Reviews with content warning for Cultural appropriation - Ninth House

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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

4 reviews

mc_castle's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I don't know if I enjoyed it, but I was GRIPPED. It's was a blend of dark academia, fantasy, a commentary on the upper classes and a murder mystery. Everything bad that could happen to someone happened to the protagonist but with ghosts involved. Also was interesting pacing as it wasn't linear storytelling, especially at the beginning where you're thrown into a weird future telling ritual, where a group of students reach into a man's innards to predict the stock market prices. With NO context. I was very confused at first. Also why do college kids have so much power? Read to find out.

Content Warnings

orndal's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

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

2.5

Could have been real great with a better story structure and more world building. Linear storytelling would have helped with upping the stakes.

The ending came out of nowhere with little to no setup for the reveals. As a mystery novel, this is terrible.

Content Warnings

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“…this was the moment he’d been waiting for: 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 the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.”

TITLE—Ninth House

AUTHOR—Leigh Bardugo

PUBLISHED—2019

GENRE—adult dark academia (plus ghosts)

SETTING—Yale

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—ghosts, the occult, secret societies, university setting, neurodivergency, sexual assault, drugs, classism

“Alex smiled then, a small thing, a glimpse of the girl lurking inside her, a happy, less haunted girl. That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—The worldbuilding with the ghosts and the magic system was really really deep and well done.—“Death words could be anything, really, as long as they spoke of the things Grays feared most—the finality of passing, a life without legacy, the emptiness of the hereafter.” This was also one of the best dark academia books I’ve ever read—all the classic literature quotes and references were so fun!

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️—“He didn’t know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn’t return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.” Yeah.

“The current is strong and inevitably we all succumb.”

Full disclosure: for the first hundred pages I wasn’t sure I was really going to get into the story, but after Chapter 6 I was *obsessed*.

I TOTALLY understand that this book is not going to be for everyone. The content is extremely difficult and uncomfortable to sit with however I personally thought it was extremely well handled and intentional and I found Alex and her experiences to be SO goddamn relatable that I didn’t resent or question Bardugo for any of the choices she made regarding the graphic content of the story. *pause* Will I be able to handle this content in the screen adaptation of this book? That is unlikely. 😅😅

“You shouldn’t be ashamed to be different,” her mother had said when Alex had summoned the courage to ask for the name change. “I called you Galaxy for a reason.” Alex didn’t disagree. Most of the books she read and the TV shows she watched told her different was okay. Different was great! Except no one was different quite like her.”

However, one of the reasons I love Bardugo so much is that the deeper philosophy behind her books is always solid. I know she’s never going to disappoint me on that front. Not only did this book not disappoint philosophically, it had a PLETHORA of PHENOMENAL deeper philosophical themes. Her treatment of themes from neurodivergency, to classism, poverty & disenfranchisement, to abuse, to death, to college, to abandonment & isolation, made it feel as though Bardugo was reaching out through the pages to tell me that she knows what it’s like, that it’s beyond hard, impossible even, barely survivable, almost entirely hopeless all of the time and that even though all that is true, she wants me and others like me, like us, to know that whatever happens, however we feel, we’re actually *not* entirely alone, and that all our lives have *tremendous* value and that we ourselves have *tremendous* power.

“You thought you saw me. See me now.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // I absolutely loved this book but I strongly encourage you to go with your gut before reading and check out the full list of CWs on the storygraph! Graphic: rape (ch 7, ch 16, ch 19), sexual abuse of a child (ch 7, ch 19), bullying, drug use & drug dealing, death & murder, feces; Brief mention: forced institutionalization, white colonization & theft of items of indigenous cultural heritage (There are definitely more so like I said, I recommend checking out the storygraph. Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi
Oligarchy, by Scarlett Thomas

Favorite Quotes:

“She had the eerie sense that they were dreaming her, a girl in a dark coat who would disappear when they woke.”

“He didn’t know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn’t return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.”

“…this was the moment he’d been waiting for: 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 the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.”

“Alex smiled then, a small thing, a glimpse of the girl lurking inside her, a happy, less haunted girl. That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”

“Death words could be anything, really, as long as they spoke of the things Grays feared most—the finality of passing, a life without legacy, the emptiness of the hereafter.”

“But if Beinecke was a living house of words, then it was one grand memorial to the end of everything.”

“It was strange to Alex that the smell of books was always the same. The ancient documents in the climate-controlled stacks and glass cases of Beinecke. The research rooms at Sterling. The changeable library of Lethe House. They all had the same scent as the fluorescence-lit reading rooms full of cheap paperbacks she’d lived in as a kid.”

“They talked about death like it was a breach of manners.”

“You shouldn’t be ashamed to be different,” her mother had said when Alex had summoned the courage to ask for the name change. “I called you Galaxy for a reason.” Alex didn’t disagree. Most of the books she read and the TV shows she watched told her different was okay. Different was great! Except no one was different quite like her.”

“No one could see the things hurting her.”

“He’d taken some papers out of his briefcase, an old essay she’d written when she still bothered going to school. She didn’t remember writing it, but the title read, A Day in My Life. A big red F was scrawled over the top, beside the words The assignment was not fiction.”

“This was the Connecticut Alex had dreamed of—farmhouses without farms, sturdy red-brick colonials with black doors and tidy white trim, a neighborhood full of wood-burning fireplaces, gently tended lawns, windows glowing golden in the night like passageways to a better life, kitchens where something good bubbled on the stove, breakfast tables scattered with crayons. No one drew their curtains; light and heat and good fortune spilled out into the dark as if these foolish people didn’t know what such bounty might attract, as if they’d left these shining doorways open for any hungry girl to walk through.”

“They tried to kill me, Hellie,” she rasped as she slid into the dark. That means I get to try to kill them.

“Darlington had never managed more than a grudging respect for mid-century architecture. Despite his best attempts to admire its severe lines, its clean execution, it always fell flat for him. His father had openly mocked his son’s bourgeois taste for turrets and gabled roofs.”--same lol

“Mirror magic is all about reflection and perception. A lie isn’t a lie until someone believes it. It doesn’t matter how charming you are if there’s no one to charm.”

“Halloween was a night when the dead came alive because the living were more alive: happy children high on candy, angry teenagers with eggs and shaving cream tucked into their hoodies, drunk college students in masks and wings and horns giving themselves permission to be something else—angel, demon, devil, good doctor, bad nurse. The sweat and excitement, the over-sugared punches loaded with fruit and grain alcohol. The Grays could not resist.”

“Because people who can’t be bothered with manners pretend to be amused by them.”

“You didn’t talk. You didn’t tell. That was how CPS got called. That was how you got locked up “for observation”.”

“I’m trying to keep things as normal as they can be in a world where monsters live.”

“The current is strong and inevitably we all succumb.”

“It was something they had in common, though it had never really felt that way.”

“…there was a big difference between things being fair and things being set right.”

“No one realizes how much life happens between the wounds, how much it has to offer.”

“Did they hand him the same Life of Lethe booklet? A long file full of horror stories? A commemorative mug that said Monsters Are Real?”

“We’re all racists, Dawes,” said Alex. “How did you even make it through undergrad?”

“You thought you saw me. See me now.”

“When she was fighting for her life, it was strictly pass/fail. All she had to do was survive and she could call it a win.”

“The Houses of the Veil had too much power, and the rules they had put in place were really about controlling access to that power, not limiting the damage it could do.”

“I know their names.” And names had power. She spoke them one after another, a poem of lost girls…”

Content Warnings

katreadswaytoomuch's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

What is the line between paranormal and fantasy? I have no idea, but this book has decided to jump rope with that line 😅. Don’t get me wrong. That’s not a bad thing. You might think that the inclusion of multiple mythos would be confusing, but Bardugo does it in a clean and elegant way.

I’ll be honest. I had no idea what this book was really about. Huge case of “bookstagram made me read it.” I’m so glad I did. The plot was fast paced and easy to get into. I think the non-linear plot-line really helps with the flow and establishing context in an efficient yet engaging way. Idk what it is, but I love me a good non-linear plot.

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