Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I haven’t been taking good care of this blog, but I intend to rectify that! Book reviews, crossword puzzles, and London/grad school content are all coming at you! I suspect I shall be making a Ninth House crossword puzzle soon.

I really really loved this book. And I am beyond excited for the next book. And to reread.

I love a good oversight body, Lethe is, in theory, this good oversight body. I am currently in grad school studying human rights, and basically, every time a society comes up so too does a human rights abuse. I was 100% on team 'these rich kids (and their funders) need to be punished' and SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO RIFFLE THROUGH INTESTINES. Riffling through intestines is traumatic.

Bardugo's plotting is just as tight as Six of Crows; she does an excellent job folding the layers together. I knew they must intersect (or at least a subset of them) eventually, but I was continually surprised even as I guessed certain events to come. She is truly a master of misdirection.

The characters. Oh my god. Galaxy Stern is a triumph. She is everything dark and wild that characters like Kaz were while being entirely her own brand of person. Darlington was the perfect intellectual dreamer, I loved seeing the gaps between how he thought of Alex and how Alex was, and his flashbacks were particularly great. Dawes is my favorite character. She is awkward and amazing and kickass and really needs to finish her thesis. Mercy was so normal and wonderful; I hope we get more of the roommates in later books. Turner was also an excellent character; he is the kind of person who is excellent within an oversight body; I loved his moral compass even when he really really would rather not follow it. Any more on characters might be overkill and far too spoilery.

I loved that this book was a dissection of power. Gender, race, class, education. All were examined to various extents throughout the book. I thought Bardugo did such a fantastic job with this throughout this book. I have been critical of the way Bardugo handled power dynamics in previous books (I'm looking at the Darkling and fascism in the Grisha Trilogy), but this makes me surer than even that I am going to like the King of Scars sequel. Reading the entire work of an author is always fascinating.

I loved this book; I loved my reading experience; I shall hate waiting for book two.

Speaking of book two, apparently, the title is hidden in the last chapter. My guesses (in the order in which they appear in the text) follow: The Dead Shall be Raised, In The Borderlands, Gentleman Demon, The Gentleman of Lethe, Union of Sulfur and Sin.