JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The mesmerising adult debut from Leigh Bardugo. A tale of power, privilege, dark magic and murder set among the Ivy League elite. Alex Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime – the last thing she wants is to cause trouble. Not when Yale was supposed to be her 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 – societies that have yielded some of the most famous and influential people in the world. 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 . . .

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo is an adult fantasy novel, and the first in a new series with protagonist Alex Stern.

Alex Stern is recruited to work for the mysterious and secretive Lethe society at Yale simply because she can see ghosts. Her job is to the oversee the other secret societies at the college, and make sure their rituals and practices are above board. When a young girl is murdered on campus grounds, Alex endeavours to uncover who murdered her and why.

The world is original and intriguing — at its core, it’s about a girl who needs to heal from her past. Alex Stern can see ghosts and she’s had some horrible trauma throughout her childhood/teenage years. This book is also about revenge, murder, conspiracy theories, magic, power, and secret societies at Yale university that work with magic.

“If they could find him. If they could somehow bring him home from whatever dark place he’d gone. In less than a week they’d attempt the new-moon rite. Alex didn’t understand the specifics, only that Dean Sandow believed it would work and that, until it did, her job was to make sure that no one asked too many questions about Lethe’s missing golden boy.”

After browsing all of the glowing reviews for this title, I definitely think there’s some sort of disconnect between me and this book. I thought it was…fine. I read it, enjoyed it, and finished it. Did I think it was exceptional? No. Was I underwhelmed after reading all the pre-publication buzz? Yes.

There is a distinct lack of introduction to the world, or credible world-building. Alex Stern has the rare ability to see Grays — ghosts who have yet to move on from their time on earth — and we’re thrown head first into this fantasy world with very little explanation. I had to reread chapters 1 and 2, twice.

The pacing is also incredibly slow throughout the book, and I’m not sure that the plot holds enough tension to justify the slow pacing.

“A cluster of Grays was mulling around by the gym. Alex let her eyes skim over them, landing nowhere, barely focused. A few were local Grays who could always be found in the area, a rower who had drowned off the Florida Keys but who now returned to haunt the training tanks, a heavyset man who had clearly once been a football player.”

Characterisation is a strength of the book — Alex is a high school dropout, drug addict, and her best friend recently died under suspicious circumstances. Her relationship with her mother is fractured, and her grades at Yale so far have been sub par. Her time at Yale helps her understand her gift — to trust it — and over the course of the novel, she grows and matures and comes to understand who she is as a person.

There’s a particularly fantastic moment in the book when Alex gets revenge on a sexist, abusive college boy called Blake — this could well be my favourite plot point in Ninth House. Lips are sealed!

Leigh’s language and prose is another strength in the book — the sentences feel decadent, indulgent, and inviting.

“As Darlington had known they would, the Grays began to appear, drifting through the walls, drawn by blood and hope. When at last the blood tide reached the end of the parchment, the Aurelians each lowered their sleeves, letting them brush the soaked paper.”

You’ve really got to love fantasy to read Ninth House. You’re thrust into a world with very little explanation, and to wade through that and continue on, you need to love the genre. Otherwise, you’ll just leave this book incomplete.

Personally, I thought this was just okay. I liked the twists at the end, and how it opened up for the sequel, but I felt quite let down with the book as a whole.

Recommended for fantasy lovers, 18+. This book is very dark, and deals with mature themes — rape, sexual assault, murder, suicide, drug overdose, self-harm — and is not recommended for children or young adults under the age of 18.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo
October 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.

Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals – the old art known as the Wit – gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.

When I started this book, I wanted to read it as if I were a non-fantasy-reader. Since Game of Thrones became such a phenomenon, more people are opening themselves up to the genre, and it’s easy for me – a huge reader of fantasy – to read Assassin’s Apprentice and review it based on how well it utilises the conventions of fantasy fiction. But this novel, which is the first in a trilogy, has the abilty to engage all readers, even those who aren’t familiar with the genre.

Assassin’s Apprentice is fast-paced and interesting, and the first person narration is believable and realistic. And the journeying in the story doesn’t take 50,000 pages, which is usually what frustrates me about fantasy fiction (*cough* The Queen of the Tearling *cough*). Robin Hobb reveals enough about the world and the characters for the reader to understand the story, but not too much where the reader is going to feel fatigued by the excess information. I assume that Robin reveals more to the reader in the second and third novels in this trilogy.

Robin Hobb’s writing is fluid, and events seem to flow from each other in a natural sequence. There are no disjointed events or conversations that have the reader confused and flicking back through an earlier chapter. Fitz’s motivations and doubts are seen through his actions, not through telling. This is hard to accomplish, especially since fantasy authors have so much information to write down and it’s tempting for them to simply tell the reader things instead of showing them.

What I loved about the main character, Fitz, is that although he’s brave and intelligent, he’s also extremely flawed. His relationships with the other characters are sometimes misguided, or he says or does things that the reader might not understand or agree with. And because he’s flawed, the reader sympathises and engages with him on a greater scale.

My Score: 8/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

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