Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. 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. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. 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. What’s the catch, and why her?
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. 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. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
Source | Format | Pages | Publisher | Genre | Publication Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Netgalley | eARC | 480 | Gollancz | Fantasy (Adult) | October 8th, 2019 |
Leigh Bardugo has won millions of hearts with her young adult fantasy series. It’s no miracle her debut adult title was going to be THE most anticipated release. Since October, the book has tallied up a neat 33k+ ratings with the current average of 4.15 – not bad! Not bad at all! … or, is it?
Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.
Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo
… huh, well, with this I couldn’t agree with more…
Adult debut, and yep, this is one comes with heavy trigger warnings: rape, abuse (both sexual and drug), death.
You’d think this sounds like a title right up my dark desire’s alley… and yet, Ninth House was a long, hard battle for me. Without pussyfooting around, I was bored, inundated with the ‘mysterious backstory’ of the characters and not really focusing on the details of the mysterious ‘secret society’ vibe, the structure of delivery didn’t work for me – it was back and forth for pretty much most of the book and all of this made picking this book up from where I left off feel like a chore rather than an explosion of excitement.
There is quite the mystery to crack in this book and there’s quite the backstory to the characters as well as the setting, but I simply could not get into it. From the start, I was waiting to warm to the characters – that didn’t happen, no connection, no matter how heartbreaking or intriguing their story. I was waiting to get excited about the setting: Yale, an ‘outsider’ being thrown into the mix of all those privileged ‘insiders’ and secret societies to boot who carry out some funky, magical rituals – yeah, that failed to make me excited as well – I don’t know why. Well, maybe I do… Feeling attached to characters is one of the most important elements for me… that doesn’t happen, the rest of the story just loses its spark for me. Yes, it’s a solid, waterproof and well thought out environment. It was simply too rich for me this time and if I were you, I would judge the book by reading it yourself. Plenty love to go around for the title around the blogosphere, I’m simply not part of the cool kids this time.
A simple fact remains- you will get tons of story for your buck! Whether you like it or not, I will leave that for you to discover and I shall look forward to hearing what you thought of the book! 🙂
Fantastic review Liz, too bad it didn’t work for you!
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Thank you! 🙂
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Tough to come up cold on a book that everyone’s hot about. Kudos for standing your ground. That’s why it’s called ‘your opinion’.
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Indeed,, and I was SO prepared to love this book so much… but, as it goes- you win some, you lose some! Thank you for stopping by! 🙂
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Oh I have missed your reviews! Even when a book is not for you, you just nail the explanation and I love how you write. Brilliant post! xx
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Awwe, ❤ thank you! 🙂
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SO glad to find someone who felt the same way about this book!!
I actually considered abandoning the book several times because I was bored and worse, I just didn’t care what would happen to the characters. The only one I vaguely liked.vanished pretty early on and didn’t come back. I skim read to the end in case it got better, but it didn’t 😦
I was so disappointed as Six of Crows remains a masterpiece. And who knows, maybe this series will get better now we have all the backstory out of the way… (I’m an optimist!).
Great, honest review 🙂 x
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Oh godddd, yes… DNF was so heavy on my mind but I just kept going because it was a Netgalley copy and I simply didn’t want to press that ‘do not give feedback’ button – although it was an option I considered like a hundred times… I agree – Six of Crows duology was good and definitely popped expectations way up… But, like you – perhaps the sequel will indeed be a bit more focused now that all of the possible introductions in the history of ever are out of the way! 🙂
Thank you! 🙂
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Is it me or have I missed a tonne of posts from you? Or have I just been that Unactive this month… Great review, can not judge you for not liking a book many others adore…
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eeek, not sure… in fairness, I haven’t blogged for a long time either… last post was in November so… oopsie 🙂
I am trying to get back into blogging though!
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Exited
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I definitely agree with you. This book was such a disappointment for me!
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Yes! It’s one of those that make you feel you read a different copy to the people who really love it- it just doesn’t align, at all… hmm… think you’ll give the sequel a go though?
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I mean, never say never, but I really don’t think so. I just have zero interest in the characters and world. What about you?
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ahhh… tough one… I am curious but know my disappointment with book 1 will hold me back from giving book 2 a chance… too many other worlds to discover that are guaranteed to excite me…
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Fab review! You’ve definitely made me curious to see how I would react to this story now… A shame it didn’t work out for you! xx
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🙂 If you do have this book on your TBR list thn I shall await for your thoughts 🙂
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Oh I do have a copy on my kindle! I’m just not sure when I’ll actually have time to read it haha. xD
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I love your review. As it happens I really enjoyed this but I can completely see where you’re coming from. There is a lot of world building to this and in some respects it swamps the read doesn’t it. but then, at the same time, for me, certain things just really fell into ‘the things I love’ bracket.
I did have a few niggles but they weren’t deal breakers for me.
Always interesting to read opposing reviews.
Lynn 😀
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🙂 Thank you!
I do wonder if in another place and time I would have enjoyed the book more.. but this time, it just didn’t work. I will probably keep an eye on future developments but doubt I will jump in very eagerly to see what happens next… mmm, time will tell 🙂
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Great review, Liz. It indeed sounds super heavy in the themes department. Sorry to hear that you couldn’t connect with the characters though. It was bound to disappoint in the end if it couldn’t at least do that huh…
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Thanks for your unbiased opinion! I think every other review I read was from a staunch Bardugo fan, and the only negative ones were from YA readers expecting a YA story and not based on the merits of the book, so your review was exactly what I was waiting for. 👍✨
I still.plan to read it next year and hopefully it will show up as a $1.99 ebook or on Hoopla before that because I’m not going to pay full.price for it, ha ha. I am restarting my old habit of having what I call a slow-read book going on in the background; one I read in spurts, a bit at a time. This sounds like it will be one of those books for me next year. 📚
Are you planning on reading the next one? 🤔
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I mean, it was made Uber clear to everyone this was an adult book and with heavy trigger warnings, how the YA crowd still expect YA – beyond me.
Anyway, defo get this one either from library or a sale – hard to tell what you’ll make of it but for some reason I can’t see you loving-loving it.. hmm… But who knows?!? 😁
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I don’t know if you saw I didn’t care for it. 😁 I’m going to look to see if Hoopla or Libby has the next one out of curiosity. 😏
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Yes, I think I breathed a sight of relief when I saw you were also not that smitten with this one. It was such a bizarre book and I found it SUCH a slog that I don’t think I even want to try the second one. But, I’ll keep an eye out for your thoughts on it should you decide to share!
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Oh! Reading the sequel? I highly doubt it… Yes, the stage is now set but I don’t feel like I will be snatching it up the minute it comes out…
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Oh gosh, I’m completely in the other camp. I loved the characters. Alex was a little too cool for school for my taste at a couple of points. The way she so easily intimidated and outsmarted other characters read as very Mary Sue-wish fulfillment to me. But overall I found her so likeable and sympathetic. She had such a tough life and dealt with drug addiction and poverty. Then there’s Darlington, who also dealt with poverty after his grandfather died, but poverty in a mansion?! Oh, I couldn’t get enough of these characters and their plights.
And there are so few low fantasy books. High fantasy dominates the genre and I just don’t have the patience to learn a whole new world and continents and history. This was exactly the kind of magic-in-the-real-world book I’ve been craving.
Still, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the book! And from looking at the goodreads reviews, I can see you definitely aren’t alone in not feeling a connection to the characters.
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