The Facts
- Published: October 8, 2019
- Original language: English
- Genre: Adult fiction, dark academia, paranormal fantasy
- Number of pages: 450
- Sequel: Hell Bent
The Gist
“By the time Alex managed to get the blood out of her good wool coat, it was too warm to wear it."
From the very first sentence, it is crystal clear that Galaxy “Alex” Stern’s life has been anything but easy. As a high school dropout with a very traumatic past, Alex is the last person expected to join Yale’s incoming freshman class, and yet her ability to see the dead, also called Greys or ghosts, earns her a second chance in life after being the sole survivor of an unsolved homicide. The Ancient Eight are the eight secret societies of Yale, whose members range from famous politicians to Wall Street’s biggest players, and these societies actually exist in real life. Their "crypts," or headquarters, can be found across Yale's campus, and in Bardugo's story, their success is owed to devious practices; Skull & Bones practice divination using human and animal entrails, Scroll & Key can create magic portals, members of Book & Snake are necromancers, and so on. Bardugo herself attended Yale for undergrad, and her goal was to create a world that could exist in our own, and create an extremely thin line between fantasy and real life. Many urban legends from New Haven find a home in Bardugo's story, such as the The Ghost Ship of New Haven, so throughout the book readers also get to learn a lot about Yale and New Haven's lore and history.
“He needed her and she needed him. That was how most disasters began.”
Lethe House, the ninth society and Alex’s new sponsor, is tasked with keeping all of the other societies, and their occult practices, in check. The novel opens with the disappearance of Alex’s mentor, Daniel Arlington, the Virgil to her Dante, and the mysterious murder of a local girl named Tara. As Alex navigates this new world of dark magic and gruesome rituals, she comes to realize that ghosts are not the scariest thing in town, and we as readers discover what exactly happened to Alex before her arrival at Yale. Flashbacks reveal the fast-paced and sometimes-dizzying dynamic between Alex and Darlington, also nicknamed The Gentleman of Lethe. Being the complete opposite of messy, scrappy, make-it-as-you-go Alex, Daniel Arlington represents the priviledged side of Yale and what life looks like when you belong to an old, rich (white) family, reason why this book gains another layer of complexity: the book takes a critical look at the privileged lifestyle of Yale’s young men who have power over life and death, but no real empathy for others of lesser means.
“There were always excuses for why girls died”
This book is Bardugo’s first adult series and is completely unrelated to her famous Grishaverse series. And while it’s indeed a book about magic powers and secret societies, the plot is heavily coated in the grimy realness of the world we live in. Alex’s story shines a light on power dynamics, privilege and class divisions that permeate our society; it exposes the different kind of abuses women suffer depending on their social standing and what they’re labeled as (the pretty girl, the rich girl, the weird girl, the cool girl, etc.); it exposes the reality of high school drop outs hooked on substances from an early age, and it also depicts the different kinds of shapes our demons (both metaphorical and real) can take. It’s a macabre story about magic, secret societies, and the impending descent to Hell awaiting every survivor.
** Find out what happens to Alex and Darlington is The Ninth House’s sequel, Hell Bent. Miss Bukowski will be attending an in-person event with Bardugo on January 12th to celebrate Ninth House’s sequel, Hell Bent , and will be sharing her review after reading the book.
The Themes
- Trauma
- Power dynamics
- Substance abuse
- Classism
- Sterotypification
- Existentialism
- Redemption
- Privilege
The Author
Leigh Bardugo is the author of the world-famous YA trilogy Shadow and Bone, a story that shares the same universe with the Six of Crows duology. Bardugo is of Israeli-American descent, and she currently works as an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University. The Ninth House is largely inspired by her time as a student at Yale, where she discovered the real-life tombs of Yale’s secret societies down New Haven’s Grove Street. The Lethe house is based on the Anderson Mansion, the real-life HQ of the Yale society Shabtai. Shabtai is a Jewish leadership society and one of its many notable members is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who ran for President of the United States in 2020. Leigh Bardugo currently suffers from osteonecrosis, reason why she often uses a cane and why her character, Kaz Brekker, also uses a cane.
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