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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

106 reviews

findmeinunderland's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

Loved, loved, loved.

First of all the cover is just so aesthetically pleasing, even more so after actually falling in love with the characters…
I kind of equate it to being about Alex’s tattoos. Alex’s most prominent tattoos are the snakes that wrap around her collar bones, and I feel like they would be the epitome of her shame when it comes to her tattoos, it’s the most blatant in the macabre nature of the art on her body, spider webs are a more common choice, other things could be given an alternative explanation of importance, but not many people, especially those within the stereotypes of ivy league alumnus, have two huge black snakes curling around their shoulders. I love the symbolism of it being on the cover of the book because Alex used the stereotypes of her outward appearance to avoid attachment, when given the opportunity to flee her environment she covers them as a way of separating herself from the memories she had of being ostracized. Her tattoos later become a different kind of cover, an armor.

I saw some people Say they loved darlington but thought it was hypocritical that he judged Alex for killing someone, since at the end of the book we find out his fate is connected to the fact that he is a murderer.but Let’s be real here, his shock said more about him than it did about Alex. I think darlington unplugged or smothered his grandfather to finally give him piece, I think he colors himself as a monster because of that experience. Enter Alex, who makes him feel like someone with purpose. His whole life he turned towards magic to heal him from the trauma of his parents, I think his grandfathers death took something away from his obsession of magic and the hopefulness it represented to him, until he met Alex who reshaped his view of magic because of her abilities and what she had been through. To learn that the person who reignites your purpose in life is guilty of the same actions you hate yourself for has to be so overwhelming in that it probably completely disillusioned him.

I even saw some people say Bardugo tried to hard to be dark in her content by making Alex’s trauma explicit but failed to give the character any justice, but my response is that the entire present day timeline is Alex’s justice…. Alex was abused and violated by something the most privileged people she knew saw as a gift. It is a widely known horrible part of our reality that the world doesn’t believe or protect victims, it doesn’t protect women. The fact that so many people saw her trauma even if she didn’t want them to and completely wrote her off so they didn’t have to deal with what it meant, is the most realistic part of her character. She was poor, a woman of color, homeless at more than one point in her life…I can think of nothing more realistic that her not getting feasible, malleable justice. But to say she got none at all would be wrong, Alex’s justice was cosmic and metaphorically and more meaningful than some get in the real world, she gained a different sense of self worth imprinting herself onto Tara’s circumstances, fighting to find out what happened to tara meant acknowledging that she and Alex were one in the same— at least in The sense that the world values them the same, she became attached to Tara because she saw herself in a dead body that no one else seemed to care about and couldn’t help but imprint on that experience. Alex knew the world valued her and Tara the same, she saw the parallels between Tara and herself and yet she still came to the conclusion that Tara deserved better than what she got in death, and in life. Those thoughts are more kind than Alex was to herself on a normal basis, and maybe they wouldn’t have meant anything if Alex wasn’t the narrator but she was, she was the one aligning their value, and ultimately accepting that she deserved better than what she got out of life…Alex’s justice was aligning her value with every victim belbam took and saying that they all deserved better.

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makahlo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative 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

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mypatronusisajedi's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

3.0

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egurgens's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-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

I am now in desperate need of book two. I listened to the audiobook, so when I saw 30 min left, I assumed there was more story. Nope. There was an author interview, so I was left on an unexpected cliffhanger. However, this story is so interesting, that I had no issues paying attention and keeping up with what was happening. There are two points of view, there are 3 different time frames, and is just so good! I can imagine that the time skips would be confusing to some, but the book is complicated and interesting enough to keep the reader engaged. When I began the book, I didn't realize it was part of a series, so its safe to say my heart broke when the book ended, but the story continued.

I definitely recommend reading this book, but be warned there are several difficult topics. Drug use, sexual assault, graphic death, bullying, and more. However, the cast of characters is pretty diverse; not perfect, but definitely better than other books I have read. The magic is pretty realistic, as its use is modern, and takes place in the modern world. No hidden world, just a secret society of magic users, that can use it for good or bad.

So many plot twists, you end up hanging onto every word. Friends are enemies, enemies are your greatest allies. No one is who you think they are. Bardugo does POV and time changes well, as each is labelled at the beginning of the chapter. Highly recommend reading this book. Realistic fantasy, secret societies, magic, ghosts, monsters, just so many good things.

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claudiamacpherson's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-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

3.0

Beneath the polished veneer of old money and colonial brick and academic success at Yale lies something much darker. Eight secret societies harness different branches of magic to further their own interests: social and political success, monetary gain, and anything else they can think of. The Ninth, called Lethe House, was created to oversee and prevent the others from going too far. Enter Galaxy “Alex” Stern, dropout and troubled kid, given the chance to go to Yale because of her rare ability to see ghosts, or grays. Lethe’s golden boy, Darlington, begins training her in the rites and procedures of the Ninth House...until his mysterious disappearance. Then a dead body turns up, and Alex must figure out what to do without Darlington’s mentorship.

<i>Ninth House</i> was totally unlike any other Bardugo books I’ve read, and not entirely in a good way. While I am okay with some violence, the gore in this book was too much for me, not to mention sexual assault (definitely check out the trigger warnings before you pick this up!). I’m also generally not a big fan of heavy themes of drugs and addiction. But there were some good points, namely, the main characters. Darlington, Dawes, Turner and even Alex made me love them despite their (many) flaws. I also liked that it was continually pointed out that no one should have the kind of power that exists in this world, especially not a bunch of college students. Most YA/NA brushes over that, but it felt especially necessary to acknowledge here. I like a lot of the magical systems Bardugo created: the rites and rules for ghosts were super interesting.

I didn’t think that the explanation for the nexuses—created when a wheelwalker consumes another soul (I think? Honestly, the explanation was unclear to me)—made much sense, though.

Happy ending meter (no specific spoilers, just the general vibe of the ending):

Like...sort of happy? I guess? Probably as close as it was going to get, minus one loose thread that will (presumably) be tied up in the sequel.

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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

pipedreambrekker's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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s3lin's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious

4.0

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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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oktuber's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.75

I really enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot, and how the conflict was deeply woven into the setting. I have only two complaints. One, it was a bit hard to get into the book at the beginning because it starts directly in media res: Alex is already mostly through the semester in which the plot develops, and we're slowly told the backstory through flashbacks integrated with the rest of the story. The amount of characters and world building at the beginning was hard to push through, but once I did, these aspects made the book more enjoyable. My other main complaint is that the big reveal seemed out of nowhere: it contained information that the reader could have never figured out beforehand,

as Professor Belbam seemed to come out of left field. She was there at the beginning, but then seemed to be so absent through the story, that I was genuinely surprised when she was there at the end. I wish that she and Alex had more interactions leading up to the reveal.

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