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A review by unburnt_bela
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Did not finish book. Stopped at 89%.
The racism against POC people in this book it's astonishing—despite whatever good intentions could lay behind the plot.
Dark academia it's more than a setting, it's a critic toward elitism inside intellectual and cultural settings.
This book isn't a critic. To me, it's a fantasy story about a Yale graduated where "what if Yale's secret societies had dark magical powers, with very edgy characters as protagonists?"
And this is a problem that I've seen multiple times with fairly successful YA authhors: to have an adult book does NOT mean "watch how many trigger warnings I can sum up into this bad boy." (Trigger warnings that originally published weren't included in the ARCS giveaways).
The multiple heavy-topic themes are just thrown in for shock value, without any care to dive deeper in the consequences that would give respect to actual victims.
Needless to say, to read this as a Latina was so deeply hurtful I had a panic attack that made me stop reading with care and just spiteful sweeping across pages to read the ending.
Alex could've just been Jewish, coming from poverty, and NOTHING would've changed in the plot. For her to be ambiguously Latina it's just to justify the bad traits she has, and oh boy she has a LOT.
Dark academia it's more than a setting, it's a critic toward elitism inside intellectual and cultural settings.
This book isn't a critic. To me, it's a fantasy story about a Yale graduated where "what if Yale's secret societies had dark magical powers, with very edgy characters as protagonists?"
And this is a problem that I've seen multiple times with fairly successful YA authhors: to have an adult book does NOT mean "watch how many trigger warnings I can sum up into this bad boy." (Trigger warnings that originally published weren't included in the ARCS giveaways).
The multiple heavy-topic themes are just thrown in for shock value, without any care to dive deeper in the consequences that would give respect to actual victims.
Needless to say, to read this as a Latina was so deeply hurtful I had a panic attack that made me stop reading with care and just spiteful sweeping across pages to read the ending.
Alex could've just been Jewish, coming from poverty, and NOTHING would've changed in the plot. For her to be ambiguously Latina it's just to justify the bad traits she has, and oh boy she has a LOT.
- Bad at school
- Enters Yale as a replacement, because she could have never entered by her own merits.
- Too dumb to learn Latin.
- Refer herself as "shit that sticks".
- Drug addict.
- And the root? All because her (Latino) father abandoned her.
Please. Spit in my face closer, Bardugo.
All the themes in this book just make up space of nonsense.
All the themes in this book just make up space of nonsense.
Because how it is possible that a book criticizing misogyny has the big baddie as a WOMAN??? or that the obvious main love interest it's your stereotypical gloomy, rich, white boy? That discovers his attraction toward Alex through a rape scene???
That includes a revenge scene reminding of "Spit in my grave" where Alex makes the rapist eat his own excrement while she records a video JUST to show it to her raped friend and that just magically cures any of her traumas??
This is wild, man.
Plot-related aside, this book it's boring up the last third.
Bardugo it's an established author and it's shows: because to waste half the book in narrating things that already happened and that the readers are already aware of? Unbelievable.
Here the murder it's a setting to info-dump about the characters. A rather annoying strategy I've seen Bardugo has started to settle comfortably in since King of Scars after the success of Six of Crows.
The problem? I don't care for any of the characters in Ninth House. They're not charming, or witty, or funny. I don't care about their tragic backstories (TM).
Her writing it's very good, but here it feels snobby and over the top. One thing it's to weave the atmosphere and another it's to show off.
Anyway, with this book I end my decade-long relationship of devotion toward Leigh Bardugo's work. Once brilliant and refreshing, now coming crashing down since it's peak with Six of Crows, landing messily with the King of Scars fiasco, and buried into Dante's Inferno with Ninth House.
0.5 stars ⭐️, for "trying".
That includes a revenge scene reminding of "Spit in my grave" where Alex
This is wild, man.
Plot-related aside, this book it's boring up the last third.
Bardugo it's an established author and it's shows: because to waste half the book in narrating things that already happened and that the readers are already aware of? Unbelievable.
Here the murder it's a setting to info-dump about the characters. A rather annoying strategy I've seen Bardugo has started to settle comfortably in since King of Scars after the success of Six of Crows.
The problem? I don't care for any of the characters in Ninth House. They're not charming, or witty, or funny. I don't care about their tragic backstories (TM).
Her writing it's very good, but here it feels snobby and over the top. One thing it's to weave the atmosphere and another it's to show off.
Anyway, with this book I end my decade-long relationship of devotion toward Leigh Bardugo's work. Once brilliant and refreshing, now coming crashing down since it's peak with Six of Crows, landing messily with the King of Scars fiasco, and buried into Dante's Inferno with Ninth House.
0.5 stars ⭐️, for "trying".
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Excrement, Antisemitism, and Murder