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A review by thesonorista
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
4.0
Supernatural mystery? Yes, please!
I went into this without listening to any reviews, so I didn't know what to expect except "good." Ninth House is a mystery set on the campus of Yale and in the town of New Haven. Alex Stern has been chosen as the new "Dante" of Lethe, a secret ninth house to oversee the "Ancient Eight" secret societies of Yale (Bardugo replaces Mace & Chain with Manuscript but otherwise is true to the names of the actual societies). In Bardugo's world, the societies of her alma mater each have a magical specialty that provides its members and alumni with advantages, whether that is being able to play the stock market to win, or make Anderson Cooper more successful than the "actually five foot four inches tall, weighs two bills, and talks with a knee-deep Long Island accent" investigative journalist could have been on his own.
But Ninth House doesn't reach the heights of her best works, in part because it is set at her alma mater, Yale, and Bardugo wants to take us there, really much more than we need to be there. Ninth House could have done with some serious editing of place descriptions. I would rather that energy be applied to the atmosphere of the place instead of the minuscule detail that the book sometimes uses.
That minor peeve aside, Bardugo has once again breathed life into real people that jump off the page. Her handling of drug use and assault feels so much more realistic than anything I've read recently from authors who have actually been in recovery (I'm side-eyeing you Louise Penny). Alex Stern is not necessarily likable, but she is true. The relationship that is established between Stern and Darlington is nearly as good as the slow road to friendship between Stern and Dawes, the eternal grad student of Lethe.
The jumping timeline feeds us clues and does some excellent foreshadowing (the first chapter is brilliant) and the reveal was clever, but it's Stern, who does good even when she isn't doing well, who carries the show. I can't wait to find out what she does next.
I went into this without listening to any reviews, so I didn't know what to expect except "good." Ninth House is a mystery set on the campus of Yale and in the town of New Haven. Alex Stern has been chosen as the new "Dante" of Lethe, a secret ninth house to oversee the "Ancient Eight" secret societies of Yale (Bardugo replaces Mace & Chain with Manuscript but otherwise is true to the names of the actual societies). In Bardugo's world, the societies of her alma mater each have a magical specialty that provides its members and alumni with advantages, whether that is being able to play the stock market to win, or make Anderson Cooper more successful than the "actually five foot four inches tall, weighs two bills, and talks with a knee-deep Long Island accent" investigative journalist could have been on his own.
But Ninth House doesn't reach the heights of her best works, in part because it is set at her alma mater, Yale, and Bardugo wants to take us there, really much more than we need to be there. Ninth House could have done with some serious editing of place descriptions. I would rather that energy be applied to the atmosphere of the place instead of the minuscule detail that the book sometimes uses.
That minor peeve aside, Bardugo has once again breathed life into real people that jump off the page. Her handling of drug use and assault feels so much more realistic than anything I've read recently from authors who have actually been in recovery (I'm side-eyeing you Louise Penny). Alex Stern is not necessarily likable, but she is true. The relationship that is established between Stern and Darlington is nearly as good as the slow road to friendship between Stern and Dawes, the eternal grad student of Lethe.
The jumping timeline feeds us clues and does some excellent foreshadowing (the first chapter is brilliant) and the reveal was clever, but it's Stern, who does good even when she isn't doing well, who carries the show. I can't wait to find out what she does next.