Ninth House

Ninth House, Book 1

By: Leigh Bardugo

Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang, Michael David Axtell

'Impossible to put down' STEPHEN KING
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THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FANTASY OF 2019

AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF OCTOBER 2019

A 2020 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST

IN DEVELOPMENT FOR TELEVISION WITH AMAZON STUDIOS

BY THE BESTSELLING CREATOR OF THE GRISHAVERSE

AND THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES SHADOW AND BONE

STEP INTO THE WORLD OF NINTH HOUSE
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Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime, Alex was hoping for a fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world's most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch.

Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale's secret societies - well-known haunts of the rich and powerful. Now there's a dead girl on campus and Alex seems to be the only person who won't accept the neat answer the police and campus administration have come up with for her murder.

Because Alex knows the secret societies are far more sinister and extraordinary than anyone ever imagined. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And sometimes they prey on the living . . .

'One of the best fantasy novels I've read in years' LEV GROSSMAN

'Ninth House rocked my world' JOE HILL

'I wouldn't blame you for taking the day off to finish it' KELLY LINK

'Mesmerising' CHARLAINE HARRIS

'Compulsively readable' KIRKUS

'Atmospheric' BOOKLIST

'The fantasy novel of the year' THE I
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Leigh Bardugo's book 'Ninth House' was a No. 7 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 14-10-2019.
Leigh Bardugo's book 'Hell Bent' was a No. 2 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 09-01-2023.

Critic reviews

Ninth House is the best fantasy novel I've read in years, because it's about real people. Bardugo's imaginative reach is brilliant, and this story, full of shocks and twists, is impossible to put down

Ninth House is one of the best fantasy novels I've read in years. This book is brilliant, funny, raw and utterly magnificent - it's a portal to a world you'll never want to leave

Ninth House is the best thing I've read in a long time. There's so much magic here that you'll begin to feel it seeping into the room around you as you read, and characters so real you 'll practically hear their voices in your ear. Leigh Bardugo has written a book so delicious, so twisty, and so immersive I wouldn't blame you for taking the day off to finish it

Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House rocked my world. I could not get enough of sinewy, ghost-haunted Alex Stern, a heroine for the ages. With a bruised heart and bleeding knuckles, she risks death and damnation ? again and again ? for the people she cares about. I was cheering her on the whole way: from the first brilliant sentence of this book to the last. More, please, Ms. Bardugo

In this mesmerizing novel, Leigh Bardugo introduces us to Alex, a high-school dropout who gets a free ride to Yale because of a unique talent. Bardugo's New Haven is plausible and frightening, and I was one rapt reader

The worldbuilding is rock solid, the plot is propulsive, and readers will be clamoring for a sequel as soon as they read the last page

Fantasy readers, particularly those who love ghosts, will hungrily devour this novel

The fantasy novel of the year

A dark, twisty thriller that doesn't disappoint

Beautifully narrated & wonderfully written. I can't wait for the sequel to come out.

Fully developed story

Loved the story and narration. Good pace and strong characters. Did not feel like a long book. Buying the next instalment soon.

This book destroyed me!

I loved this book so much!
my favourite quote is still one from Darlington "There is probably a metaphor in all this Stern...I'll figure it out when I'm sober."
I loved every second and the narrors were amazing!!

beautifully written and read

Characters with a very honest view of themselves, magic that is realistically grim, and people with magic that are just as flawed as anyone... this all make up a sensitive, magical and gory listening and I loved every second of it:)

Three and a half stars, rounded down.

Mostly, I enjoyed this book. Only less than I expected to based on the rave reviews. A lot was made of the fact that this wasn't a YA novel, including by the author herself, however I felt most of the book that it was a YA novel with an overlay of some sexual violence and a lot of use of the word "f***" so it wasn't quite adult feeling in the sense of it being a mature novel, also given that the protagonist is indeed a teenager, so something didn't add up for me.

Other things I failed to connect with were the police as the good guys (fantasy indeed) and the attempt to critique the unbelievable privilege inherent to most of the people and surroundings. Much like the flat effect of straight people writing LGBT relationships, Bardugo is writing about her own privileged background, and she seems to think that to contrast with it one must be a drug addict of unclear ethnicity and paternity from the slums. And use the word Town a few times.

Along the same lines, there is a well dressed Black cop but everyone else is white, all of them straight. This lack of diversity is much like Bardugo's early work, which is what led her to create the weird hybrid TV series, so that might have been something she learned to do better? The MC has a Ladino speaking Jewish grandmother, but an Ashkenazi last name, and no personal connection to this ethnicity. Much is made of the fact that she might look a little Mexican if she over-tans, but that is about as diverse as it gets, and all invested into the one character who is an outsider anyway, so while it is an interesting aspect of the character it doesn't really make the story very diverse.

Finally, I pretty much saw the ending coming from miles away. Not the particulars, but definitely the whodunit.

I did like the MC, whom Bardugo calls "thorny" in the bonus interview, which again, only shows what a soft background she herself is from. I found her smart and tough and liked her sense of humor. I also liked the representation of friendship between women.

The pacing was good, and the big reveal at the end was pretty original however some of the imagery used was pretty unoriginal including for example the banquet, which seen through a mirror all the participants are old and falling apart and eating rotten food or something like that. It's been done a lot, and there are several elements like that throughout.

Nitpicks: I might have just missed where this was clarified, but the MC seems to have been 15 years old during the events leading up to her coming to Yale as a freshman (and not 15). The male narrator couldn't say New Haven correctly, and while Fortgang is a talented narrator, her accents were terrible, and she probably should have just skipped them.