I’ve had Ninth House on a shelf for a while, but I hadn’t really been in the mood for what promised to be a pretty dark story, and as it turns out, it’s a good bit darker than I’d thought. Although, I do have to say the darkness does really suit the story. Ninth House is something of a mix between The Secret History and The Magicians, neither of which I liked. I did however somewhat enjoy Ninth House. So as it turns out, some of those rumored secret societies at Yale really do exists, and they actually engage is some scary and very real practicing of magic, including necromancy, glamour, weather magic, word magic, portals, and divination using entrails (sometimes of a living person). There are eight Houses, sort of like fraternity/sororities each with their own specialties and interests, and there’s Lethe, the organization that is supposed to keep an eye on the rest and keep them from going too far.
The story is told by jumping back and forth in the timeline, but follows two characters: Darlington, the current Virgil of Lethe (meaning he’s supposed to teach everything he knows to his Dante who will then become Virgil to train the next Dante etc.). Darlington appears to be the standard Yale stereotype, wealthy, stylish, charming, smart, etc. The word appears is important since he, like pretty much everyone else, has some pretty major secrets in his background, often of a traumatic nature. He also very much believes in the power of magic and of New Haven itself. His Dante is Galaxy ‘Alex’ Stern who was not supposed to be Dante. Alex is a former druggie/drop-out from LA who wouldn’t have gotten to Yale if she weren’t able to see ghosts, which makes her very unusual and very valuable as a Dante; she was actually discovered by Dean Sandow who seems to have some form of Lethe/Eight Houses oversight position. Darlington has to take a dangerous alchemical concoction to be able to see the ghosts which he has to do in order to keep the magic practiced from hurting anyone innocent.
Both Darlington’s and Alex’s pasts are gradually revealed and they are both pretty dark in their own ways, but Alex’s features several different forms of violence as a result of her being able to see ghosts beginning as a young girl, so if you’re sensitive to some pretty graphic descriptions of domestic violence or rape, stay away from this one.
There are three big mysteries driving the plot, and they turn out to be connected: first, Tara Reid a local resident is found murdered and Alex suspects something connected to the Eight Houses; second, Darlington disappears halfway through the novel, so Alex also needs to find him; thirdly, Alex asks for help from North one of the local ghosts, and in exchange he wants her to solve his and his fiancé’s murders (he was accused of the killings himself but claims to be innocent). Alex has some help besides North in the form of a local detective who seems to want nothing to do with the Houses and their problems but does the work anyways for the money, and Dawes, Lethe’s graduate student research assistant.
Everything ends in a big mass of reveals, a few of which were genuine twists, and the set up for the presumed sequel. On the one hand, I really do like where the plot ended up and I want to see what happens next, but at the same time, very few of the characters are all that likeable. I would also argue slightly with some of the Latin translating, such as the unofficial Lethe motto “Mors irrumat omnia”. The given translation is accurate in terms of the force of the verb, but the Latin is actually considerably more specific in nature than the translation suggests, and the translation also assumes an extra noun that could be implied but the language is too ambiguous to be sure. It’s a small thing but it still annoyed me, especially since Alex really seems to agree with the sentiment. It’s the difference between “Death ****s us all” {given translation} and “Death ***-****s everything.” {more accurate, according to me} The syntax is also not very Latinate; it would more properly be “mors omnia irrumat” unless you’re a student/translator who has the words and basic grammar down, but who hasn’t quite figured out that Latin word order doesn’t really match with how English does things. My point? While I really do appreciate some of the ideas of this novel and it’s an intriguing world, looking more closely at the details, things start getting problematic. Maybe that’s the point.
