Well, I got derailed a bit by work and life and then time off from work, but I am finally back with my series of reviews on books with secret societies. My latest read was Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and it’s a crazy ride!
Ninth House is a fun and dark fantasy novel that focuses on the secret societies that are found in real life at Yale University. In this book, the societies are actually all magical in nature and each house has a different magical ability, which, of course, makes them powerful. The fictitious “ninth house” is Lethe, tasked with keeping the other 8 societies (there are more than 8 but these are the oldest and most well known) under some semblance of control and ensuring their magic does no harm.
There are also ghosts, or grays, which can be seen by members of Lethe after ingesting a painful potion. They do this in order to help with their tasks – it’s complicated. Alex, our heroine, is able to see the grays naturally, without a potion, and is recruited by Lethe to be their latest protector. Alex is an unlikely candidate for Yale – a drop out drug addict with a sketchy criminal past. She accepts the offer at Yale as a chance to escape her life and start over. She finds herself caught up in a giant mess at Yale with a murder (perhaps more than one), more drugs, dangerous magical abilities, ghosts and their pasts, and a whole lot of buried secrets.
I found this book difficult to get invested in initially. Bardugo has the reader join the action midway, and then slowly reveals backstory. This isn’t an unusual plot device, but her methods tended to make the start of the novel rather disjointed and somewhat hard to follow, thus making it difficult to get into the story. Plus, we’ve got 9 secret societies to learn about and keep track of, Alex’s backstory, several other characters and their stories, ghosts and how they are important, and the murder and other crimes. There’s a lot going on here and at times it’s a bit overwhelming. Once I DID get into the story, and more character development had happened, I was fully invested.
Although this book obviously fully embraces the idea of a secret society and has many of them, the focus is NOT on the sense of community or belonging that a secret society can engender in its members. That sense of loyalty is examined, but the main point of this story is Alex, her feeling of NOT belonging and how that impacts her role in Lethe. Magic and ghosts are the other strong aspect of the story. Ninth House is quite dark: it doesn’t make secret societies or magic look too appealing. Granted, none of the books in my sub-genre make any of the secret societies or elite groups look totally appealing – the whole point is that there is some darkness lurking there. Ninth House is just much more upfront about that darkness.
I found several characters easy to root for, but they are definitely flawed. I happened to love the ending, which is a cliffhanger, but the drama of it made me smile. There is clearly a second book on the way and I will be reading it!
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