Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo Rothdas book review RSS
3.0 Stars
1-10-2024

A somewhat confusingly named book about that is not about Gideon and Harrow and Necromancy, but rather about Yale and Urban Fantasy and Necromancy. The MC is a down on her luck kid, and it is only her ability to see ghosts that gives her a chance to join the magical world of Yale with its secret societies of spell casters. There's a murder, then a few murders, and then a few more murders, and she is not about to let them go unsolved.

On the upside, the book is easy to read/listen to, decently written, and has a number of grounded, physically thought out rituals that I liked. At its best the book is about grotty, low magic, and costly attempts to change reality. On the downside, the plot becomes gradually dumber as it moves along. In a world with teleportation, face-changing illusions, and mind-control magic, murder plots can quickly become convoluted to the point of farce. There's also a few modest elements in the book I wasn't a fan of; the trauma tourism on the one hand, and the fetishizing of Yale and its trivia on the other. On that second charge the book is ambivalent. It wants to recognize that Yale and the other Ivies have benefited from a false reputation of graduating geniuses and movers and shakers and real solid people, when in reality they are just idiots like all the rest of us. E.g. see the history of the CIA. On the other hand, the book can't quite help but buy into, at some level, the standard myths that have been erected around these places. Apparently the author went to Yale herself, and that made a lot of sense. She can see that it is a silly place, but still can't quite shake off her conditioning.