Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo, 2019
Flatiron Books
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250313072
Summary
The mesmerizing adult debut from Leigh Bardugo, a tale of power, privilege, dark magic, and murder set among the Ivy League elite.
Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse.
In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide.
Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless "tombs" are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players.
But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Jerusalem, Israel
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in Hollywood, California, USA
Leigh Bardugo is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Shadow and Bone (2012) and Siege and Storm (2013). Ruin and Rising (2014) is the third installment in her Grisha Trilogy.
Six of Crows came out in 2015, which, although not yet announced, appears to be the first volume of a new series.
Leigh was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. She has worked in advertising, journalism, and most recently, makeup and special effects. These days, she’s lives and writes in Hollywood where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. (Adapted from the author's website .)
Book Reviews
Bardugo's greatest power is ushering readers of any age through big, cast-heavy books with clarity and narrative precision. She is great at crime capers and misdirection…. Bardugo makes unexpectedly strong rivers of stories, purposed by swift currents of feeling. As you step further into the nasty and confusing dark of Ninth House, you feel for her caught-up characters. That's what usually gets discarded first in these genres when writers get distracted by world-building or struggle with plot. But Bardugo's characters feel real—and she doesn't forget that everyone hurts.
New York Times Book Review
Simultaneously elegant and grotesque, eerie and earthbound…. Wry, uncanny, original and, above all, an engrossing, unnerving thriller.
Washington Post
Ninth House is a lot of things. Its emotional superstructure is a fish-out-of-water story…. And Bardugo lives believably in this first skin, this initial level of ugly duckling strangeness that is familiar to anyone who has ever gone anywhere or done anything new.
NPR
(Starred review) Excellent… Bardugo gives [her protagonist] a thoroughly engaging mix of rough edge, courage and cynicism.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Genuinely terrific… 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.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Atmospheric…Part mystery, part story of a young woman finding purpose in a dark world.
Booklist
(Starred review) With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review) Instantly gripping…. Creepy and thrilling…. The world of this book is so consistent and enveloping that pages seem to rush by.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for NINTH HOUSE ... then take off on your own:
1. Describe Galaxy "Alex" Stern and her troubled past, a background less than privileged compared to students at Yale. Why does Lethe enlist her? What is she tasked with as a member of the secret society?
2. How does Alex feel vis-a-vis her Yale classmates—her outsider status? How would you describe Yale itself: it's elitism, its customs, history, and even its vibe.
3. When Galaxy is first shown magic, she observes with near relief that "the world they’d been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that… everything [really] was full of mystery.” What does she mean by having to "abandon" the world because it didn't live up to its childhood promises? As an adult, do you ever feel disappointed by the world as it is? Have you ever yearned (do you yearn) for a magical world from your childhood fantasies? What would that world look like for you?
4. What are the specialties of each of the Houses of the Veil, and how does each house use its power in the larger world?
5. Power is one of the central concerns in Ninth House—who has it, who wants it, who uses it for good, and who uses it for evil. Line up the characters in terms of their drive and motivations for power. Where does Alex fall in all of this?
6. Alex simply wants to be a good student and to succeed in her life at Yale. Why then does she refuse to let go of Tara Hutchinson's death? Why is Alex so affected by it?
7. What do we learn, bit by bit, as Alex's story is pieced out to us? And what do you learn, by the end, why Alex finds herself alone, with no one by her side, trying to solve the mystery of Tara's death?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)