Uptown Oracle Reads… Ninth House

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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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.

So first things first is admitting that I didn’t like Ninth House as much as I thought I was going to. I’ve not read any of Leigh Bardugo’s books before, so I’m unsure if it’s her writing style but I just wasn’t getting on with it. Ninth House has an intense prologue which does capture your attention. However, some parts had me really interested, but then other parts had me feeling bored. The pacing felt all over the place, and it’s not just that some parts are slow it’s that they’re filler content. It’s information that doesn’t add to the character, plot, world-building or lore and it pulls you out of being gripped to the pages.

Ninth House covers a lot of topics which are prevelant in the real world, whilst also having that fantasy edge. Being set in Yale makes it the perfect setting to discuss wealth, privilege and the realisation that if you have money you’re safe. It’s something that’s brought up time and time again as Alex tries to survive and fit in to this world that she’s been excluded from for both not being rich and also not knowing about magic until recently.

Alex is a great main character for the topical discussions because she’s lived a tragic backstory, and this allows her to have a different perception than those around her. I also loved seeing her loyalty to others like Hellie and Darlington, as well as showing off that she’s a lot softer than she puts on.

In both her lives she puts up walls and a pretence of who she is, and I liked that consistency. But I did think she spends so much of her experience on these pretences that she doesn’t develop as a character through the story, our perception of her does change as her backstory is filled in though. I’d hope that in the series she grows as a character and has a story arc that matures her and makes her a better person.

I was always intrigued by Darlington’s story, and kind of wish we’d seen his arc of attending Yale and becoming Dante. There’s a lot of questions around him which not all are answered in Ninth House, however I’m hoping we find out more in the next book.

The magic system and concept of different groups forming a house on a nexus of power isn’t original, but it was really intriguing. Magic specialisations include extispicy, splanchnomancy, portal magic, necromancy, therianthropy, glamours and illusions, logomancy as well as elemental magic. For an urban fantasy, it was great to see that there’s a robust magic system with clear ties to the real world and history. It made it feel like we could go to New Haven and find these societies.

It is a world where everyone is capable of magic, if they know how and are in a place of power. However, we don’t get to actually see enough of it as our character is both in the middle of it all and also not part of it and doesn’t really use magic. Lethe is the least interesting house as they’re like the cops of the magic world in New Haven, and they sometimes use objects which have magic but they’re not out here calling dead bodies to life or anything. I’m hoping the magic is explored more in later books.

Overall I think the hype around Ninth House has let it down for me, as it’s not and exceptional book. But it was an enjoyable book, and whilst there are flaws they’re not flaws that made me stop reading it.

Positives of Ninth House

• Magic societies hidden at Yale with many different specialisms
• Really good takes on topics of wealth and poverty

Negatives of Ninth House

• Odd pacing and writing style makes it hard to stay focused

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