Rating: ★★★★★
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Title: Ninth House
ISBN: 1250313074
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Publisher: Flatiron Books, 2019
Page Count: 459 pages
Synopsis: Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
When my dark academia book club wanted to start with Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, I was thrilled. I've been meaning to get my hands on this one ever since my friends freaked out over it. I also have trusted sources who have told me Bardugo is an amazing author.
But before we get into my reactions, what is dark academia? Dark academia is a subgenre of fiction books that satirizes the neogothic romanticism of libraries and academia. Books in this category typically focus on the dark realities of these environments, or they create worlds around them that are hard to swallow. There's a mixture of grounded fiction and fantasy on any dark academia shelf. Dark academia has fostered a subculture aesthetic with the same name that you might be familiar with on Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, or Tumblr.
I should go on record to say that this book has some known trigger warnings. However, if you're going to dabble in this type of subgenre, you're probably aware of the darker tones these stories bring. Still, for those dealing with personal traumas that they may not want to subject themselves to while reading this book, a quick warning that Ninth House does deal with violence, rape, sexual assault, murder, and drug use. I have seen some reviews list every plot beat that's grotesque as a trigger warning, but I think that's a bit overkill and can be more damaging to someone who sincerely cannot engage with the details. So, if you think any of these bucketed categories aren't in favor of your mental health, please consider that (also this may not be the subgenre for you). Still, if you're squeamish and you've watched anything like Game of Thrones, this is manageable.
So, now that that's out of the way...
Ninth House opens with a prologue in spring. We meet Alex Stern, a student at Yale who is a member of the Lethe House and works with the secret societies of the university, however, much of the story focuses on the Skull and Bones society. The Bonesmen host highly mystical prognostications, focused on economics and politics—everything you'd expect from Yale students linked to a secret society that functions on money and nepotism. However, Alex isn't quite like the rest of Yale or the Bonesmen. She's a high school dropout, with a rough past, who was accepted to Yale on a scholarship because she has a special gift: she can see the "Grays". The ghosts that haunt New Haven.
Whenever I think of Yale, my mind goes to Gilmore Girls and how much research I did on the university back when I was a prospective student—desperate to go, but I knew my GPA and lack of money would never get me there. Getting to explore the dark and fantastical side of Yale through Ninth House made me so happy. There's a lot of mystery and rumor that follows the role the secret societies play at Yale, but within the context of this book, it's all about the paranormal and magical.
The setting is painted so vastly different between perspectives. For some, it's the failure of the elite—the city that can never compete with its ivy siblings. Some see it for the alive beast it is—filled with haunted memories, festering wounds where the money ran out. But this New Haven reflects the state of every college town: A castle gleaming in the center of mediocrity and underdeveloped life.
Most of Ninth House takes place in winter, with flashbacks to the previous year's autumn. The book juxtaposes two perspectives throughout the book: Alex in winter, and Daniel Arlington ("Darlington") in autumn. The juggling of these two timelines, and the perspectives they bring, were an important element to the story overall, but it was an adjustment at first. Alex focuses on what's ahead—the present story and plot at-hand. (Occasionally she reflects on her past.) Darlington's chapters are about meeting Alex the previous year and watching her step into his world. This is both important for getting to see Alex from a different angle, but it's also important for understanding the Lethe House through an actual member's eyes.
Bardugo does exactly what you want dark academia to do. It's not just an aesthetically pleasing setting, but it's a satirical commentary on the prestige of a university like Yale and those involved with secret societies. Ninth House executes on this satire well by making the primary point-of-view Alex's—a person who never thought she'd be in a place like Yale. She has earned the right to poke fun at the classism and the overall pretentious nature of the budding scholars around her. It makes the commentary feel organic, rather than having some well-off pseudo-intellectual nihilist sneering at their peers.
Maybe all rich people asked the wrong questions. For people like Alex, it would never be what do you want. It was always just how much can you get?
Darlington's perspective reveals a self-aware young man with elevated dictation and charisma. He understands the follies of his world while also delighting in them. I personally love a little self-aware pretentiousness. When he first encounters Alex, and her disdain for the behavior of the people around her, Darlington feels pangs of resentment and defensiveness. But he's aware that his world comes with privileges and mediocre understandings of what life outside of this mystical New Haven is really like. Especially for someone like him, who delights in sticking to Black Elm for as long as possible.
Darlington did not like to think he had behaved badly. He did not like to think that Lethe had behaved badly. We are the shepherds. And yet they'd left Alex to face the wolves. She was right. They hadn't cared.
The descriptions are what gripped me the most. The way words like "sweaty" or "matted" depicted the grotesque nature of Alex's surroundings and states of being. Bardugo has a poignant way of creating an image in your mind with only a handful of words. Something I worry I'm often struggling to do. From the morning dew sticking to grass, to the way an open wound festers, Ninth House burns these illustrations into your mind. It's also why if this ever became a show or movie, my squeamishness might get the better of me. (I covered my eyes a lot in GoT, okay?)
In the prologue, you see glimpses of Alex hiding away, attempting to study, while tending to some kind of wound. In the first chapter, you see her in a prognostication and learn about her place at Yale. By the second chapter, you start to meet the characters she mentions throughout the first two, and you understand more how she ended up on an acceptance list for Yale despite her complete lack of credentials. Each chapter tells you more and more of her history while unveiling the paranormal plot ahead. Alex was a young woman exposed to more than she should have been, which made her resistant where she shouldn't be, weak where you'd least expect it, cunning when she most needed it, and funny with a sharp edge.
The characters around her spoke in circles around her as gossips and wannabe philosophers. Their jokes and references were esoterically elite, punctuated by classical literature, Freudianism, and a feigned since of propriety. Yet, even when they floated through the halls unbothered, Alex still saw them as people. She knew them from the Grays, and she wasn't so prideful she couldn't turn to them when it counted. In spite of herself, she knew she needed people, and that persistent softness rounded out her character nicely.
I've seen some reviews state that they didn't like how reserved and lackluster Alex was by comparison of other characters. I don't agree with the idea that she was stale in any way. If anything, Bardugo does a great job of emphasizing the mystery behind her motives and overall personality while giving you very exact reasons for why she is more withholding and stoic at times. We see this when one chapter pivots to Darlington's perspective. Through his eyes, Alex shifts between rigid and lively depending on the conversation and her environment, and the dread that follows her stare keeps him on edge. Throughout Ninth House, some of those layers peel back just enough to understand why she is the way she is. She's worn and ragged by time and abuse. She's having to use her survivalist skills to adapt quickly in a world she didn't earn through achievement or money. Yale has trapped her in this life of potential and academics while using her much as she had been used many times over.
Bardugo offered a diverse cast without ever making the focal points their racial struggles—something she would have had to feign as a white author. She didn't try to speak for the characters and their places in the world, she merely spoke about their circumstances as they relate to the plot. Their descriptions were simple, describing skin tone and hair types without using reductive adjectives. Even the horrors these characters experience are described with honest and caring words. They don't tremble for pages on end, trying to find the right words for their fear. They're scared, with their feelings presented with a paragraph of threaded descriptors that make it feel real before we move on. This works well for a story that moves without the characters often, urging them to keep up and swallow whatever is holding them back—both a mechanism of Lethe and the overwhelming sense of something much worse coming.
While I want to rave about how much I loved Darlington, and even give more mention to the reasons why Alex is a great protagonist, I have to give a special shoutout to Dawes. Dawes appears, more or less, as an underdog in the story. She's seen furiously scribbling notes, highlighter markings coloring her knuckles, trying desperately to get her grad school thesis perfect. In the beginning, we know little of her. She's in love with Darlington, she's dismissive of Alex, and she's otherwise seen one dimensionally. But Bardugo didn't allow Dawes to stay that way. Through Darlington, we know little of her, but through Alex we see so much more. She's cunning and caring, and while she's more timid than Alex, her expertise navigating this world and performing various rituals make her an important actor in this plot. Dawes could have easily stayed a one-dimensional character—grimacing at Alex once in a while, maybe occasionally knowing where to find a book that was missing—but she became much more than that. Allowing her character to be a player and not a passive observer in this story made me so very happy.
There's so much more I could say about Alex and Darlington's perspectives, the characters around them, their worlds, and the world they both share. But I don't want to give too much away; it is full of violence and the occult, and it pulls you under from the first chapter. I hope if you get the chance to read Ninth House, you'll feel much as I have.
