(no subject)

[skygiants]

I didn't have strong feelings about picking up Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House -- I really enjoyed the Six of Crows books, but all I'd heard about Ninth House was that it was Bardugo's first adult novel and extremely dark/horror-ish, and I have some horror limits.

But then aquamirage told me that I would probably like it, so I put myself on the extremely long library hold list, and as is often the case it turned out that she was absolutely correct. Ninth House is indeed quite dark and fairly graphic and fully engaged with themes of trauma, sexual violence against kids and teens, substance addiction, and wildly cavalier abuse of privilege, and is also kind of a ... romp is definitely the wrong word? But, dang, the book moves! It's not just extremely readable, but satisfying to read in a way that I think is primarily a function of Bardugo's skilled prose and secondarily a function of how satisfying Alex Stern is a protagonist: she takes decisive action, and it is often not the correct decisive action but it does always feel grounded in her worldview and it certainly keeps the plot rolling.

The plot: Alex Stern sees and occasionally traumatically interacts with ghosts, which through the course of her young adulthood led her down a lot of dead-end paths in attempts to see less ghosts. One of these ended in a scene of mass violence and Alex in the hospital ... from which she was directly recruited into Yale University! by way of Lethe House, the secret society that watches over all of Yale's other secret societies, which all specialize in different mildly horrific and unethical varieties of magic to ... boost the careers of their alumni! That's it, that's all they want to do. It's one hundred percent plausible and one hundred percent gross and a perfect literalized metaphor for the way systems of institutionalized privilege and Yale's actual real-world secret societies work in the real, non-magical world. Literally nothing about this worldbuilding required suspension of disbelief in any way.

Anyway, into the middle of this world comes Alex, who is only there because Lethe House is interested in ghost research, but who is nonetheless determined to seize the opportunity presented and get herself back en route to a viable future via a Yale degree. Alas, various things inevitably interfere with her plan to stay the course and keep her head down, including but absolutely not limited to murder.

There are a lot of books about sinister worlds of privilege, and most of those books spend a lot of time on how seductive and glamorous those sinister worlds of privilege are; you know they're bad, but, like, in a sexy way! The thing I really appreciate about Ninth House is that it does not do this at all. Yale is alluring to Alex because it offers her an opportunity to reinvent herself on the model of Normal Kid Having A Normal College Experience, but the more she sees of the ultra-privileged back end, the grosser it looks both to her and to the reader. It's explicitly all the same kinds of violence and misogyny and abuse that she encountered among the drug dealers she hung out with in her teens, just dressed up in a fancier coat. The things that ground her, and the allies she makes, aren't the people on the inside of that world of privilege: instead it's the mousy grad student who took a low-level job with Lethe in an attempt to finish her dissertation, the ghost whose death may have been a consequence of nineteenth-century society shenanigans, the roommate who doesn't know anything about the magic but suffers the consequences of its abuse at a frat party and comes out for her in the clutch. (It's also their reluctant cop liaison who dislikes everything the secret societies stand for, whom I liked as a character while at the same time wishing a little bit that while we were calling out systems of privilege we could get away from The Cop as representative of The Good Guy Who Wants To See Justice Done.)

I also liked: how difficult it was for Alex to stay on top of Yale classwork as someone extremely smart in ways very different from the ones that Yale recognizes and rewards; the extremely grounded and well-described sense of place and location; and the use of Sephardic poetry in the plot. A good book! I will read the next one!

Comments

[sovay]

Literally nothing about this worldbuilding required suspension of disbelief in any way.

I appreciate knowing that this is one hundred percent a book I should not try to read.

[skygiants]

Yeah, this is very absolutely not going to be a book for everybody.

[glitteryv]

The only other book I've read by Leigh Bardugo is Shadow and Bone (the firs book of the Grishaverse). So, unlike, a lot of Bardugo's fans, I approached Ninth House with minimal expectations. I read it last fall and had an interesting time (I'd read up on all of the Content/Trigger Warnings and that helped me with the heavier/horror aspects.)

I did liked Alex and how unlikable she was at times. Also the setting and most of the worldbuilding.

FWIW, I did have 3 gripes with the book. For starters, it did feel overwritten here and there (particularly in the first 25%). Also, I was disappointed with how Bardugo wove in themes of socio-economic privilege, misogyny (internal and external), sexual assault, racism, and trauma... and left them at a superficial level. Finally, the Spanish was wonky (I'm ESL and my first language is Spanish so poorly translated Spanish is something that drives me bonkers. Especially in profic).

In the end, though, I liked the book (gave it 3 stars, iirc) and I'm deffo waiting for the next one in the series. :)

[skygiants]

lol, I read the excerpt of Shadow and Bone at the back of Six of Crows and immediately decided I did not need to read it. But I really loved Alex as a POV character in this one. So many decisions, so many of them ill-advised but extremely cathartic!

I completely missed any issues with Spanish -- I was just so excited to see all the Ladino, which isn't a language I feel like I ever see in contemporary fiction! (But I'm also not a Spanish speaker, so I absolutely would not have noticed any issues with the translation.)

[glitteryv]

There was a point when Book Ppl were going wild over The Grishaverse. And that went double for the SoC duology. I am deffo eager to read the latter, but have had to wait pretty much until late spring of this year cuz some folks were so into those books that I was on the verge of hype backlash.

At the same time, it was LOLARIOUS to see the Grishaverse trilogy fans absolutely freak the F out when Ninth House dropped. You know, despite the fact that the marketing made it V. Clear that this wasn't a YA novel.

[skygiants]

I hear you on the hype backlash -- I managed to slide in on Six of Crows right before that hit for me, but there was definitely a genuine risk.

and oh man, I did hear there was Some Discourse about Ninth House...

[chestnut_pod]

I don't think I saw any Spanish, only Ladino (the characterization of which as being a "dead language of diaspora,", fwiw as an hispanohablante and ladinohablante Jew, I strongly didn't appreciate - people literally still speak this, Leigh, there's just been a whole section of the Academia approved to include it, and also, diaspora does not mean dead??). And yes, the translations of that Ladino were pretty loose, but as they were never anything other than proverbs or the lyrics of folksongs, I was willing to extend some disbelief based on the fact that poetry is hard to translate and idioms even more so! That said, it really needed… like, how did a Ladino speaker end up in California like that? Good estimates say there are probably fewer than 100 in the region - why is this grandmother one of them? Why can Alex remember all these complex idiomatic translations of Ladino but not battle her way through Spanish II or remember any other Ladino words? Why I think we're supposed to understand that Alex gets at least some of her Latinx heritage through her mother - this wasn't a language spoken in Latin America, actually? It's from people around the Mediterranean basin and the former Ottoman Empire, and it's definitely not something preserved via crypto-Jewish activity in the borderlands. So what gives! The Ladino needed more explanation. Just goes to show you that Ashkenazi Jewish authors can mess up when they try to write other Jewish subgroups.

Definite agree on the slow start, however.

[glitteryv]

The 2nd reason why I didn't jump aboard the Grishaverse train back when it was the YA series to read had to do with some pointed criticisms toward Bardugo's worldbuilding.

Especifically the fact that she's using Russian culture for 'cool points' while, at the same time, doesn't seem to have put that much care into it? (this review and this other one go into detail abt what Bardugo presented vs. the actual!culture.)

So I was disappointed but not surprised at how poorly Alex's Latinx background + the Ladino and Spanish thing were handled in the story.

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, that's good (if disappointing) to know. Thanks for including the links.

[kore]

YAY, I'm so glad you liked it! I really fell in love with Alex. I didn't go to Yale and my background wasn't anywhere near as bad as hers, but that book really captured "outsider girl goes to school of privilege" in a way a lot of stories don't.

[skygiants]

Alex was such a great character! I thought Bardugo did a really good job with the outsider POV -- I was really impressed by how she kept the thousand mundane stressors of being at Yale a constant presence in and around all the dramatics of the magical plot, and how few illusions Alex has about the glamor of it (but the behavior she encounters manages to sink even below those.)

[slashmarks]

This sounds like my sort of thing, I'll have to check it out.

Also thank you for this bit of description: There are a lot of books about sinister worlds of privilege, and most of those books spend a lot of time on how seductive and glamorous those sinister worlds of privilege are; you know they're bad, but, like, in a sexy way! The thing I really appreciate about Ninth House is that it does not do this at all. . It neatly articulated something I've been trying to do in writing for a while now without being able to explain in words.

[skygiants]

I hope you enjoy it if you read it! (Let me know if you want any specific gore/trigger warnings.)

It's like ... so many off them have this air of wish-fulfillment, like 'who wouldn't want to be part of ~*~all this~*~?' when the reality is, like, no, you shouldn't want to be part of this! It's awful!

[bookblather]

*slides into your comments*

I would like some specific warnings around the sexual abuse and violence please? And anything about mental hospitals.

[skygiants]

Absolutely! It's a lot, so I'll put them in ROT13:

- va cebonoyl gur zbfg qvfgheovat fprar gung'f npghnyyl ba-cntr, n grzcbenevyl fbyvq tubfg nggrzcgf gb encr lbhat (12-lrne-byq) Nyrk qhevat ure svefg zrafgehngvba
- grra Nyrk vf cerffherq vagb frk jvgu byqre zra
- Nyrk'f zbz gevrf gb pbzzvg ure gb n zragny ubfcvgny ntnvafg ure jvyy (vvep Nyrk rvgure oernxf njnl gura be rfpncrf nyzbfg vzzrqvngryl, naq gur rirag vf bayl zragvbarq bapr naq abg zhpu qrfpevorq)
- grra Nyrk'f orfg sevraq vf (aba-fcrpvsvpnyyl ohg pyrneyl onqyl) frkhnyyl nohfrq naq bireqbfrq qhevat n cnegl naq fhofrdhragyl qvrf
- gurer'f ng yrnfg bar fprar bs n tubfg cbffrffvat fbzrbar gb pbzzvg snveyl tencuvp zheqre
- Nyrk'f pbyyrtr ebbzzngr vf zntvpnyyl qngr-encrq ng n seng cnegl, naq gur rirag vf ivqrbgncrq
- Nyrk ergnyvngrf ol hfvat fvzvyne zntvp gb pbzcry gur encvfg vagb gnxvat n uhzvyvngvat ivqrb bs uvzfrys (ur rngf fuvg)
- va gur cerfrag qnl, Nyrk vf nggnpxrq frireny gvzrf ol natel zra naq/be tubfgf, bar bs jubz nggrzcgf gb hfr gur qngr-encr zntvp gb pbzcry ure, ohg trarenyyl unf gur pncnpvgl gb svtug onpx naq vg trarenyyl jbexf bhg BX

[bookblather]

Evtug, fb gurer'f ab npghny fprarf va gur zragny ubfcvgny?

And thank you so much!

[skygiants]

Abcr! Ab zragny ubfcvgnyf ba-cntr.

And of course, happy to do so!

[princessofgeeks]

Wow, I had not heard of this author but the title Six of Crows really intrigues me as a person who's interested in tarot.

I gather that it's not a tarot theme, though? The six refers to the six people on the team?

Can you tell me more about the connotations of the six and the crows? And any possible resonance with the idea of tarot?

Thanks for the pointer. I will be looking for the show.

[skygiants]

To be honest, I don't know much about tarot, or how the themes of the book might play off the title reference -- the six are the protagonists, and the Crow Club is the gambling house that Kaz Brekker runs, and that's about all I've got -- but I think the resonance is definitely intentional because a lot of the related art and merchandise utilizes tarot imagery, so someone who knew more about it might get more out of that than I did!

[thistleingrey]

Sorry to any Yalies in the house, but that deconstruction sounds awesome. Also, some good friends went to Yale, etc. etc., so I know that it isn't unremittingly evil or something--but having that sense of privilege taken apart in fiction sounds, well, it sounds awesome. There is so very much of the "But it's sexy."

[skygiants]

I desperately loved the deglamorization of privilege in the text (and I wasn't at all surprised to learn after reading the book that Bardugo went to Yale and was in one of the societies -- the whole book feels incredibly lived in, and the disillusionment the kind that comes from experience.)

[ceitfianna]

I really enjoyed Ninth House, more than I expected with how dark it is, but when I was started reading it. I had trouble putting it down. My first Bardugo reads were Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom which I loved and her book of fairy tales is great. I've now also read King of Scars and have started the Grishaverse books, which are good, but so far much more YA than the others. I really like her writing even in a fantasy setting, there's a real sense of reality to them.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it was such a fast-paced read, I zoomed through it! I should probably get around to King of Scars at some point, though my understanding is that it's more a Grisha book than a Ketterdam book?

[lirazel]

I was hesitating about this book because while I really, really enjoyed the Six of Crows books, I read the first Shadow and Bone book and absolutely hated it (was bored out of my mind). So I wasn't sure which Bardugo I was going to get in this particular book. But this sounds like something I should at the very least give a try, so thanks for the compelling review!

[skygiants]

lol that was exactly my feeling for the one chapter/excerpt of Shadow and Bone that I did read, it felt very ... YA-by-numbers? But this one definitely did not feel conventional to me in any way!

[cahn]

This sounds like something I would absolutely love and I am super going to check this out!

Interestingly, I just finished reading Six of Crows (which I liked a lot, but I suspect I'll like this one better).

[skygiants]

I think I actually might have liked this better than Six of Crows too, which I didn't expect, because on paper Six of Crows is so much more my jam! And to be clear I did also really like Six of Crows, but this book is just so grounded and direct and lived-in.

[cahn]

Yeah, I should say that I enjoyed Six of Crows a lot! But I started reading the Kindle sample for Ninth House and although generally speaking I would rate horror way lower than "fantasy heist," it really feels, as you say, lived-in.

[chestnut_pod]

I think this was the first "dark academia" book I've enjoyed, probably because it's so honest about all the absolute messes created by the system without thinking of them as glamorous novel plots first.

[skygiants]

Yeah, one of the things I really liked was the sense of history that was both layered and bad -- and also just really petty! There's nothing impressive or grandiose in the villains' plots, it's all just venal and self-serving and has been that way since the beginning.

[jadelennox]

I was so glad I trusted Leigh Bardugo enough that I me and my horror squick made it past the first chapters -- and what with having read the audiobook (yay, library Libby!), audio + horror almost noped me right out. But it was so worth it, from the class explorations, to the mystery procedural, to the slow burn interpersonal relationships, to the Jewish ... what do we call Jewish Ashkenaz/Sphardi things? Not racism, but... there must be a word for it in Israel. Anyway, that.

[skygiants]

Oh man, I really loved the slow build of her networks of friendship and trust -- all tentative, none of them quite load-bearing, but nonetheless growing in ways that keep surprising her. (I also wish I knew a good word for that thing.)

[conuly]

There are a lot of books about sinister worlds of privilege, and most of those books spend a lot of time on how seductive and glamorous those sinister worlds of privilege are; you know they're bad, but, like, in a sexy way!

Could we accurately describe them as "louche", a word I do not have enough chances to use in my daily life?

[nevanna]

Your review prompted me to reserve this book on my library's (also very long) holds list!