Ninth House (Leigh Bardugo) (2019)
Mar. 22nd, 2020 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseFrom cahn et al came buzz about Ninth House (Leigh Bardugo) (2019). It's a fantasy/horror/thriller novel about a young woman who is let into Yale because she can see ghosts, which she does not consider any type of useful; and about a murder investigation, which eventually brings to the protagonist's attention the corruption underlying Yale's magical practices.
I went in expecting Serious Lit and got Dumb Thriller. If I read this as the latter, rather than the former, it's probably a fine example of the genre. Too bad about the expectations.
It was billed to me as "kind of like The Magicians, but without Quentin dragging everything down," but I think it wishes to be closer kin to the movie adaptations of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The trouble is, The Magicians has this killer luminous prose, at the sentence and paragraph level; the adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I've seen is structured to pull every end into its brutal examination of its theme, spelled out in the novel's Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women. Ninth House doesn't commit to pure anything. It's a mishmash of thriller, Yale story, shots at unexamined privilege, and some magic on the side.
I was going to trash on the worldbuilding a bit too, because why not, having a "there can only be two, and the alumni" structure for your guardians against magic going awry sounds like a fast ticket to trouble during flu season and finals. But if the intent of Lethe, the magic guardian society, is actually as a fig leaf of oversight and accountability when the reckless moneyed children - and adults - break their lower-class toys, it makes more sense.
Yes, this left me in a mood. I've been in a mood for about four years, because I am done with Wealth = Power = Privilege => Corruption as a significant insight; I am all in for complicity with unjust systems these days. (Or, why have we not seized the means of production for the masses? I can name a couple of good reasons, but sometimes I forget when presented with contemporary capitalism.) I'm looking for something that balances the violence of revolution against the necessary structures of functional society, what trade-offs are worth making and which are the bridge too far; how things look when you've misjudged those trades. Ninth House is adamant that Rape is Bad, but is weirdly a little wishy-washy on the murdering and coercion? Killing Darlington is a clear bad, but it's okay to murder rapists? Because, I don't know, they had it coming? And there's the way the coin of compulsion is used on Blake, who is clearly bad news, by Sandow, who is also bad news, but is killed by undead!Daisy, so that's all right... the concluding chapters dissolve into a cacophony of dead and dying villains, which isn't a very compelling narrative choice.
If Ninth House had just taken "magic is Bad" as a starting theme and gone from there, the novel might cohere somewhat better. The implication magic is slowly drying up and the Yale societies are scrabbling to maintain their waning magic power has some interesting implications, but that's not where the story goes. Instead it goes to "Daisy has been eating people for a century and a half, and that's where the societies' magics came from", which is a weird counterpoint to the other themes in play. Unless the core theme is "power corrupts", which is very done; or "magic is Bad" in which case I look forward to New Haven as Hellmouth in future installments.
After poking at this for a couple of days, I have some additional thoughts:
1.) Yep, it's the first of a series. That would be why the ending chapters are a hot mess of incomplete plot threads, though the thematic untidiness is not as explicable.
2.) Somehow the timeline starts off with Alex Stern mentored by an enthusiastic but sometimes naive Daniel Arlington, with Sandow and Dawes lurking, and by the end of the novel it's Alex, Lethe alumna Michelle Alameddine, roomie Mercy, Dawes has been promoted to Pammie, and Alex is on speaking terms with her mom. It's a nice show of girl power.
2a.) I am here for Daniel Arlington, possible Princess In Need of Rescuing. Not quite as good as Peter Bishop, Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, but I'll take the gender-flipped tropes I can get.
3.) Maybe it's just my own "I don't hate you, I'm just hangry" issues, but Alex doesn't keep nearly enough random snacks on or near her person. Ice cream for breakfast isn't the same as that 2 pm stealth library snack.
cahn et al came buzz about Ninth House (Leigh Bardugo) (2019). It's a fantasy/horror/thriller novel about a young woman who is let into Yale because she can see ghosts, which she does not consider any type of useful; and about a murder investigation, which eventually brings to the protagonist's attention the corruption underlying Yale's magical practices. I went in expecting Serious Lit and got Dumb Thriller. If I read this as the latter, rather than the former, it's probably a fine example of the genre. Too bad about the expectations.
It was billed to me as "kind of like The Magicians, but without Quentin dragging everything down," but I think it wishes to be closer kin to the movie adaptations of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The trouble is, The Magicians has this killer luminous prose, at the sentence and paragraph level; the adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I've seen is structured to pull every end into its brutal examination of its theme, spelled out in the novel's Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women. Ninth House doesn't commit to pure anything. It's a mishmash of thriller, Yale story, shots at unexamined privilege, and some magic on the side.
I was going to trash on the worldbuilding a bit too, because why not, having a "there can only be two, and the alumni" structure for your guardians against magic going awry sounds like a fast ticket to trouble during flu season and finals. But if the intent of Lethe, the magic guardian society, is actually as a fig leaf of oversight and accountability when the reckless moneyed children - and adults - break their lower-class toys, it makes more sense.
Yes, this left me in a mood. I've been in a mood for about four years, because I am done with Wealth = Power = Privilege => Corruption as a significant insight; I am all in for complicity with unjust systems these days. (Or, why have we not seized the means of production for the masses? I can name a couple of good reasons, but sometimes I forget when presented with contemporary capitalism.) I'm looking for something that balances the violence of revolution against the necessary structures of functional society, what trade-offs are worth making and which are the bridge too far; how things look when you've misjudged those trades. Ninth House is adamant that Rape is Bad, but is weirdly a little wishy-washy on the murdering and coercion? Killing Darlington is a clear bad, but it's okay to murder rapists? Because, I don't know, they had it coming? And there's the way the coin of compulsion is used on Blake, who is clearly bad news, by Sandow, who is also bad news, but is killed by undead!Daisy, so that's all right... the concluding chapters dissolve into a cacophony of dead and dying villains, which isn't a very compelling narrative choice.
If Ninth House had just taken "magic is Bad" as a starting theme and gone from there, the novel might cohere somewhat better. The implication magic is slowly drying up and the Yale societies are scrabbling to maintain their waning magic power has some interesting implications, but that's not where the story goes. Instead it goes to "Daisy has been eating people for a century and a half, and that's where the societies' magics came from", which is a weird counterpoint to the other themes in play. Unless the core theme is "power corrupts", which is very done; or "magic is Bad" in which case I look forward to New Haven as Hellmouth in future installments.
After poking at this for a couple of days, I have some additional thoughts:
1.) Yep, it's the first of a series. That would be why the ending chapters are a hot mess of incomplete plot threads, though the thematic untidiness is not as explicable.
2.) Somehow the timeline starts off with Alex Stern mentored by an enthusiastic but sometimes naive Daniel Arlington, with Sandow and Dawes lurking, and by the end of the novel it's Alex, Lethe alumna Michelle Alameddine, roomie Mercy, Dawes has been promoted to Pammie, and Alex is on speaking terms with her mom. It's a nice show of girl power.
2a.) I am here for Daniel Arlington, possible Princess In Need of Rescuing. Not quite as good as Peter Bishop, Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, but I'll take the gender-flipped tropes I can get.
3.) Maybe it's just my own "I don't hate you, I'm just hangry" issues, but Alex doesn't keep nearly enough random snacks on or near her person. Ice cream for breakfast isn't the same as that 2 pm stealth library snack.