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A review by drlark
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
5.0
This. Was. Fantastic. I started it on my kindle about 4 years ago, close to when it came out, and only made it about 75 pages in. It felt unnecessarily dark and edgy. And I do think those first chapters are a tough sell -- a combination of info-dump and dropping the reader right into the story that's a little difficult to follow, from the perspective of a narrator who's not super sympathetic.
It was enough for me to DNF then, but I'm SO GLAD I came back to it. And I'm so glad Leigh Bardugo's writing has continued to grow from her Shadow and Bone series, which I tried multiple time and just found dull. (Though I, along with everyone, loved Six of Crows.)
Our gal, Alex Stern definitely fits that fantasy main character profile of scrappy young ne'er do well, thrust into events out of her depth. Whether she's a thief or a con artist or some other miscreant existing at the fringes just waiting for some handsome stranger to whisk her into another story, I've read this heroine before. And I was tired of her. And Alex Stern isn't NOT that heroine. She is plucked from tragedy to attend Yale as part of the Ninth House, tasked with keeping the other eight houses/secret magic societies in line. She's out of her league, big time. But she's a scrappy survivor, and the snake on the cover is appropriate.
And it's the story Bardugo weaves together with the New Haven setting, the magic of the secret societies, and the murder mystery that is the most impressive. A highly skilled combination of genre conventions. I had an absolute ball. The darkness of the story feels proportional. Alex drives the action every step of the way -- which is really all you need to keep a story moving, and something that so many books lack. (City of Brass, I'm looking at you.) I love Alex, Darlington, and Dawes. I can't wait to read Hell Bent. This is expertly done fantasy, and I am so happy about it.
It was enough for me to DNF then, but I'm SO GLAD I came back to it. And I'm so glad Leigh Bardugo's writing has continued to grow from her Shadow and Bone series, which I tried multiple time and just found dull. (Though I, along with everyone, loved Six of Crows.)
Our gal, Alex Stern definitely fits that fantasy main character profile of scrappy young ne'er do well, thrust into events out of her depth. Whether she's a thief or a con artist or some other miscreant existing at the fringes just waiting for some handsome stranger to whisk her into another story, I've read this heroine before. And I was tired of her. And Alex Stern isn't NOT that heroine. She is plucked from tragedy to attend Yale as part of the Ninth House, tasked with keeping the other eight houses/secret magic societies in line. She's out of her league, big time. But she's a scrappy survivor, and the snake on the cover is appropriate.
And it's the story Bardugo weaves together with the New Haven setting, the magic of the secret societies, and the murder mystery that is the most impressive. A highly skilled combination of genre conventions. I had an absolute ball. The darkness of the story feels proportional. Alex drives the action every step of the way -- which is really all you need to keep a story moving, and something that so many books lack. (City of Brass, I'm looking at you.) I love Alex, Darlington, and Dawes. I can't wait to read Hell Bent. This is expertly done fantasy, and I am so happy about it.