Right off the bat, I was surprised by Alex and by the setting. I saw a lot of hype around it, but having not read anything by Bardugo before I was unsure what I was walking into. I really enjoyed this book from the very beginning. Especially when she no longer has her Virgil to guide her through the monitoring of and work with the landed societies. Alex is unique this in regard, and thus approaches the duties and work of Lethe House in a very different way. Much of the plot focus comes from Alex’s ability to see Grays, or ghosts. I appreciated that in a story placed at an Ivy League and concerning the activities of secret societies filled with the wealthy and societal important, our main narrator is far from their social and wealth class. Tropes: Rich People Have Too Much FreedomĪlex is a pretty self aware POV character, and even when we slip into Darlington’s POV we’re reminded that he didn’t have everything handed to him (just most things). The genre really should be Urban Fantasy, but c’mon. I know, I know, Dark Academia is more of an aesthetic. If only she could see and find her mentor, Darlington. While other members of Lethe must consume an increasingly dangerous potion to see Grays and perform their duties, Alex was offered a fresh start, a scholarship, and a new life thanks to her surprising abilities.
And she has a special gift: she can see Grays–ghosts. Alex Stern is a freshman at Yale and the current Dante of Lethe House, making her an apprentice training to monitor the activities of the societies. Lethe House was founded to make sure unnecessary death and uncontrolled magic don’t happen. These societies deal in real magic, and that magic can be incredibly dangerous. Ninth House is about the underworld of Yale University, where Lethe House monitors and restricts the activities of the eight secret societies there. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. Some might say she’s thrown her life away.
By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class.
0 kommentar(er)
