"Ninth House", Leigh Bardugo
10 January 2025 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI'd told myself I wasn't going to read any more Leigh Bardugo novels after increasing disappointment with the previous ones I'd encountered; I picked this one up without noticing the author's name and was thoroughly hooked before I eventually realised that this was the same writer! [Edit: it turns out I had her confused with Laini Taylor; in my defence, there are too many authors writing YA fantasy with titles like "Shadow and Bone"/"Daughter of Smoke & Bone"...]
I really don't know very much about the American university world, so I have no idea how accurate the depiction of student life is, but the premise is an intriguing one: the famous US fraternity clubs are actual real magical fraternities rather than drinking groups, each with access to its own specialised sphere of power which is tied to the location of their meeting house (which turns out to be a vital plot point later on). And there is also Lethe, the Ninth House of the title, not a fraternity house as such but a sort of self-regulatory body run by members of the University to make sure the others don't abuse their powers, as it is hinted they have done in the past (which also turns out eventually to be a vital plot point).
And then there is Alex Stern, who just happens to have been born with an ability that most members of Lethe can only attain via a difficult and dangerous potion, and which is desirable enough for their purposes that they are prepared to fast-track her into Yale University despite her lack of academic qualifications (where she is now struggling to cope with her normal student workload as a result), and to parachute her in as their single student recruit for this year over the heads of all the other eager regular applicants. As the novel opens, she has just lost her mentor under mysterious circumstances, the exact details of which will not become apparent until much, much later in the book - suffice it to say that the implications will look very different from what we initially assume - and hence is struggling to keep up a front of competence in this sphere as well: no one must know that there is anything wrong at Lethe. The very first thing we see is an attempted divination of the future using (living) human entrails, which very nearly goes horribly wrong; this book takes no prisoners in terms of horror and general nastiness, and it starts as it means to go on, but I didn't find it gratuitous.
A big plus for me is that there is no obligatory teenage Destined Romance (although I think there are hints of it towards the end, by which point I wouldn't have been averse to it; that development was earned, rather than just being instant lust or Enemies to Lovers). The story is about human relationships of all the other kinds: Alex's mentors in the academic and the magical spheres, her friendships with other students who know nothing of Lethe, her troubled past, which is gradually revealed to be far from unconnected to the magical gift which unknowingly ruined her childhood, and her mingled gratitude and resentment towards Lethe, who rescued her and gave her a golden opportunity, but only for their own purposes. And it is also basically a detective story about who is at the bottom of what is happening, and why.
And then there is Darlington, who has gone missing before the start of the story but to whom we grow increasingly attached in flashback, so that the possibility that he is not in fact dead comes as a leap of bright hope. Initially his name is simply that of The Person Who Ought To Know What To Do, and who needs to be here but isn't. Then he appears to be the stereotypical posh boy at Yale who is everything Alex isn't: talented at everything, rich, and good at getting on with people. Eventually we learn that he was actually recruited under circumstances not so very different from hers, and with an equally troubled relationship with his past. But I think the thing I liked most about Darlington is that he is quite uncomplicatedly *nice*, which when you think about it is a very unusual quality in most contemporary novels. It helps that you have got Alex as the standard-issue troubled outsider with (understandable) personality issues, but Darlington actually is the perfect gentleman, or tries hard to be -- not a type that commonly gets lauded in modern fiction, where such ideals tend to get subverted as tropes of repression/oppression/etc. And ultimately the author uses this to chilling effect when she starts to hint that because Alex is not herself squeaky clean she may have had a motive to dispose of Darlington on her own account...
Another thing I liked about the book is that it provides a plausible explanation for all the heavy lifting being done by the young adults, while older characters are largely absent from the action. In this universe the practice of magic becomes progressively more difficult and dangerous, so that practitioners graduate to a mainly research role, and a few mentions are dropped in as to what career progress for senior members of Lethe eventually involves.
The Bridegroom subplot works well: this is a local haunting involving a supposed nineteenth century murder/suicide case, where Alex promises to find out the truth in return for supernatural assistance. This whole strand ends up going nowhere, and you question why the author brought it up in the first place - but then it comes back with a vengeance after everything appears to be over. I also appreciated the deployment of the classic 'true names' magical trope: we know from an early stage that Alex's real name is Galaxy, thanks to a hippie mother, but I'd assumed that this was just an attempt at making the character more 'edgy' and interesting. In fact it turns out to be vitally important when her tutor assumes her full name must be Alexandra!
One thing I thought was effective was the gradual revelation that the dead girl was very much less of a murdered innocent than initially assumed - although, as with A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, I didn't think it really worked to then play the 'poor little victim" card at the end, after revealing her as a drug dealer and blackmailer whose criminal schemes had gone wrong. I suppose that is the gap between the morality of the world I grew up with and modern conventions...
One element I liked, although it might come across as a cheat, was that after all the heavy emphasis on institutional corruption and the abuses of the secret fraternities which are the very reason for Lethe's existence, it transpires that in the end, for all Alex's attempts to deduce which school of magic must have been involved, *none of them* are guilty and the true culprit is elsewhere. Dissolute behaviour and the abuse of power are morally vile but not necessarily inherently evil, and it is too easy to jump to the wrong conclusions. On the other hand, I did find the Agatha Christie-style reveal of one culprit followed by a completely different one on unrevealed evidence to be rather dissatisfying, as well as a bit of a scramble -- as is the whole end of the book. Was the author conscious that the manuscript was already running over-length or was she rushing to provide a hook for a potential sequel? On the whole I think I'd have preferred things to have been tied off (possibly more tragically) in the form of a standalone novel, as I'm not entirely enthused about where a sequel appears to be going: it was the parallel backstory reveal, which has now been completed, plus Alex's simultaneous struggle to cope with her academic and magical commitments that sold this story to me, and taking it into a more purely supernatural quest setting has less appeal.
But I liked this book a lot more than I would ever have expected, and couldn't put it down, despite its length. The world building is fascinating, at least to those who know little of American academia, and there are a lot of compelling minor characters - from the Bridegroom to grumpy Dawes and Alex's roommates - who get developed in unanticipated ways. Alex isn't a very likeable character, but then I don't think she is meant to be: the book doesn't make the mistake of demanding the readers regard her as a persecuted innocent, and she is more relatable for it. Darlington, 'the Gentleman of Lethe', is a delight, and I couldn't help sympathising with (and wincing for) Alex's chronic sleep deprivation as she keeps trying to fit two full-time sets of commitments into one while preserving her cover!
I might even seek out the sequel...
I really don't know very much about the American university world, so I have no idea how accurate the depiction of student life is, but the premise is an intriguing one: the famous US fraternity clubs are actual real magical fraternities rather than drinking groups, each with access to its own specialised sphere of power which is tied to the location of their meeting house (which turns out to be a vital plot point later on). And there is also Lethe, the Ninth House of the title, not a fraternity house as such but a sort of self-regulatory body run by members of the University to make sure the others don't abuse their powers, as it is hinted they have done in the past (which also turns out eventually to be a vital plot point).
And then there is Alex Stern, who just happens to have been born with an ability that most members of Lethe can only attain via a difficult and dangerous potion, and which is desirable enough for their purposes that they are prepared to fast-track her into Yale University despite her lack of academic qualifications (where she is now struggling to cope with her normal student workload as a result), and to parachute her in as their single student recruit for this year over the heads of all the other eager regular applicants. As the novel opens, she has just lost her mentor under mysterious circumstances, the exact details of which will not become apparent until much, much later in the book - suffice it to say that the implications will look very different from what we initially assume - and hence is struggling to keep up a front of competence in this sphere as well: no one must know that there is anything wrong at Lethe. The very first thing we see is an attempted divination of the future using (living) human entrails, which very nearly goes horribly wrong; this book takes no prisoners in terms of horror and general nastiness, and it starts as it means to go on, but I didn't find it gratuitous.
A big plus for me is that there is no obligatory teenage Destined Romance (although I think there are hints of it towards the end, by which point I wouldn't have been averse to it; that development was earned, rather than just being instant lust or Enemies to Lovers). The story is about human relationships of all the other kinds: Alex's mentors in the academic and the magical spheres, her friendships with other students who know nothing of Lethe, her troubled past, which is gradually revealed to be far from unconnected to the magical gift which unknowingly ruined her childhood, and her mingled gratitude and resentment towards Lethe, who rescued her and gave her a golden opportunity, but only for their own purposes. And it is also basically a detective story about who is at the bottom of what is happening, and why.
And then there is Darlington, who has gone missing before the start of the story but to whom we grow increasingly attached in flashback, so that the possibility that he is not in fact dead comes as a leap of bright hope. Initially his name is simply that of The Person Who Ought To Know What To Do, and who needs to be here but isn't. Then he appears to be the stereotypical posh boy at Yale who is everything Alex isn't: talented at everything, rich, and good at getting on with people. Eventually we learn that he was actually recruited under circumstances not so very different from hers, and with an equally troubled relationship with his past. But I think the thing I liked most about Darlington is that he is quite uncomplicatedly *nice*, which when you think about it is a very unusual quality in most contemporary novels. It helps that you have got Alex as the standard-issue troubled outsider with (understandable) personality issues, but Darlington actually is the perfect gentleman, or tries hard to be -- not a type that commonly gets lauded in modern fiction, where such ideals tend to get subverted as tropes of repression/oppression/etc. And ultimately the author uses this to chilling effect when she starts to hint that because Alex is not herself squeaky clean she may have had a motive to dispose of Darlington on her own account...
Another thing I liked about the book is that it provides a plausible explanation for all the heavy lifting being done by the young adults, while older characters are largely absent from the action. In this universe the practice of magic becomes progressively more difficult and dangerous, so that practitioners graduate to a mainly research role, and a few mentions are dropped in as to what career progress for senior members of Lethe eventually involves.
The Bridegroom subplot works well: this is a local haunting involving a supposed nineteenth century murder/suicide case, where Alex promises to find out the truth in return for supernatural assistance. This whole strand ends up going nowhere, and you question why the author brought it up in the first place - but then it comes back with a vengeance after everything appears to be over. I also appreciated the deployment of the classic 'true names' magical trope: we know from an early stage that Alex's real name is Galaxy, thanks to a hippie mother, but I'd assumed that this was just an attempt at making the character more 'edgy' and interesting. In fact it turns out to be vitally important when her tutor assumes her full name must be Alexandra!
One thing I thought was effective was the gradual revelation that the dead girl was very much less of a murdered innocent than initially assumed - although, as with A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, I didn't think it really worked to then play the 'poor little victim" card at the end, after revealing her as a drug dealer and blackmailer whose criminal schemes had gone wrong. I suppose that is the gap between the morality of the world I grew up with and modern conventions...
One element I liked, although it might come across as a cheat, was that after all the heavy emphasis on institutional corruption and the abuses of the secret fraternities which are the very reason for Lethe's existence, it transpires that in the end, for all Alex's attempts to deduce which school of magic must have been involved, *none of them* are guilty and the true culprit is elsewhere. Dissolute behaviour and the abuse of power are morally vile but not necessarily inherently evil, and it is too easy to jump to the wrong conclusions. On the other hand, I did find the Agatha Christie-style reveal of one culprit followed by a completely different one on unrevealed evidence to be rather dissatisfying, as well as a bit of a scramble -- as is the whole end of the book. Was the author conscious that the manuscript was already running over-length or was she rushing to provide a hook for a potential sequel? On the whole I think I'd have preferred things to have been tied off (possibly more tragically) in the form of a standalone novel, as I'm not entirely enthused about where a sequel appears to be going: it was the parallel backstory reveal, which has now been completed, plus Alex's simultaneous struggle to cope with her academic and magical commitments that sold this story to me, and taking it into a more purely supernatural quest setting has less appeal.
But I liked this book a lot more than I would ever have expected, and couldn't put it down, despite its length. The world building is fascinating, at least to those who know little of American academia, and there are a lot of compelling minor characters - from the Bridegroom to grumpy Dawes and Alex's roommates - who get developed in unanticipated ways. Alex isn't a very likeable character, but then I don't think she is meant to be: the book doesn't make the mistake of demanding the readers regard her as a persecuted innocent, and she is more relatable for it. Darlington, 'the Gentleman of Lethe', is a delight, and I couldn't help sympathising with (and wincing for) Alex's chronic sleep deprivation as she keeps trying to fit two full-time sets of commitments into one while preserving her cover!
I might even seek out the sequel...