... magic wasn’t something gilded and benign, just another commodity that only some people could afford... [p. 401]
Alex Stern -- brown-skinned high school dropout, small-time dealer, and sole survivor of a gory drug-fuelled massacre -- has been granted a second chance, a full scholarship to Yale, an escape from her LA roots. Her imposter syndrome is wholly justified, but she's been recruited to Lethe, one of Yale's ancient secret societies, for her unique ability to see and interact with ghosts.
There are (there really are) a number of secret societies at Yale. In Ninth House, each of the eight Houses of the Veil practices a different form of magic -- haruspicy, necromancy, illusion et cetera -- with the eponymous ninth house, Lethe, monitoring the rituals and standing 'between the living and the dead'. Alex's mentor is Darlington, the epitome of East Coast privilege: wealthy, handsome, white, well-mannered, and kind to Alex despite his sense of betrayal at having this messy, trashy loser forced on him by Dean Sandow. Darlington envies Alex's 'gift': it takes him a while to realise that to Alex it's not a gift but a curse, and to understand how furious she is that nobody ever helped her, or told her how to ward off the dead, or believed in the things she saw.
Most of Ninth House is told retrospectively: the murder of a young woman, the disappearance of Darlington, and Alex's ill-informed attempts to uncover some uncomfortable truths. She's aided by the third member of Lethe, Pamela Dawes, and by one of her roommates, Mercy: she's hindered by almost everybody else, living or dead. But Alex's rage, and her refusal to buy into the ways in which the rich and powerful prey upon everyone else, are powerful forces.
This is a dark and gory novel -- there was discontent about the trigger warnings when it was first published -- and very definitely, despite the young adult protagonist, not intended for a YA audience. Ninth House features graphic scenes of murder, rape, child rape, mutilation, coprophagia, drug abuse ... This is not a light happy novel, nor is it a fast-paced one, but I liked it very much. It's a compelling and timely read, questioning white male privilege and the role of the outsider: the #metoo generation's The Secret History, if I'm being glib. I liked both Alex and Darlington, who are pretty much polar opposites: Alex's rage and pragmatism, Darlington's romantic yearning for real magic. The occult history of Bardugo's Yale was intriguingly constructed, and the secondary characters (Dawes, Dean Sandow, Mercy, the Bridegroom) felt as though they all had stories of their own. I admire the twists and layers of plot, and the writing is crisp and evocative. After a tantalising ending, I'm pleased to see that a sequel is coming.
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