently pays lip service to feminism and social justice, but the real content of this book is misogynistic and appropriative. The word “appropriative” appears in the text when Darlington tells the reader that it would be “appropriative” if Alex dressed as a “sexy Pocahontas” for Halloween (pg 165). This is the extent that “Ninth House” is #woke: in surface-level dialogue and glib, snarky commentary. The book’s woke statements are meaningless when a reader considers the actual content of this book. In “Ninth House,” Bardugo’s use of Crenshaw’s work and the Say Her Name movement is appropriative. That level of appropriation is far more egregious and sickening to me than seeing a Latina or Hispanic girl like Alex dress up as a “sexy Pocahontas” for a Halloween party at Yale.

There were so many other things that I found to be aggravating, ignorant, and wrong about this book. But this review is already so long that I will simply list my other points, rather than describe them in detail.

Problematic Material in “Ninth House,” an incomplete list :

Equating female drug dealers with prostitutes. Over and over, “Ninth House” depicts female drug dealers as being prostitutes. Alex, Tara, and other female drug dealers perform sexual acts that are depicted as a necessary part of selling drugs as a woman. In reality, the two jobs are NOT the same. Female drug dealers do NOT perform sexual acts in order to sell drugs to their customers. The fact that every female drug dealer in “Ninth House” was a prostitute in order to sell drugs was extremely insulting and just flat-out wrong. This was another example of the book’s relentless misogyny.
Bardugo doesn’t really know what it feels like to grow up poor, and it shows. The details Bardugo uses to present Alex’s economically disadvantaged background all read like disjointed notes the author has gleaned from reading nonfiction books and memoirs about poverty. Everything felt slapped-on and fake about Alex’s background, because the truth is: this is not Bardugo’s own background at all. I grew up in poverty, and it was obvious to me that the economic details in “Ninth House” were contradictory, unrealistic, and badly executed. Being poor was simply part of the spectacle of this book.
Alex’s years-long drug addiction vanishes the moment she is offered a place at Yale. Alex has no cravings or relapses; there is no actual reality of a drug addiction on display anywhere in this book. Similar to point #2, the reason for this ridiculous execution is that Bardugo herself has never suffered a drug addiction, which is why Alex’s drug addiction read as slapped-on and fake. Like Alex’s economically disadvantaged background, her drug addiction exists in the book as spectacle.
Bardugo could have used Alex’s condition as a child who can see ghosts to discuss the ways in which many real-life children who are victims of incest, poverty, abuse, mental illness, exploitation, abandonment, and other traumas learn to use drugs to self-medicate. Many homeless, drug-addicted adults in the United States are childhood trauma survivors who are desperately trying to self-medicate, the same way that Alex started using drugs to numb the pain of her rape and ghost-seeing-ability at a young age. But Bardugo never draws these parallels in “Ninth House,” further emphasizing that this is not a book about solidarity with the disadvantaged or oppressed.
The novel presents Dean Sandow as being the only dean at Yale. Sandow is repeatedly called “the dean,” even though Yale University has many different deans. The lack of any mention of other deans at Yale, especially when Dean Sandow was the penultimate villain, made “Ninth House” feel even more childish and naïve. Dean Sandow as a singular dean, along with the villain monologues in the denouement, contributed to how much this book read like Young Adult fiction, not adult horror or adult fantasy.
Alex and Darlington are the only POV protagonists, and they have the same voice: the voice of the author, an omniscient narrative voice. For example, here is how Alex, a high school dropout, former drug addict, and former prostitute, describes a dressing room at one of the Lethe hideouts: “Darlington’s own clothes still hung there—a Barbour jacket, a striped Davenport College scarf, fresh jeans neatly folded and creased, perfectly broken-in engineer boots, and a pair of Sperry Top-Siders just waiting for Darlington to slip into them” (pg 72).

And here is how Alex describes a platter of food she is helping to serve at a professor’s party: “When Colin said to hand him the cheese, it took her a long moment to realize it was right in front of her: not platters of cubed cheddar but giant hunks of what looked like quartz and iolite, a tiny pot of honey, a spray of almonds. All of it art” (pg 340). I absolutely believe that Bardugo herself, a Yale graduate and member of the real-life Wolf’s Head secret society named in this book, would describe hunks of cheese looking like iolite, and knows what Sperry Top-Siders are. I definitely do NOT believe that Alex even knows this vocabulary, much less talks like this in her interior monologue.

The reader is meant to have sympathy for Tara Hutchins as a murder victim because Tara is poor, a townie, and a woman, but Tara Hutchins spent years creating the magical date-rape drug Merity and selling Merity to rapists on campus. As the reader later learns, even after Tara knew what the drug was being used for, she continued to sell it to Blake. After Tara’s murder, Blake still has a substantial supply of Merity from Tara, because she never actually stopped making and selling the drug. Tara’s murder is the framing device for the entire novel, and Tara is an absolutely shitty person. Do I care that Dean Sandow murdered her? Hell no. This whole book is gross, and Tara is one of the grossest people I’ve ever encountered in a story. She is as vile as Blake is, and I am definitely not mourning Blake’s loss, either.
By the time Tara is murdered, Darlington has been missing for almost three months, and Alex already knows that the eight magical houses at Yale can control people’s minds and behavior with magical objects and drugs. Alex herself uses a “coin of compulsion” early in the book while first investigating Tara’s murder (pg 53), and a few days later, when Alex watches the video of Mercy being raped, Alex immediately knows that Mercy has been drugged with Merity. The only mind-control drug that Alex isn’t aware of at the start of Chapter One is called “starpower,” which is introduced on page 255. Despite the fact that Alex knows mind-controlling objects and drugs exist at Yale, along with magical glamours that can make one person look like another, the criminal use of magic to murder Tara and manipulate Blake never factors into her own thinking until the climax of the novel. Alex’s lack of logical thinking is absolutely ridiculous, and another function of the Baffle the Reader with Bullshit premise of the novel’s elliptical timeline.
The book demonizes trauma survivors. One of the most-quoted lines of this book appears on page 300, when Alex tells Darlington in interior monologue: “ I let you die . To save myself, I let you die . That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.” I absolutely HATE this material. Those sentences are delivered as the truth, from the person who has become the story’s hero: Alex, the righteous warrior girl who single-handedly vanquishes the evil soul-eating Daisy in a Say Her Name intersectional feminist manifesto action sequence at the end of the book. Unlike Bardugo, I survived growing up in poverty, being raped as a small child, having homeless parents, drug addicted parents, mentally ill parents, and still arrived at college on a full-ride scholarship, the same way Alex does in this book, and I don’t walk around with an attitude that I have to “let people die” to save myself. Demonizing trauma survivors is morally wrong. And yet, those lines are so popular, they’re even quoted on the Goodreads review page for this book.
On page 311, Alex says in dialogue, “We’re all racists,” as if acknowledging the size and scale of racism forgives the anti-Mexican content in this book. Sorry, but no. It doesn’t.
If you claim to be a friend of a rape victim, and your friend’s gang-rape was videotaped, why would you ever watch the video of them being raped, and play it in front of them? Alex not only does this, but she does this less than 24 hours after Mercy was raped. Um, what?? What the hell is this even?? People actually think this situation was drawn from Bardugo’s real life, and Alex is acting like this?? Readers honestly think Bardugo has ever provided comfort for a friend right after a gang-rape, when she wrote an aftermath scene like this one into her novel?? As a voice of reason, I must emphatically state, there is absolutely NO way that Alex’s behavior after Mercy’s rape was drawn from real life. And as an added bonus, here’s a pro-tip for anyone who thinks a “good friend” would act like this: watching your friend’s videotaped gang-rape in front of them is NOT something a friend does. This is seriously FUCKED UP and this is NOT how you support victims.

That concludes my list of criticisms on the overall content of the book. Now I would like to make a list of craft issues I had with the text.

Writing Craft Flaws in “Ninth House,” an incomplete list :

Ridiculously incorrect grammar.

I have always considered Bardugo to be an excellent writer on a sentence level. “Shadow and Bone” and “Six of Crows” are both competently written, and feature fine prose. But with “Ninth House,” Bardugo began making sloppy craft errors that made the book a slog to read. This was the first time I’ve seen her use the g rammatical affectation of dropping conjunctions. It was a constant sentence structure motif on display throughout the entire book. Here is a short selection of these aggravating sentences:

“Alex set aside the aluminum container of cold falafel from Mamoun’s, wiped her hands on her Lethe House sweats.” (pg 3)

“She cupped her hand beneath the faucet, watched the water pour over her fingers, listened to the grim sucking sound from the mouth of the drain.” (pg 3)

“For the first time in weeks, she looked at the girl in the water-speckled mirror, watched as that bruised girl lifted her tank top, the cotton stained yellow with pus.” (pg 3)

“She picked up the Reuge music box from the desk, touched her finger to the lid, but then thought better of it, set it down.” (pg 66)

“Alex crossed to the window, pulled open the curtain.” (pg 196)

^^I really have no idea why Bardugo thought this affectation improved her writing. I think it’s hackneyed and annoying. I was definitely not a fan and I feel like Bardugo devolved as a writer when she published this book.

Similes that are ridiculous or just wrong.

There were so many of these in the book, but this is the only one I will cite:

“The greatest gift Lethe had given Alex was not the full ride to Yale, the new start that had scrubbed her past clean like a chemical burn.” (pg 20)

^^In truth, chemical burns are NOT “clean” burns. I can well imagine every medical doctor and burn survivor saying, “WTF??” when they read that sentence. Chemical burns have massive variation, and that sentence is incredibly ignorant. Ridiculous similes like this one are not the kind of prose I expect from a bestselling author. Bardugo had beta-readers and editors for this book, and still no one caught that error. This level of ignorance is distressing.

Overtly sexist dialogue that is upheld as “truth” in the narrative.

While a lot of the dialogue in “Ninth House” is pretty childish and ridiculous, and frequently gave me strong Nikolai vibes from Bardugo’s “Shadow and Bone” series, one exchange in particular topped my list of ignorant dialogue featured in the book. It’s an exchange between Professor Belbalm and Alex that takes place fairly early in the story:

“Only people who have never lived without comfort deride it as bourgeois.” She winked. “The purest Marxists are always men. Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives can come apart in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us.”

“ Yes ,” said Alex, leaning forward. This was what Alex’s mother had never managed to grasp. (pg 85)

^^ Fun fact #1 : No matter what genitalia a person might have, anyone’s life can come apart in a moment. Calamity can strike anyone, at any time.

Fun fact #2 : People of all genders cling to money to keep themselves safe.

Fun fact #3 : There are also “pure Marxists” who are women. You can even find their names by researching things like “women Marxists” at your local library.

Fun fact #4 : At the very end of the book, Professor Belbalm is revealed to be the evil Mother Gothel Daisy, kept alive in Gladys’s body, but this early in the book, the character of Belbalm is simply a classy Yale professor spouting her wisdom, wisdom that Alex accepts as truth. The sexism in this dialogue goes unchecked in the narrative, and Belbalm’s “wisdom” about women and calamity never comes up again.

Randomly, lazily repeated expository details.

Literary fiction will often repeat slightly-altered key details to enhance the thematic exposition of a novel, building upon the author’s chosen motifs in a masterful way. The repetition of detail in “Ninth House” was not masterful, however. It read as incompetent and lazy.

For example, here is how Alex describes the bland, “uniform” look the young women at Yale have in comparison to the women she knew in California:

“ Who are you? Alex would sometimes think, looking at another girl in a navy peacoat, pale face like a waning moon beneath a wool cap, ponytail lying like a dead animal over her shoulder. Who are you? ” (pg 77)

Later in the text, Alex describes the Yale student Salome Nils (the girl Alex threatens with breaking out her front teeth), in a nearly identical way:

“Now she looked at Salome Nils, lean and smooth-faced, a Connecticut girl who rode horses and played tennis, her heavy bronze ponytail tucked over one shoulder like an expensive pelt.” (pg 203)

The repetition that girls at Yale have pale, smooth, moon-faces and taxidermy-esque hair did not read like Bardugo was expanding her motif, but lazily repeating the same description she had already used. What felt “fresh” in Bardugo’s exposition the first time (pg 77) became stale when it reappeared later (pg 203).

I borrowed this book from the library, so I wasn’t able to annotate the text, but had I been able to do that, I would have pointed out more of the expository repetition in this book.

While repetitive description is annoying, what is far more egregious is how often Bardugo repeats key plot information. Either she didn’t trust her reader to remember critical information, or she was too lazy to remove the repetition from the text.

For example, in the first three chapters of the book, when Alex’s thru-story (her murder investigation during her spring semester at Yale) is first established, it is made clear to the reader that Darlington has been missing for some time (approximately three months), and no one knows where he is. Alex has been instructed to tell everyone that Darlington is in Spain on a study abroad program (pg 51). It is made clear to the reader that this is only a cover story, not the truth. This information is repeated over and over throughout the book. By the time I arrived at page 299, and Alex tells the reader, YET AGAIN: “Darlington was not abroad. He was not in Spain,” I felt so insulted that I just wanted to scream. I marked this page in my notes by writing: “No shit, Sherlock, I heard you the first one hundred times this was explained. Can we just get on with the story now and stop repeating things I already know??”

When authors repeat information like this, it’s called USELESS DRAG. “Ninth House” is full of useless drag.

I would not call the prose of “Ninth House” literary at all, but commercial fiction that tries to be literary and fails. For all of the graphic violence depicted in this book, the storytelling is utterly boring, and on a sentence level, the amount of repetition in the prose is punishing to read.

Bardugo forces the reader to inference, and then spells out the inference material later, in the most ham-fisted way.

This problem is related to point #4, and I think it’s so noticeable because of the commercial fiction/elliptical timeline storytelling structure Bardugo chose.

For example, on pages 8 and 9, the SSS building is first introduced. The reader can quickly and easily infer that SSS stands for “Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall,” because the full name of the building appears soon after “SSS” appears.

Later, on page 95, this dialogue exchange takes place between Darlington and Alex:

Alex blew out a breath. “Founded in 1910. Rooms consecrated in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall—”

“Save yourself the mouthful. Everyone calls it SSS.”

^^If a novel is going to feature dialogue like this, there is no point in forcing your reader to needlessly infer. This is more of the useless drag that utterly characterizes “Ninth House.”

In the end, my biggest problem with “Ninth House” was that the story was disjointed, melodramatic, and profoundly dull, and finally ends with Alex asking her friends Michelle and Dawes, “Who’s ready to go to hell?” (pg 450), indicating that the sequel will mimic Dante’s “Inferno” in order for Alex to rescue Darlington in book 2 of this proposed five-book series. I found Alex’s question rather ludicrous since the world of “Ninth House” was already hell: literally, a realm of hungry ghosts. The Grays in “Ninth House” prey on the living; the ghosts constantly seek human blood, sugar, happiness, and other necessities to feed on from other people, and Grays can even rape children. Only a select few people like Alex can even see these predators, and the story makes it clear that Grays are everywhere in the human world, not just in magical “nexuses” like New Haven and Yale. Since no one at Yale gives a shit about anyone but themselves, and Alex Stern is the absolute standard of moral goodness in this story, the real hell in this book is the world as it is, not the realm of the hellbeast that swallowed Darlington.

I certainly won’t be reading any of the sequels. My journey with these characters ends here.

Negative three hundred stars. Not recommended.

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Novel On My Mind

Book Review and Recommendation Blog

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – Book Review

Warning – possible spoilers! (Tiny ones, though, and I’ll try to avoid even those; I swear I’ll give my best not to ruin it for you… :-))

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – Book Details

TITLE – Ninth House

SERIES – Alex Stern, book #1

AUTHOR – Leigh Bardugo

GENRE – fantasy , urban fantasy , paranormal , mystery , dark academia

YEAR PUBLISHED – 2019

PAGE COUNT – 461

MY RATING – 4.5 of 5

RATED ON GOODREADS – 4.04 of 5

Initial Thoughts

Dark academia is one of my favorite subgenres. The school setting, the mystery, the esthetics, the gothic vibes… There are no many things that intrigue me more and that can ensure I’m going to pick up a book.

And Ninth House – well, after I finished Six of Crows a while ago, I most definitely wanted to check out Leigh Bardugo’s storytelling outside of Grishaverse .

Plus, the blurb of this story sounded more than promising. And I am also a big fan of urban fantasy.

Long story short, Ninth House easily ended up near the very top of my TBR pile pretty much as soon as I got my hands on a copy. In fact, this was one of my most anticipated reads in the last couple of years.

The reviews of this book, however, were so confusing, I almost regretted checking them out. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such mixed opinions about any other book. Especially amongst my close friends and go-to book reviewers.

And the funny thing is – people I thought would love it ended up all but hating it. And people I was sure would be bashing it now say it’s one of their favorites.

So, my expectations were all over the place, to say the least…

What It Is About

“…the chance to show someone else wonder, to watch them realize that they had not been lied to, that the world they’d been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that there really was something lurking in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.”

Galaxy (Alex) Stern can see ghosts. So far, that only meant trauma on top of trauma for her, and the ways she tried to cope only pushed her further down the self-destruction road.

But, after a particularly brutal event that left Alex a sole survivor, she is approached by the dean of the Lethe House at Yale University. He offers her a deal of a lifetime – a full scholarship to Yale in exchange for her joining a secret magical society that oversees all the other magical societies at Yale.

Several months later, Alex still struggles to keep up with the classes and is still learning about magic and her own role in this mysterious world. On top of that, she is trying to figure out what happened with her mentor Daniel Arlington (Darlington). And there is also a murder investigation Alex is a part of, that becomes more and more confusing the more she looks at it.

But the biggest problem with investigating magical secret societies – getting closer to figuring out who done it does not necessarily mean getting any closer to putting a stop to it all…

There are several trigger warnings for Leigh Bardugo’ s Ninth House, you can check them out here .

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – My Review

Man, what a start. That prologue was so gripping, it made me wanna just continue reading and forget that the rest of the world existed.

“Darlington liked to say that dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.”

But right after the prologue, you kind of get pushed into the story and it takes a moment to make sense of what’s going on. The first few chapters were a bit odd for me.

Because, getting into the Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, I only had the vaguest possible idea of what to expect. And it happened several times that I read whole scenes having no clue what I’m reading, then get an explanation after 10 or so pages.

And then, the details – honestly, I wouldn’t mind if there were less setting descriptions. Which surprised even me because – it’s dark academia, the setting is beautiful and mysterious and full of history; why wouldn’t I want to know more about it?

But in this case, for some reason, it didn’t quite work for me. Not that there was anything wrong with the descriptions. But they were kind of unnecessarily dragging the story.

“The window was open, letting in the bare beginnings of a breeze as twilight fell, and Alex felt like she was watching herself from the courtyard—a happy girl, a normal girl, surrounded by people with futures who assumed she had a future too.”

Plus, Bardugo certainly likes jumping between different timelines. Which is something that would drive me crazy with any other author. But for some reason, it never truly bothers me in her books. Her flashbacks are always interesting and really help me care about the characters even more.

Still, all the jumping around, going through the consequences of an event without actually knowing yet what had happened… It can be a lot. Just push through it, though, it’s worth it.

Luckily, it didn’t take me long to start caring for the characters, so that pulled me through that beginning. And once the story really started – it was on, and I started flying through the pages, on the edge of my seat the whole time, wondering what was going to happen.

“Wait … I’m going to have to die?” She really should start doing the reading. “Yes.” “And come back?” “I mean, that’s the idea.”

I loved both the main characters and a few smaller ones. Kept comparing them with the Six of Crows crew. And I’m not sure which ones I liked more.

I think that the characters from Six of Crows were a bit more… memorable than the ones from Ninth House. But that was because they were very unique and spectacular, to the point where they were a bit cartoonish.

Alex was also a strong character, but she felt a bit more human and real to me. Because of that, I managed to connect with her more, although I loved both crews very much.

“I thought they were people for a while, and it’s not like anyone pays attention to a kid talking to no one.”

In a world where everyone strives to be different, Alex is a bit too different. So much so that her childhood and teenage years had been filled with fear and shame and loneliness. And she almost didn’t survive it.

Then we have Alex on Yale, just given a second chance. Pushed into a world she doesn’t understand to keep barely surviving. Or so it seems.

Because everything that didn’t kill her during the early years did eventually make her stronger. And it was a wonderful moment when she finally started to realize that.

That she may not be as educated and refined and well-spoken as all these people around her. But when it comes to fighting, and persistence, and real strength, and not giving up, she could top any of them.

That she doesn’t have to stop pushing. Because losing the chance she was given would suck, but she already survived having nothing.

Granted, she would occasionally come out as too edgy. She’s sometimes too much. But, considering everything she went through – I mean, you can see where it’s coming from.

“If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

As for the murder mystery – not bad, Bardugo. Not bad at all. Whatever more I say might give you clues. So I’ll just say I loved that part and shut up.

I loved that the book didn’t end on a cliffhanger. The main issue got resolved and many questions were answered. Yet, there’s still enough left to make you keep wondering.

And now I can’t wait to read the sequel, Hell Bent .

“Her map had been changed. Her coastline altered. Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.”

When it comes to the things I didn’t like, there was one particular thing that might be considered a spoiler, so I don’t want to talk much about it. And me preferring that it didn’t occur at all might be just me, I don’t know how other people have felt about it. But it was just one of those things that – the book might as well have gone without it, so why?

Plus, I do feel obligated to stress that this book was not perfect. It had several things that were a bit too convenient and then several more that could have been explained a bit better. So just to be clear – my 5-star rating is more a reflection of how much I enjoyed reading this story and spending time with these characters than anything else.

Because yes – despite its flaws, I really did like it that much. And all the people who didn’t like it – I mean, I see where they are coming from. But to me, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo was one of those books where I don’t even care about technicalities, because my gut feeling screams – gimme more!

A new favorite for me!

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COMMENTS

Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) by Leigh Bardugo
Original Review: **3.5-stars rounded up** Ninth House is moody, dark and secretive. In other words, it's everything I love in my fiction!! This book is a delightfully intriguing start to the all-new Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo. I have been fascinated by the idea of this book for a while.
Review: 'Ninth House,' By Leigh Bardugo : NPR
Review: 'Ninth House,' By Leigh Bardugo Leigh Bardugo's new stand-alone thriller is set at a dark, ... Book Reviews 'King Of Scars' Muses On The Monstrous. Ninth House is a lot of things. Its ...
Leigh Bardugo Brews a Witchy Tale of Ghosts, Dark Magic and Murder
The writer Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward. At 28, the poet Tayi Tibble has been hailed as the funny, fresh and immensely skilled ...
NINTH HOUSE
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo's compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels. 114. Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2. Page Count: 448. Publisher: Flatiron Books. Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019. Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019.
'Ninth House,' by Leigh Bardugo book review
Books Book Reviews Fiction Nonfiction April books 50 notable fiction books. ... Her adult debut, "Ninth House," is wry, uncanny, original and, above all, an engrossing, unnerving thriller. ...
Ninth House: Alex Stern, Book 1 Book Review
Our review: Parents say ( 1 ): Kids say ( 6 ): This phenomenal and mature adult debut from a popular young adult author Leigh Bardugo is more twisty-turny-absorbing mystery than spine-tingling ghost story. Half the time, the ghosts that main character Alex see are just a nuisance to deal with.
Book Review: "Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo
"Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo Synopsis: Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fa
Summary and Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Book Review. Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo, was released earlier this month. The book is unconnected to Barugo's very successful "Grishaverse" world. Instead, it's the first in a planned series of books about the protagonist, Galaxy "Alex" Stern. I find secret societies a little hokey and self-important, so a book that gives them ...
Ninth House
BOOK ONE of the Ninth House Trilogy. The mesmerizing adult debut from Leigh Bardugo, a tale of power, privilege, dark magic, and murder set among the Ivy League elite. Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a ...
Book review: 'Ninth House' by Leigh Bardugo
Watch on. 'Ninth House' is a soft magic system masquerading as a hard magic system, which makes it frustrating as hell. Our protagonist, Alex has rocked up to Yale with a traumatic backstory and bad grades - the only reason she's been given the chance to study there being that she has a seemingly natural ability to see 'greys ...
Book Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
However, while Ninth House was a thoughtful and intense story that explored magic, mystery, trauma, and healing, I struggled to wholeheartedly enjoy this book. Personally, despite knowing the book contained gorey and dark elements, I found the themes of this book too dark for my personal liking. NINTH HOUSE (ALEX STERN #1) by Leigh Bardugo.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Review: Engrossing epic
More Ninth House reviews "Ninth House is one of the best fantasy novels I've read in years.This book is brilliant, funny, raw and utterly magnificent—it's a portal to a world you'll never want to leave." - Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians "With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo's compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ...
Ninth House: Recap & Summary
Galaxy "Alex" Stern is at Yale on scholarship. She is part of House Lethe (the "Ninth House"), which was founded in 1898 to monitor certain secret societies on campus.Alex was given her scholarship because she has the ability to see "Greys" (ghosts), while others need a special elixir (the "Orozcerio") to do so.The elixir is toxic and damaging to body, though.
Ninth House (Ninth House Series Book 1)
An Amazon Best Book of October 2019: Leigh Bardugo made her mark writing bestselling young adult fantasy, but now she's doing something a little different with Ninth House, her first adult novel.Bardugo uses Yale's secret societies—their hidden rituals and the power of membership—to create the perfect setting for a story where elitism and the occult are intertwined.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo Book Review
Author: Leigh Bardugo. Since Galaxy Stern (Alex) can first remember, the dead have always been there - walking in the crowd, lounging at the bus stop, brushing past her in day to day life. It was years before she realized this wasn't normal, that only she could see these butchered ghosts, still stuck somehow in a life that isn't theirs ...
Summary and reviews of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
This information about Ninth House was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter.Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.
Book Marks reviews of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
By far, Ninth House is the best novel Leigh Bardugo has ever written, and definitely one of the best of 2019. If I gave stars to my reviews, it would get 10 out of 5. It is a clarion call for accountability, a summoning spell for 'girls like us' who cannot fight back, and a battle cry for those working to dismantle the system. Read Full Review >>.
Book Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
I've heard so much about Ninth House and I just don't get the hype. I think Urban Fantasy is a very cool subgenre of Fantasy and I'd love to find more books that dabble in the subject matter, but Ninth House just doesn't deliver. It has the promise of it with secret magical societies at Yale, but readers are literally thrown into the ...
All Book Marks reviews for Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
By far, Ninth House is the best novel Leigh Bardugo has ever written, and definitely one of the best of 2019. If I gave stars to my reviews, it would get 10 out of 5. It is a clarion call for accountability, a summoning spell for 'girls like us' who cannot fight back, and a battle cry for those working to dismantle the system.
Ninth House
—The New York Times Book Review "[A] world that feels real enough to have its own passport stamp." —NPR "The darker it gets for the good guys, the better." ... "Ninth House is the best fantasy novel I've read in years, because it's about real people. Bardugo's imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story—full of shocks and twists ...
Book Review for Ninth House
The 2019 adult fantasy, "Ninth House," by Leigh Bardugo, faced a large amount of pre-publication controversy after Advanced Reader Copies/ARCs of the book were passed out at the Young Adult Literary Convention, or YALC, in June, in preparation for the book's October 8, 2019 publication date. According to an article in "Bustle" (linked below): "Bardugo…
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Paperback
The New York Times Book Review - Choire Sicha ★ 08/12/2019. ... "Ninth House is the best fantasy novel I've read in years, because it's about real people. Bardugo's imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story—full of shocks and twists—is impossible to put down."
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo - Book Details. TITLE - Ninth House. SERIES - Alex Stern, book #1. AUTHOR - Leigh Bardugo. GENRE - fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, mystery, dark academia. YEAR PUBLISHED - 2019. PAGE COUNT - 461. MY RATING - 4.5 of 5. RATED ON GOODREADS - 4.04 of 5.

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After dominating YA, Leigh Bardugo delivers a fantasy novel for adults with ‘Ninth House’

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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Review: Engrossing epic

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