Ninth House

Book Title: Ninth House

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Series: Alex Stern #1

Date Started: April 4th 2021

Date Completed: May 11th 2021

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

Ninth House ended up being more gothic-occult horror than mysterious detective adventure - what made me think it was going to be the latter I'm not sure, but it was a bit of change in direction at first. That's not any real problem with the book, but it definitely contributed to what made me move at a snail's pace (it took me more than a month to read this): it's just a bit more convoluted than it needs to be. While the voice of Jake Peralta kept saying 'cool motive, still murder' in my head throughout, it felt morphed a bit into 'cool story, still slow'.

There's a lot of information piled on you in the whole book, but especially at the start. I honestly still don't really understand the magic system and I couldn't name the different houses, let alone match what discipline is from which house, or what person is in what house; I just about got on top of the classical codenames by the end (Alex is Virgil right... right?). Ultimately, if you latch onto the brilliant cast of characters, nothing else matters too much, but I think it's worth saying that I'd hope later books in the series continue to make distinctions because I need a handbook.

I really like the themes Bardugo chooses, but they are slightly lost amongst the genre pieces in this. The classism and casual sexism, the gaslighting and prejudice against addicts, is interesting and nice to actually see tackled amongst fantasy, but it fades into the background when it isn't used as the main issue of the scene (where it knocks you over the head a bit).

Ultimately, Ninth House did not need to be anywhere near as long as it is. The last third was great and I blasted through the end of the story, but the first 200/300 pages was a lot of extra stuff that wasn't necessary for it. I will say that I'm a big fan of books that finish their own story arcs satisfyingly but leave questions unanswered and strings left untied so there's somewhere to go. Whether I'll read the next instalment, I'm still unsure. More because Ninth House just wasn't really my thing and it taking so long to get to the point made it less enjoyable for me.