... wry, uncanny, original and, above all, an engrossing, unnerving thriller ... The world that Alex navigates feels intimately lived-in. A Yale alum, Bardugo name-checks New Haven’s buildings, streets, restaurants and stores. Except for Lethe, all the secret societies featured in the novel actually exist. These elements create a fluid feeling of not knowing precisely where reality leaves off and fantasy takes over, creating layers of mystery for the reader ... Alex is a potent mix of flinty strength and raw vulnerability and a brilliant instrument to channel the novel’s tone, which is simultaneously elegant and grotesque, eerie and earthbound ... Alex stands at the crossroads of privilege and pragmatism, and her unique point of view opens the most relatable and often the funniest windows into the story’s themes ... Investigative momentum propels Alex through some convincing misdirection before she comes to a climactic confrontation that resonates emotionally. Alex gets answers, but they lead her only to new questions, leaving readers hungry as a hellbeast for the sequel that is sure to follow.
Bardugo’s greatest power is ushering readers of any age through big, cast-heavy books with clarity and narrative precision. She is great at crime capers and misdirection. She can move groups of characters around a made-up city or a magical New Haven with equal ease ... in Ninth House, [Bardugo] seems to feel freer to let us into her world more abruptly, with a bit more terror and a bit less hand-holding ... For any audience, Bardugo makes unexpectedly strong rivers of stories, purposed by swift currents of feeling. As you step further into the nasty and confusing dark of Ninth House, you feel for her caught-up characters. That’s what usually gets discarded first in these genres when writers get distracted by world-building or struggle with plot. But Bardugo’s characters feel real — and she doesn’t forget that everyone hurts.
I like Leigh Bardugo the young adult fantasy author, but I absolutely LOVE Leigh Bardugo the adult fantasy author. Everything I felt was missing from her young adult work is all over her adult book. In my review copy, I must have dogeared every other page to mark a meaningful quote or scene. Things she’s only hinted at in her young adult work is dredged up from the depths, cut open, and exposed to the world ... By far, Ninth House is the best novel Leigh Bardugo has ever written, and definitely one of the best of 2019. If I gave stars to my reviews, it would get 10 out of 5. It is a clarion call for accountability, a summoning spell for 'girls like us' who cannot fight back, and a battle cry for those working to dismantle the system.
... for all the good work that Bardugo does in crafting a believable alternate world where Yale's secret societies work powerful magic to alter the course of fortunes and history, it is Alex that makes Ninth House so readable. She is as disbelieving as any of us, as innocent, as skeptical, as furious. She is equal parts hard and soft, vulnerable and powerful. She may see ghosts, but she doesn't understand magic — real, nasty, visceral magic. And in Ninth House, Bardugo gives us the chance to see it all — the real and the imagined versions of Yale, the rich, the powerful, those they prey on — through Alex Stern's eyes.
You know that feeling you get when you’re first working on a puzzle, that nagging impulse that you’re close to an answer and yet you still can’t see the full picture? Ninth House is very much like that, except by the end, you’re no closer to a full picture, and there’s so many more questions than proper answers ... the writing was captivating, and really holds on to you. It has been a really, REALLY long time since I woke up with nightmares from reading something before bed…but this book managed to do it. It sneaks up on you, because it doesn’t seem as though anything expressly horrific is happening, until you’re sitting in the dark with your own thoughts. The world building is impeccable, Yale and New Haven are imbued with this life of both the living and undead. Everything is so vivid, and the grays even more so ... tackles gender issues with finesse, and some of my favourite lines of the book come from some of those interactions ... I’ll admit that the pacing of this book feels a little off, mostly in that it’s laying the groundwork for what’s to come...With the story being told in moments of past seasons as well as the present season in the story, sometimes, it could be a little confusing. Other than that though, I really can’t wait for the next book.
... the kind of book that begs to be read at 2 in the morning, under the covers, with a flashlight in your hand and snacks at your elbow. It’s so immersive that, reading it, I felt myself pulled back into the way I used to read as a child, curled up with a book and disappearing into its pages so thoroughly that it didn’t seem possible that anything else in the world could ever have existed. The only thing going through my mind was Bardugo’s haunted, corrupt, and magical Yale, and Alex Stern, struggling to make her way through it ... Bardugo fills the Yale campus with rich, luxurious details ... Alex is the great joy of Ninth House ... is willing to go dark, but it never dims so far as to feel like it’s punishing its readers. The darkness is cathartic, because we have Alex there with us, fighting with all her iron will to make it through to the other side. And her will is so strong, so visceral, as though she were exerting it on me, too, daring me to look away from her story. As if I wanted to do anything at all of the kind.
Ninth House starts with a killer first sentence and a dizzyingly cold opening ... Bardugo does away with exposition early on, building her world by immersing the reader in Alex’s life. Little is directly explained and it takes a few chapters for the world to make sense ... The real world setting for Ninth House gives it all an air of authenticity ... Ninth House is the complete package. Bardugo has created a robust and believable magic world and within that delivers a page-turning murder mystery. Alex, in the way of all good detectives, is always in trouble and in danger, and the stakes feel high and they feel real. The resolution of the mystery is satisfying in that it ties together a number of threads that had previously felt disparate. And after all of that, Bardugo still manages to land a cliffhanger that promises a further welcome exploration of this world.
Truth be told, there isn’t too much that radically distinguishes Ninth House as an adult novel, as opposed to Bardugo’s previous young adult work...A slightly more generous helping of sex, sadness, and drug use seems to mark this particular boundary between adult and YA, which is more a commentary on genre distinctions than Bardugo’s writing or sensibilities ... But the boundary between YA and adult fantasy is much less important in Ninth House than the boundaries between the mundane and the darkly magical — a line that Bardugo erases with the kind of cackling confidence that drew readers of all ages to her previous work ... The journey can occasionally feel protracted, but Bardugo has her final destination clear in mind; the concluding transformations at the end of Ninth House are thoroughly worth the wait ... a complicated treat, unfolding in slow but ultimately satisfying layers. The concept of collegiate mundanity secretly seething with magic is especially well-executed ... Crisp writing and Bardugo’s knack for creating knotty, bitingly likable characters anchors the tale in firm artistic territory, even as boundaries between the real and the fantastical rapidly dissolve ... complicated, messy material, a transformation of expectation more than anything else. It more than makes the grade — and will leave readers hungry for the sophomore adventures of the sequel.
Fans of Leigh Bardugo's young adult work will recognize her artistic prose, cutting and witty characters and dark fantasy world building ... Those not familiar with Bardugo, or even YA literature, will still be delighted by this dark novel ... as much a fantasy murder-mystery as it is an exploration of white privilege, corruption, misogyny and trauma. Bardugo highlights the vast gap between the lower-income neighborhoods that surround the campus and the toxic wealth hoarding of the school's most privileged students. New Haven itself is a character in the novel, one that never willingly bends to magic or wealth even as it drastically changes through gentrification ... sometimes loses its characters' voices in the dense plot. The theme of privilege is so interwoven throughout the story that the book challenges readers to examine their own environment without being overtly on the nose. It helps that Alex is a straight-shooting, instinct-driven character who understands the game she is in more than the gamemakers themselves.
If you are a fan of Lev Grossman’s Magicians series or Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, odds are much better than even that you’ll fall headfirst into Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and not want to ever emerge again ... Not only is Bardugo’s world beautifully built, so are her characters ... Even though Ninth House is well-plotted (and given how Bardugo flips around in time, it needs to be), it never feels like it’s being forced. Like the best moments by Grossman and Gaiman, Bardugo’s storytelling is full of life and crackles with energy. It’s one that you’ll read in great gulps but never want to see end.
Demand alone would necessitate purchasing multiple copies in all formats, but this is genuinely terrific. The worldbuilding is rock solid, the plot is propulsive, and readers will be clamoring for a sequel as soon as they read the last page.
This atmospheric contemporary novel steeped in the spirit of a mystical New Haven is part mystery, part story of a young woman finding purpose in a dark world, and is the first in a potential series.
... excellent ... Alex is the story’s gritty, rock-solid heart. While other characters refuse to admit what’s happening, too insulated by their own privilege or distracted by banal needs such as funding, Bardugo gives Alex a thoroughly engaging mix of rough edge, courage, and cynicism, all of which are required to get things done. Much of the book’s white-knuckled tension comes from the increasingly horrific flashbacks revealing Alex’s past, which is still very present in her mind. Fantasy readers, particularly those who love ghosts, will hungrily devour this novel.
Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt ... With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.
