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Dark Academia at its Finest, TBH -- NINTH HOUSE by Leigh Bardugo


—  A REVIEW OF NINTH HOUSE BY LEIGH BARDUGO  —


Ninth House
Alex Stern #1
Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron Books
releases October 8th 2019
View Synopsis »

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.


I received an advance copy from Indigo in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion whatsoever nor was I compensated in any way.

Fuck. This book is so good. So fucking good.

I'm not going to lie, when the list of trigger warnings went around on Twitter, the list made me a little wary of reading this book. However, my love of dark academia and the things that the synopsis promised had me plunging headfirst into Galaxy Stern's world and her time at Yale and thank goodness because Ninth House is one of the best books I've read this year.

The trigger warnings are as follows: child rape (the MC recalling her own trauma), date rape, murder, gore, graphic violence, death, drug use, forced consumption of human feces.

Ninth House follows Galaxy "Alex" Stern as she enters the world of Yale and its secret societies. She's always been able to see ghosts, or the "Gray" as they are called. One day, when she wakes up in the hospital after being found by the police surrounded by dead bodies, she is greeted by the Dean of Yale inviting her to campus on scholarship due to her ability. After all, the secret societies of Yale aren't just old boys clubs, but societies founded on magic and making magic and Dean Sandow wanted Alex to join Lethe, the house tasked with keeping the others in line. And while Alex learns the ways of Lethe and magic and the secret societies, everything is so much darker and deeper and deadly.

The world of Ninth House offers magic and in its reality. The societies work big magics -- Aurelian worked in word magic, Skull and Bones worked in haruspicy but on humans (a form of ancient Roman divination where the entrails of animals are examined to divine the future, but in Ninth House, on humans), members of Wolf's Head could turn into animals, Book and Snake worked in necromancy, etc. As the saying goes, not all that glitters is gold and that is very much the case for the magic in the world of Ninth House. It's especially not pretty for Alex, who has been able to see ghosts her entire life and the way they died. This ability of hers has impacted her and the way that she's grown up due to the trauma of it all.

As with anything associated with the Ivy Leagues, everything is steeped in tradition. In Lethe, Alex is the Dante to Daniel "Darlington" Arlington's Virgil, who is her guide to all things Lethe and how to handle the other societies. The concept of tradition and ritual and rites are big in Ninth House as we see the characters perform magic and of course there are rules to secret societies.

The book is told in either Alex's point of view or Darlington's as it switches back and forth in timeline as well. The time is labeled but the POV is not, but it should be clear as to whose point of view we are in as Darlington's chapters consist of him introducing the societies and magic to Alex. One of my favourite moments is when Darlington shows Alex magic for the first time:


". . . because 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 in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery." (p. 70)

Alex is an outsider to the world of Yale and the secret societies. Alex is a high school drop out, had a drug dealer boyfriend and dead-end jobs. It gives her a perspective among the rest of the Yale population that is different from theirs and while some may chafe at her directness or her explicit vocabulary, she is effective. I really love her and she is trying to do her best to do right by her new friends and to find out what exactly is happening here in New Haven and at Yale.

Ninth House is a murder mystery grounded by magic and secrecy and tradition with all the atmosphere and vibes of dark academia. I really love this book and the atmosphere and the world that Leigh's built. There's twists and turns galore in the mystery that unravels and I love it so much. The book wraps up well, but the prompt at the end for the next book. I'm so so so excited. I can't wait for the next book in the series.

TL;DR: magical dark academia murder mystery that's so beautifully written.





Happy Reading!
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Comments

  1. When I saw that that Leigh released a new book I was very intrigued, and so I googled it and came across your post. I adore dark academia and when I was you calling it "dark academia at its finest" I was pretty much sold. But. I've now read 70% of the book (I read on kindle) and this book doesn't have any "dark academia vibes", they're simply dark. Besides the fact that Alex is in college, there's no actual dark academia elements. Not every book with a murder mystery is DA, just like not every book where characters make jokes is a comedy.
    Dark academia is about the characters' love for (classic) literature, poetry, theater, art, music. It's about them expressing themselves though those things, because they are part of who they are. Alex doesn't even like to go to class, she does it out of obligation and guilt more than anything.
    Darlington's character has some dark academia vibes, for example this thirst for knowledge when it comes to magic; magic defining who he is (considering he almost died for it). But he was only in 6 chapters out of 32 so he's more of a side character.
    I've seen a lot of people label this book as DA, when it's not. Again, it's a lot more then just "Hey this person is in school/college and there's also been a murder!"
    So far the book IS amazing, and your review is very well written (it is after all what convinced me to read Ninth House), but it's not dark academia. It simply has dark themes.

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