Ninth House (Galaxy Stern#1) Review
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
cue me screaming for the past 24 hours because WHAT. THE. F***.
Leigh Bardugo really went there, huh? All the warnings I got before reading, telling me it's hella dark and if I can't handle it, I shouldn't read it, but oh I did, and I loved it. This book handled so many things that are wrong in the real world and hats off to that because Leigh wasn't afraid to show the ugly and I'm so grateful.
This is the dark academia book I have been waiting for, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this, not only are we in Yale (which is my dream university btw) but we also get soooooo much about these secret societies and Lethe and just magic in general.
Just to make this clear, this IS Adult, not YA, and as I already mentioned it handles topics not everyone is comfortable with so please be warned, the writing is heavier, the word choice is sharper, etc. I saw people on twitter being bitter with this and honestly nonsense because Leigh has mentioned several times it's gonna be like that so when did you put in the ear plugs? (Honestly twitter is always bitter about something, we should call it bitter twitter)
When I say dark, I don't mean six of crows dark, I mean monsters with pretty faces hiding in the shadow, I mean blood dripping off a holy altar, I mean snow white in a coffin but a monster beneath her skin. At times, it was even uncomfortable to read but I think that's the way the real world is too, ugly broken cracks that you try to ignore.
Starting off with the magic system, which I LOVE, each house/tomb thing has a specific time of magic they specialize in which has to be fueled and released in certain ways I won't get into, it's bloody and messy, and more than a few accidents have happened. Certain things about it aren't explained but I believe that's mostly because the characters are figuring it out too so we will get there eventually.
Next, DARLINGTON MY CHILD, (yes, I know we only had a few chapters with him, or specifically memories with him, but leave me alone), I cannot stress how much I love this kid, in short, he's me. Dark academic with a thirst for knowledge, magic, and the unknown, afraid of being left alone in the dark, I mean, his desperation to get himself out there, be a part of something bigger, that's just how I always feel like and it's amazing to see a character like that. He's also 'the gentleman of Lethe' which I think adds so much to his character. I just loved him a lot and you're likely to see me talk about him more as the review goes on.
The pacing, while I will admit the first 100-ish pages were slow, I think they were setting the scene and the 'normal' so I don't mind. But, once it started, it really started, this was a train wreck from page one. I was also reading Crescent City by Sarah J Maas with this and let me just say. THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE A 800 PAGE BOOK FOR FRICK'S SAKE! I was never bored, not once but Crescent City dragged on and on making me want to vomit.
The ghosts, this is one of the few books that centers almost entirely around ghosts and no other creatures, and I got to say, reading this has made me wary of the dark and poltergeists, certain scenes really made me realize how dangerous this is along with the magic but, me being me, it grew my fascination.
Next is the plot twists because ohoohohohooh I did not see that coming, the last 50 pages were me screaming and crying hysterically because of everything that was going, there was like a triple (?) dupes, and I kept dying every time. Leigh missed absolutely nothing, everything had a meaning, everything has a reason for being there.
Now, the setting. Beautiful, beautiful Yale and New Haven, full of art and magic. It was just- sigh
Dawes, my queen, my helping, motherly, feminist, QUEEN! I love her and Alex's friendship sooooo much that it's hard to emphasize, they have the kind of special thing I wish I had with someone else. Now, Alex, who I love and adore, who is also my queen with shady decision-making skills and the like but I love her.
Darlington! Because again, I must talk about my boy, *pats Darlington* and let's just say reading the scenes when he called himself Danny made me s o f t.
Although I'd love to say that this is something everyone should read, it's not, because I know there will be a lot of people who aren't ok with this and you know? That's fine, everyone has different tastes, god knows how messed I am for being ok with reading books like this without flinching. Be advised, check out more reviews, check out warnings before entering into it, maybe it's your thing, maybe it's not, it's entirely your choice.
➡ 5 stars
I want to live to grow old, Alex thought as she pulled the curtains closed. I want to sit on my porch and drink foul-smelling tea and yell at passersby. I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.
“Do you know what my mother said?” Turner asked. “She told me there’s no doorway the devil doesn’t know. He’s always waiting to stick his foot in. I never really believed her until tonight.”
Peace was like any high. It couldn’t last. It was an illusion, something that could be interrupted in a moment and lost forever. Only two things kept you safe: money and power.
Alex didn’t really know what she missed, only that she was homesick for something, maybe for someone, she’d never been.
If you were going to hell together, murder seemed like a good place to start.
She’s seen the dead, he thought. She’s witnessed horrors. But she’s never seen magic.
This was why he had done it, not because of guilt or pride but because this was the moment he’d been waiting for: the chance to show someone else wonder, to watch them realize that they had not been lied to, that the world they’d been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that there really was something lurking in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.
That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.
They tried to kill me, Hellie. That means I get to try to kill them.
But that had been his feeling about everything. There should be more magic. Not the creased-greasepaint performances of clowns and hack illusionists. Not card tricks. The magic he’d been promised would be found at the backs of wardrobes, under bridges, through mirrors. It was dangerous and alluring and it did not seek to entertain.
Maybe if he’d been raised in an ordinary house with quality insulation and a neatly mowed front yard, instead of beneath Black Elm’s crumbling towers, with its lakes of moss, its sudden, sinister spikes of foxglove, its seeping mist that crawled up through the trees in the autumn dusk, maybe then he would have stood a chance. Maybe if he’d been from somewhere like Phoenix instead of cursed New Haven. “Why did he call you the gentleman of Lethe?”
“Because people who can’t be bothered with manners pretend to be amused by them.
There are worse things than death, Miss Stern
And wasn’t that the worst of it? She did. She did want to live and always had
Orare las di Korach Let them be buried alive
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