Reviews with content warning for Incest - Ninth House

Reviews tagging 'Incest'

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

1 review

vader's review against another edition

dark

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

“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.”

Ignorant, bigoted, offensive, maddening quotes like this make up what is one of the worst books I've read in the last years.

This is the Ninth House trigger warnings list. Keep it in mind if you're interested in reading the book and this review, since I will mention most of them, and will go in depth in some of the worst ones (rape of a child, gang-rape, and statutory rape). This entire review will contain spoilers, because there is no way in hell I can explain everything wrong with this without talking about the plot of the novel. Read at your own risk.

Let me start by saying something good, the only good thing I can say about Ninth House: I don't hate Alex Stern. She's had a rough life, and her personality was shaped by her situation, and I think that's fine, even if she's got a great deal of internalised misogyny (which I suspect comes from the author herself, considering) and she's not one of those protagonists that make me want to pull out my hair. Oh, no. Everything else about this book does that, but Alex Stern's personality doesn't.

Great. Now, with that out of the way, let's start tearing this book a new one.

Q: Who is Galaxy "Alex" Stern?

A: Alex is the daughter of a Jewish hippie mother (sic), Mira, and a father that could be Dominican, Guatemalan, or Puerto Rican (sic, ch. 5), or maybe from Peru or Mexico (ch. 28), which as we all know, look exactly the same /s. It's not relevant, since Alex never met him, which is all you need to know about Latino fathers: they are absent /s. She looks like she could be Greek, Mexican, or white (ch. 2), and she refers to herself as a "mongrel" (ch. 2). Alex is a school dropout. Alex is a drug dealer and she fucks guys to "keep them happy". Alex has been an addict since she was 12 years old. Alex is dirt poor, so much so that she stays with her boyfriend, who smacks her around, because she'd be homeless and penniless without him. Alex is a mass murderer. Alex threatens and intimidates good, rich, white girls who never did anything to hurt her. Alex has the talent of seeing the dead, and so she gets a scholarship to Yale, not based on any merit other than being "lucky" enough to have that gift. Alex struggles academically even though she signed up for the easiest classes and the only reason why she manages a GPA good enough to stay is because the dean made a deal with her and falsified her grades (ch 27). Alex is exactly what a republican would write if they were asked to create a latine character.

Q: What's with the sexual violence in this book?

A: Sexual violence against women in general, and women of color in particular and in its worst cases, are pretty much a big, recurrent deal all through Ninth House. The first graphic instance in which we come across it is in chapter 7, when a 12-year-old Alex is raped by the ghost of an old man. This is how Alex finds out that the ghosts she can see can hurt her, and as a consequence of this she tries drugs, and finds out they make them disappear. I've got to admit, it's not a horrible metaphor for how people, including children, might develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with traumatic events. I've got a problem with it, though, and it's in how the scene is told: (TW: the following quote depicts the aftermath of Alex's rape, and is explicit in itself)

(...). She saw a butterfly lying in a puddle beneath the sink, one wing flapping listlessly as if it were waving to her. She screamed and screamed.
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. —Ninth House, chapter 7.

What's wrong with this (besides the obvious)? The book is told from a third person limited POV. This chapter was told from Alex's POV, as evidenced by the first paragraph quoted: we see what Alex sees, so when she sees a butterfly on the floor, we see a butterfly on the floor. However, for some reason, Bardugo decides to step away from Alex's head and describe what this kid looks like right after being brutally raped: half-naked, with her hips up, crying and shuddering in the aftermath. This is a sexualised description. This is Bardugo pointing a camera at a 12-year-old girl and filming her after being raped on a bathroom floor. There was absolutely no need to add that second paragraph. It's incorrect from a literary standpoint and most importantly, it's morally abhorrent. Not even Game of Thrones went there, making a pornographic spectacle of the rape of a 12 year old.

And this is not the only instance in which something like this happens. Around halfway through the book, Mercy Zhaos, a girl of Chinese descent, is gang-raped by a couple of frat boys. Her rape is described in terms exactly like the ones depicted before, only Mercy is eager to be raped due to the drug that was given to her. The act is filmed and sent to her, and it's basically a POV/gonzo porno (CW for explicit content in the link; it's a wikipedia article that describes this type of pornography and includes a sexually explicit picture). It's exactly the sort of thing you could find on PornHub tagged as "POV ASIAN GIRL BRUTALISED!" or "ASIAN SLUT GANG-BANGED!". It's disgusting and it's only a plot device, the purpose of which is so that Alex finds out that the drug Mercy was given is Merity, which is used by Yale's secret societies to take away their users' free will.

Everything that could be wrong about Mercy's rape is so: the (white) rapists say she's "something exotic [they] have on the menu" and call her "Chinese takeout" .

Alex, her supposed friend and a survivor of multiple instances of rape and abuse, starts watching the video of Mercy's abuse right next to her and has to be told to get out of the room to watch it because common sense is for rich people only (/s). Then, when she finds out who the "main'' rapist was, takes revenge on him by making him eat shit out of a toilet (another infamous part of this novel), filming it and sending it to basically every one of his contacts. When it reaches Mercy, she watches it, says a witty one liner, regains her appetite, and is cured of all trauma forever and ever amen. This all happens in chapter 14. Who'd've thought it was that easy. Someone tell all therapists everywhere: make rapists eat shit out of a toilet, show the video to the victim, and they'll be peachy once more /s.

Of course, something similar happens with Alex: she's supposed to be a drug addict, but we never see her struggling with staying clean. She has no cravings, no withdrawal symptoms, no nothing.

Later on, the rape of other girls is skimmed by. Alex describes herself as a 15-year-old blowing a much older guy to "keep him happy", as asked by her drug-dealing friends and acquaintances. Her boyfriend calls her a whore, and a slut, and Alex begs him for forgiveness, out of fear that he'd dump her otherwise. They are then described having sex, and Alex feels dirty and wrong after the fact.

This is wrong. This is wrong to a level I've never encountered before. This is misogynistic and racist. The women explicitly humiliated, abused, raped, having their trauma dismissed, are two women of color. THIS. IS. WRONG! WAKE UP, PEOPLE! OVER 4 STARS IN AVERAGE TO THIS?

Q: Is the racism really that bad in Ninth House?

A: Yes. Alex is every nasty stereotype you've ever heard about latines in general and latina women in particular, as expressed before. Mercy is meek, and sweet, and supportive, and she's incredibly smart and she helps Alex with her homework. Alex's father's country of origin and ethnicity are made a joke of (ch 28), since, haha, latines are all exchangeable /s. Everyone else, other than Turner the Black cop, is a white person, or their ethnicity is not specified, which makes for an overwhelmingly white cast.

Instead of using any sort of Western mythology or folklore, the Yale secret societies appropriate from other cultures, such as Chinese or Egyptian. They steal and keep relics from Peru, which I assume to be of Inca origins, for themselves. The only thing they have going on for themselves is that they are at least portrayed as horrible and entitled. However, the "good guys" also engage and use magic, and it's never specified where or how or by whom it was originated, so it stands to reason that they engage in appropriation, too.

Q: What about the classism?

A: It's impossible to ignore and it's glaringly obvious. It made me think that Bardugo's never interacted with a poor person in her life, and if she has, I pity them. Truly, I do. Every poor person in this novel is a drug dealer, a prostitute (or sold for sex against their will), an abuser, an addict, violent, a murderer, a school dropout, a negligent parent, book-dumb, or all of them at once. There is not one poor person in Ninth House who is genuinely good. None. Zero. Zilch.

The life of poor people is turned into a violent spectacle, their struggles sensationalized, their troubles cartoonish and over-the-top fake. Bardugo wrote poor people like I'd imagine a Fox News reporter would talk about them: thieves, opportunists, selfish, mean, willing to sell out their friends for their own gain. From Alex to Tara, the dead girl who turned out to be a drug dealer turning a blind eye to his client's deprived habits, passing by every one of Alex's old friends, poor people in Ninth House are horrible. This quote by Alex sums it up best:

“I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.” —Ninth House, chapter 20.

This is untrue. I can't believe I have to spell it out, but you can be poor, have a horrible life and still be a good person. YES, even if you're a person of color! My mom and her sisters come from literally nothing, their childhood in many ways was very similar to Alex's (no father, had-to-drop-out-of-school-at-14-to-work, put-up-their-shoes-for-los-reyes-magos-but-nothing-came poor; my mom gets emotional to this day when we put up the Christmas tree because her dream, as a little girl, was to have one, but they couldn't afford it), and they are some of the best people I know. They are hardworking. They are honest. They went back to school as soon as they could (and even if they hadn't, they would've been good anyway). They studied at night and worked by day, and they pulled all their money together so by the time they were in their early thirties they could buy a house of their own for them and my grandmother to live in. My mom and one of my aunts even went to college (by their own merit! no rich white dean made up good grades for them) and studied Latin, that pesky, elitist language that seems to be available only to the rich. It is so fucking insulting, so despicable to people like them, to write about the poor in the way that Bardugo did. It was one of the worst things about the novel. I'm quite literally tearing up while writing this: that's how horrible it feels.

This is added to the racism with Alex, and to a blink-and-you-missed-it moment of xenophobia, because of course the maid of the Rich Western White Man is an Ukrainian woman with a strong accent. Immigrants are only there to serve or sell drugs, after all.

Q: And what about the plot?

A: The book starts with a prologue set between chapters 27 and 28 of the novel. The chapters before that are only a setup for that part, which means that nothing much happens other than the establishing the setting, characters, tone of the novel, and worldbuilding. Oh, and telling us about Darlington and then saying that Darlington disappeared. The first 70% of this novel is, basically, all flashbacks, which at times feels disjointed and which makes the reader want to just skip to the point where we're in what's Alex's present.

Then: a very rushed climax of 70 pages, where too much happens all at once. Instead of spacing out the big reveals, or leaving out some for the next books, we get told that the dean is evil! the bridegroom didn't kill Daisy! Daisy is actually alive! Belbalm IS Daisy! Darlington might've turned into a demon!. And you know what's the worst part? Alex. Doesn't. Do. Anything. Things happen to Alex, things happen around Alex, but other than right at the end, when she goes to visit the dean, and then says she'll go to hell to get Darlington back... Everything plot-related falls into Alex's hands by chance, or she stumbles into it while doing something else, like when she finds out about Merity thanks to Mercy's rape. She investigates a little, she finds out some stuff, and that's the most of it. Even when she's physically attacked, she doesn't defend herself, she calls a gray to do it for her (Hellie, the bridesgroom) or the hounds. It's incredibly frustrating.

And my God, it drags. The first 150 pages are boring. The only entertainment you get from then on is the gore, murder, and rape that happens on screen. It is, to sum it up in one word, bad.

All in all, Ninth House feels like when Miley Cyrus, in 2013, hopped naked into a wrecking ball and basically yelled: "See! I'm not Hannah Montana anymore! I'm an adult now!".

This book is the lovechild between The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Game of Thrones, if it had been written by a Stephen King who was in a hurry because he really, really needed to take a shit.

Even though it's an adult book due to the mature content, the plot and storyline follow the format and complexity of a young adult novel. There is nothing good I can say about it, other than that I don't hate Alex's personality, in spite of everything. I think I don't need to say that I won't be picking up any sequels, or anything else by Leigh Bardugo, even if she released a third Six of Crows.

“Mors irrumat omnia,” Alex whispered. Death fucks us all."

Content Warnings

More...