After a long undeserved hiatus, I've suddenly been reminded that I have a blog. It was sitting in the back of my brain for like 2 months - you know since my last update was Fall 2022. I'll complain to my friends, who are not as inclined to spend what little money they have as med students, that I have no one to gush over books about, and, exasperated, they'll bring up this blog. They love me I'm sure, but int hat moemnt when I bring up my excuses - work, home life, exercise, et. - they want to throttle me I'm sure. I continue to talk about books they have not and will not end up reading. One of those is Ninth House.
I actually finished reading this a month ago while spending the holidays traveling more than I did the entire year. It was while I was sitting on the couch with my in-laws that I finished the entire thing - I remember vividly how gobsmacked I was that I enjoyed this read. I had been avoiding Leigh Bardugo for a while because of the Netflix series based on her YA series Shadow and Bone - I just did not like the premise. I say YA because from the little I've looked into it, it's giving Hunger Games with special powers not-like-other-girls main character and love interest who's destined to save the world, complete with a bath scene where they wash away the stink of poverty when she gets to the castle (presumably). I regret to say that I was biased whenever her name came up, which is why I was so reluctant to even read Ninth House. The synopsis hints at all the elements of a gorgeous dark academia setting and a vast array of characters. I was initially thrown off by the stupid name for the main character but as I learned more about her, I actually thought it was fitting. It was an amazing read and even now almost 2 months since I finished it, I still think about the story. The second book Hell Bent actually was released on January 10th and you can bet your sweet ass I pre-ordered the fuck out of that one.
About the Author
Leigh Bardugo was born in Israel in 1975 and grew up in Los Angeles, California raised by her grandparents. She attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated with an English degree in 1997. During her time at Yale, she was a member of Wolf's Head secret society. In 2012, Bardugo published Shadow and Bone (now a Netflix series) and it was a hit - it was nominated for the Romantic Times Book Award, named an Indie Next List Book, and reviewed in The New York Times. By 2014, she had published the subsequent books in the trilogy, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. She calls them Tsarpunk - a fantasy with inspiration from 19th-century Russia. She also wrote a companion duology set in the same "Grishaverse" - Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Her first adult novel was published in 2019 - Ninth House - and won the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for best fantasy novel. In 2023, she published the second book, Hell Bent. Her books have been translated into 22 languages and published in over 50 countries.
(Source: Wikipedia)
About the Book (spoilers ahead - obviously)
Let me tell you right now: this book was written so excellently that you do not want the mystery spoiled because it sets up the premise for the second book.
The book starts with Galaxy "Alex" Stern overseeing a prognostication in an operating theater of a secret area of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall at Yale University. A Haruspex is pawing through a man's intestines to get information on stocks. Suddenly, a low moan reverberates through the theater, and the Grays - ghosts who've taken up residence in the theater after passing away there that only Alex can see - seem agitated. She tries not to look too long lest they realize she can see them, but their behavior is unnatural. They're leaning into the protective salt circle around the prognostication and there are heavy booming sounds, shaking the theater - it sounded like someone was knocking from the other side. No one else living in that room can see the Grays, but they can hear the disturbances and assume Alex is causing them - she starts getting weird looks from the bonesmen. Before she can warn them or use one of her death words or spells of protection, the disturbances stop. It shook her so thoroughly, she was sick right there in front of everyone.
Alex can see ghosts since she could remember. The Grays are drawn to events and places where the living are most prevalent. It doesn't have to be a densely populated area, but it could be places where Grays can feel like they're closer to the living - parties, college campuses during move-in, where people are feeling the most - anxiety, excitement, tired, any emotions. And they avoid anything and anywhere that reminds them of death - cemeteries, funerals, mortuaries, even phrases that hint at death. This is why, when Alex got her period for the first time, a Gray around her had been given a burst of power - blood is the closest thing to the living that the Gray can get. Sometimes they get little boosts of power. She was assaulted by a ghost (something she didn't know they could do previously). The event left her shaken and, knowing that telling anyone, even her own mother, she turns to other means of silencing the dead.
Last Summer
She turned to drugs as a means of escape. By 15, she had dropped out of school and began living with her boyfriend, Len, running deals with him, and her best friend Hellie. At one party, Hellie had been drugged and died from an overdose after she was assaulted by several men, one of whom was the cousin of Len's dealer, a big time drug lord in their city named Eitan (pronouned Ay-tahn). She loved Hellie so much and realizing she couldn't avenge her, kept trying to talk to her ghost. Thoroughly traumatized and only just beginning to grieve, she takes Hellie into herself, not realizing that this gave her unparalled strength. She picked up Hellies softball bat and decimated everyone in the apartment. I'm talking eviscerated all those men, including Eitan's cousin Ariel. Afterwards, Hellie takes Alex to the canal, washes off the blood and walks her back to the apartment where the authorities were called (by the neighbors presumably) and she was hospitalized for an overdose. Somehow, she's found by Lethe House, one of the secrete societies overseeing the use of magic at Yale and is offered a new life and a full ride scholarship in exchange for her abilities by Dean Sandow. This series of events is dubbed Ground Zero.
Last Fall
There are 8 Houses of the Veil known as "The Ancient Eight": Skull & Bones - a real fucking house that exists at Yale!! (divination using animal and human entrails), Scroll & Key (portal magic and astral projections, Book & Snake (necromancy and bone conjuring), Wolf's Head - another real fucking house! (therianthropy), Manuscript (mirror magic and glamours), Aurelian (word binding and divination through language), St. Elmo's (elemental magic, storm calling), Berzelius (no teachings). Lethe House is the "ninth house" that oversees all magic use in the university and puts in place protective measures to make sure there is no collateral damage from the rituals of the other houses. Lethe assigned a Virgil to oversee the rituals - usually a rising senior - and Virgil can in turn "tap" his Dante - usually a first-year student.
When Alex arrives at Yale, the position of Virgil is held by Daniel Tabor Arlington III, or Darlington, and Alex is his new Dante. Darlington is an impoverished local from a family of former industrialists that owned a rubber boot factory in the area. Although by the time that Darlington is born, his father is estranged from his grandfather and the family has lost all of its fortune. Darlington has lived and taken care of his grandfather's old mansion, dubbed Black Elm, since he passed away seven years ago. The rest of the societies call him "the gentleman of Lethe" because of his impeccable manners and character. He was introduced to Lethe after he almost died drinking a concoction he made in his home, believing that all things magical are just out of his reach. He was prepared to pick his own Dante, but circumstances called for him to take Alex under his wing. He was unprepared for a vulgar, skinny girl of mixed heritage with haunted eyes and no standardized test scores. Eventually, they learn to trust each other and work together.
Bardugo sets us up for a steamy slow burn and I'm HERE FOR IT.
A few months into the semester, Alex and Darlington are called to a routine check at Rosenfeld Hall, the former house of St. Elmo's society - the house of storm calling and elemental magic. After a falling out between Yale and St. Elmo's society, they were relocated to a less occult-inclined place and all but lost their magic. The societies placed their houses in critically located nexuses of power all over New Haven - losing your "tomb" could mean the end of all magic rituals. As they were leaving Rosenfeld, Darlington sees what he thinks is a portal in the corner. As he's deciding what to do, he's absently talking to Alex and realizes he just put together what happened at Ground Zero - that Alex had allowed Hellie to take over her body and kill everyone. Previously, all Darlington knew about Alex's past before Lethe was that she was part of a horrific crime and was likely a victim - the reports hinted that no skinny young girl could do to those men what was in the pictures.
"Darlington looked at her. Undine with her slick black hair, the center part like a naked spine, her devouring eyes."The writing is fucking SUBLIME. It's like drinking a glass of cold, sweet red wine.
Right when Darlington realizes what she did to warrant her entrance to Yale, he gets portaled - or more accurately eaten by hellbeast. The dark shadow wasn't a portal, it was a maw. Alex, shaken by the revelation that Darlington put the pieces together, hesitated a second too long to save him and he was gone. Later, when everyone would ask where he was, they'd say he was in Spain. He's actually in hell - so Spain without the "S".
A good ol' foreshadowing dream was particularly memorable:
"Alex slept in Darlington's bed and dreamed that he was curled up behind her on the narrow mattress.He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at their tips. He whispered in her ear, "I will serve you 'til the end of days.""And love me," she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid.But all he said was, "It is not the same."
Winter
The story is told by switching between Last Fall leading up to Darlington's disappearance and Winter with Alex navigating the responsibilities of Lethe House standing in as Virgil, trying to figure out where Darlington is and dealing with the murder of Tara Hutchins.
With Darlington missing, Alex takes over ritual supervisions, making sure each society performs its rituals in a safe manner. But having never really dealt with time management in an academic setting, she struggles with her schoolwork. The same night that the prognostication in SSS Hall agitates the Grays, she gets a call from Centurion, a detective named Turner. A local girl's body was found near the Yale gym - Tara Hutchins. Turner tries to dissuade her from looking into it, suggesting the murder was unconnected with the societies. Alex however, investigates anyway, because Tara reminds her of Hellie.
The investigated leads to her sticking her nose into some serious shit when she is attacked by a gluma, a ghost that is like a Gray but not really. A gluma was a husk, a spirit raised from the recently dead to pass through the world, go-betweens who could travel across the Veil. They were messengers for Book & Snake. She was saved by the Bridegroom - a Gray that was believed to have killed his fiancee Daisy. In return, he asks that Alex find out what actually happened the night he was thought to have killed Daisy.
After some sleuthing and nearly getting killed again, Alex and Turner find out that Tara Hutchins' ex-boyfriend was not her killer, and that Tara's death was actually arranged by Dean Sandow. After his divorce, the Dean was almost destitute, so he arranged for a new headquarters to be created in exchange for a hefty sum from a group that wanted to create their own House. Believing the nexuses of power on which the Houses all stand on are created after the death of several young women, Dean Sandow arranged for Tara's death on an empty plot of land. However, this did not succeed.
Alex returns to her dorm one night to see Mercy, one of Alex's beloved roommates, crying. Lauren, her other roommate, tells Alex that Blake Keely, one of the frat boys on campus posted a horrible video of her obviously drugged on something and doing sexual acts to him. Alex takes revenge by using some cool magic items on him and posting a video of him literally eating shit as revenge and discovers that he used an herb only used by Manuscript, meaning the other Houses are indeed involved in some sketchy shit. After this, Alex is nearly killed by Blake after someone used magic on him to get him to kill her. Pamela Dawes, Lethe's Oculus and a timid young PhD student, hits him overhead with a bust of Hiram Bingham III and kills him to save her. They're tied irrevocably now.
After losing all her leads to Tara Hutchins besides Dean Sandow and still not knowing what happened to Daisy and the Bridegroom, she attends a party held by Professor Marguerite Belbalm. Alex confronts Sandow but is interrupted by Belbalm, who reveals that she is in fact Daisy herself, and that the nexuses that coincided with the deaths of all those young women were the result of Belbalm (Daisy) devouring the souls of young women. She kills the dean and tries to eat Alex's soul, but Alex calls on all the surrounding Grays to help her and frees all the souls that Daisy had absorbed. Belbalm basically disintegrates. Alex finds out she's a Wheelwalker like Daisy - someone who can see and communciate with the dead.
"'We are Wheelwalkers. All worlds are open to us. If we are bold enough to enter.'"
After Sandow's funeral, Alex, Dawes, and Michelle Alameddine, Darlington's Virgil when he was a Dante, gather to learn how to get Darlington back. After some discussion, they decide to go into Hell to bring back Darlington, who's been possessed by a demon.
My Thoughts
Jesus Christ - where do I start?
When I repeatedly say that this book has been on my mind since December, I mean every now and then I'll get the urge to read a really good book and my brain immediately thinks of this, I'm inclined to dive back into this world of literature, magic, and quotes that I'll probably never read in their own works. And I get ANGRY, at least I was until January 10th when the second book was released.
I mentioned it before but the writing was so incredible. The character descriptions were amazing - Alex was portrayed as this bad ass, tattooed, brown girl with this beautiful slick black hair and haunting eyes, and Bardugo stuck to it! It fed into her personality (along with, you know, the trauma of killing like 5 people with a baseball bat) and it influenced how she approached people who she knew viewed her as "other". The odd one out sense of preservation that Alex used to her advantage saved her life multiple times. Right now, as I write this, I can't think of any times in this book that Alex did something out of character. She's not a robot, she still cares for people - especially people who preserve the sense of normalcy she's growing accustomed to in Yale - like Mercy and Lauren (her other roommate), and Darlington, Dawes and Turner (though "care about" is not an accurate description of their relationship). She realizes yet again, as with her childhood after that god awful ghost assault in the bathroom, that adults/authority figures are still not to be trusted - which explains the tentative truce between her and Turner - after learning that Sandow was the reason Darlington was gone and Tara was murdered. So you're seeing all this crazy shit through the eyes of someone who's seen some shit even before she learned about magic. Her decisions are equal part insane and totally understandable.
Even after finding out that Darlington is in fucking Hell, her only concern was trying to figure out how to even get there. Her stand off with Belbalm was just the missing puzzle - she could've gotten there the whole time, she just didn't know it.
I've already read the second book so this point is moot, but I wish I had gotten some insight into Dawes' character. The second book gives a lot more with Dawes while she works with Alex to get into Hell to bring Darlington back.
The dark academia setting was *chef's kiss*, I was thoroughly immersed. Bardugo's writing is so crisp I was convinced that if I set foot on campus, I'd get recruited by Lethe or feel the aftereffects of a ritual gone wrong while doing homework in the library. She expertly wove the timelines together so you got closer to the characters while reliving their memories. It was a slow start with all the terminology but I was hooked after being introduced to Darlington. The brief glimpses into Darlington's life when you got his point of view was less a detraction from the story and more of a build-up with a great pay-off.
The entire book left me prone for like 5 minutes after I read the last line and when I got feeling back in my limbs, I pre-ordered the second one.
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