Book #201 of 2019:
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (Alex Stern #1)
This mature urban fantasy is a major departure for author Leigh Bardugo, both in genre and in tone. Although its college-age characters aren’t significantly older than her YA Grishaverse bunch, the traumas they face are so much darker than anything encountered in that high fantasy franchise. Her talent remains, but I can’t imagine all of her existing fans will be quite eager to follow in this new direction.
The story posits that the eight original secret societies of Yale University are not just networks of privileged connection, but also hidden dens of somewhat-depraved sorcery — with the titular ninth house existing as a sort of oversight agency to prevent wizarding excesses from getting truly out of hand. Bardugo is a Yale graduate and admitted member of one of these clandestine organizations herself, and she draws on that experience for many of the key details of this novel. So many of the buildings are exactly as she describes them that she has mentioned in interviews the idea of conducting a book tour to show off the campus’s gothic architecture. Even sight unseen, the writer’s evocative prose makes it easy to picture these structures and believe they could hide the occult.
The narrative itself is a fairly straightforward noir investigation, in which a hardboiled cynic doggedly pursues the truth and gets progressively more beat-up for her efforts. That protagonist, a street kid plucked from obscurity due to her ability to see ghosts, is very well-drawn, as is her upperclassman mentor, a blue-blooded Richard Gansey type. I don’t quite love how the case resolves, but I enjoy these characters and the still-open mysteries of their setting enough to come back for another go. I just need to remember to steel myself more than I would for a typical Bardugo offering.
[Content warning for self-harm, drug abuse / overdose, revenge porn, possession / mind control, coerced prostitution, PTSD, coprophagia, and rape including child rape. And probably some other topics that are now slipping my mind. The overall mood of the piece is not so nihilistic that I would call it an example of violence-for-the-sake-of-violence grimdark speculative fiction, but sensitive readers should tread cautiously all the same.]
★★★★☆
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