Ninth house
Gollancz , 2020
458 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4732-2798-9
Leigh Bardugo, the bestselling Young Adult author, after an enormous success of her Grishaverse novels and Netflix series based on them, brings us her first adult novel: a magical dark mystery set in Yale, Ninth House.
A troubled girl, Galaxy “Alex” Stern ends up in Yale to join to join Lethe, the Ninth House which oversees the rituals and gatherings of the eight other “Houses of the Veil”, the secret societies that practice there. Each of the houses focuses on different skill, different kind of magic: from reading the future to raising the dead. Bur sometimes something goes wrong and that’s the role of the Ninth House: to clean up the mess. And eventhough Alex Stern doesn’t fit in Yale, she has a ver useful skill: she can see ghosts and that makes her valuable to Lethe.
A twisty story that follows three interlinked mysteries, full of flash-backs and flash-forwards, an original read that proves that fantasy literature is no less than any other genre and can still include some social critic or treat serious issues.
That definitely is an unusual read for Donostia Book Club, but we are always up to discovering new genres and trying out books that become so incredibly popular. A phenomenon of Leigh Bardugo’s fame called our attention and we want to try it for ourselves. On November, 6th we’re discussing the novel in detail and you are more than invited to join us. Or at least to read it too and ponder this issues:
- How and why does Alex not fit in Yale? What is her
background and what are the backgrounds of the
typical Yale students?
- How is Yale described? Would you say it's another
character in the novel?
- How are the fantastic elements set in a real world
we know?
- Why is Alex such a magnetic character? What are
the contrasts in her personality?
- Do you find the magic system created by Bardugo
original and convincing?
And some questions from the official Reading Guide:
- Alex’s life before Yale is lived on the fringes of society.
At Yale, she finds herself in a somewhat similar
situation: an outsider in a world of privilege. How does
Alex’s sense of identity change over the course of the
book? What kinds of attempts to assimilate into the
culture does Alex make, and do they help or hinder
her work for Lethe, and later, her attempts to solve
Tara’s murder?
- Themes of class, race, and ethnicity are woven
throughout Ninth House. How does having Alex
as a narrator influence our view of the story and
the world of Yale and New Haven? How would
it be different if the story were narrated by Darlington,
Dawes, or Turner?
- Throughout the novel we see magic in Yale and
New Haven used for both good and bad. If you
were in charge of Lethe, would you run it differently?
If you had the power to ban the use of magic by the
Houses of the Veil, would you or wouldn’t you, and why?
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