Ninth House - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 480 pages

English language

Published Jan. 29, 2020 by Flatiron Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-75136-2

(1 review)

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 …

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.

15 editions

Radioactivestardust reviewed Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (Alex Stern, #1)

Review of 'Ninth House' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I have never seen such horrible marketing for a book. If you understand anything about the story from reading the blurb you are 100% smarter than me, because I did not get anything. If I would have written the blurb it would have gone something like this:

Since she was a kid, Alex Stern was able to see ghosts. That led to a horrible childhood, drug abuse as teenager and a bloody homicide. But Alex survived. When she was approached by the Dean of Lethe House for her special skill, she won the jackpot to finally make something out of her life. A full sponsorship at Yale University. Her only task? Take care of the societies at Yale that deal in black magic, don't fuck up. Until they do, under her watch and an innocent girl dies. Alex now needs to figure out, who was the murder.

Doesn't this sound …

I have never seen such horrible marketing for a book. If you understand anything about the story from reading the blurb you are 100% smarter than me, because I did not get anything. If I would have written the blurb it would have gone something like this:

Since she was a kid, Alex Stern was able to see ghosts. That led to a horrible childhood, drug abuse as teenager and a bloody homicide. But Alex survived. When she was approached by the Dean of Lethe House for her special skill, she won the jackpot to finally make something out of her life. A full sponsorship at Yale University. Her only task? Take care of the societies at Yale that deal in black magic, don't fuck up. Until they do, under her watch and an innocent girl dies. Alex now needs to figure out, who was the murder.

Doesn't this sound clear? Now you can actually understand what is going on. Isn't that amazing. And all we would have needed was the word "ghost".

Instead, reading the beginning was hard. It basically threw me in a 3 week reading slump. And I am really angry about that.

This is also not a "dark academia", this is a very well written paranormal fantasy. Why did the publishers not use the word? Because they were scared it would seem cheap.
In the end, it is your regular paranormal fantasy.

It took forever until I understood what was actually going on. I had to spend 3 hours at one point to reread the story, to understand the plot and what is actually happening. Bardugo hid all the hints in ass long paragraphs of unnecessary detail. But the details we would have needed for real world building weren't available. This is the biggest flaw. Real bad world building. I still have so many questions that have not been answered

Nevertheless, I loved the dark vibe of the book. Apparently I like horror things (not the crime part, that was horrible annoying) but the action and the dark magic and the bad pasts (because it feels more real). I love Darlington (who doesn't? But let's face it, he is a 90% copycat of Gansey) and the writing was great.
It followed several plot lines that layered each other and open up a lot of possibilities for coming books.
The book feels written like a dark paranormal fantasy Netflix series. I had a ton of images in my head which would work for a TV show adaption. The writing was very vivid and the characters mostly well done (beside Dawes, still don't know who she is)