Author: Leigh Bardugo
Rating: 2/5
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is a freshman at Yale University mainly due to her ability to see Grays (ghosts). She is recruited by a secret society called Lethe. When a townie is found dead, Alex investigates and learns some uncomfortable truths about the way societies are run at the university.
Spoilers ahead.
Detailed Summary
Alex is a student at Yale and works for an organisation called Lethe known as the Ninth House. They oversee the other eight societies that deal with magic. Alex can see ghosts–called Grays. She can also possess them and use their power. Her Virgil is Darlington (aka Daniel Arlington who was raised by his grandfather because his parents were too busy frolicking around the world and squandering their money and when his grandfather died, Darlington took care of the house Black Elm and prevented his parents from getting their grubby hands on it). A local girl named Tara is murdered so Alex looks into it. She gets Detective Turner (who works for Lethe–kinda) to help even though he tells her to stand down multiple times. Lethe’s assistant Pammie Dawes helps her too. Darlington has gone “missing” but it’s actually that he’s been gobbled up by this monster and Alex was the only one to see this happen. Tara and Lance were drug dealers and grew Merity which forces people into servitude. They also figured out a mix for portal magic. Alex’s backstory is revealed. Everyone thought she was crazy. She was raped by a ghost too. She did drugs to dull her ghost-seeing abilities. She falls in with a bad crowd who includes her abusive boyfriend named Len who is much older. One night, Hellie, her friend, died after being sexually abused(?) and Alex learnt she could possess Hellie’s spirit. She killed all the people and ran away where she was found and recruited by Lethe.
Alex bonds wth a ghost named North and uses him to learn more about Tara’s death. They realise Darlington had been looking into the murder of North’s fiancee named Daisy along with other murders. Alex realises each death corresponds to the founding of a society and Tara’s death was meant to do the same thing. Alex confronts Dean Sandow who admits his plan but says a new society wasn’t formed. Professor Belbalm interrupts and turns out to be Daisy in a possessed woman’s body. She is a Wheelwaker–like Alex. Belbalm kills Sandow, Alex destroys Belbalm by drawing out all the souls she had trapped. Darlington is revealed to have been transformed into a demon. She gets Dawes and Michelle (Darlington’s mentor) to go into hell to bring him back.
Review
Those 2 stars are only for Darlington because my gods, he was the only thing that I liked about this book. I’m not going to spend much time on this review. I was disappointed and I was warned that this veered off Bardugo’s usual style but I just felt that it lacked the depth her other books contained. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the societies and the characters (and, to be honest, there was a lot of info-dumping about the other societies and I couldn’t keep them straight in my head). It’s funny, the premise of this book REALLY appeals to me. I love the idea of secret societies and the Gods above know I’ve been dying to create one of my own. It’s just finding people and figuring out what we’re actually going to be doing and, you know, actually DOING IT is hard! I love the idea of learning lots of languages and martial arts and keeping physically fit etc. like that’s SO down my alley. I think this series started in the wrong place. It would have been more effective to have the first book be about Darlington’s time at Lethe and then the second book starting with the murder of Tara. I think that would have made me feel more attached to the societies and better understand how Lethe works in the first place.
Some of the prose was gorgeous and the dialogue (especially Darlington’s) was very witty. So it was a shame that I didn’t like this book. I really had to force myself to sit down and READ.
Aside from Darlington, I will say I LOVED this quote by Professor Belbalm:
“Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives come apart in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us. […] So once you have the money, once you can stop clinging to the rock and can climb atop it, what will you build there? When you stand upon the rock, what will you preach?”
This quote articulates SO PERFECTLY how I feel about graduating from university and working as a doctor. It’s the reason I’m so negative about becoming a doctor in the UK because as much as I want to help people and make a difference, I also WANT to be able to afford things. I want to be an author and an artist but I can’t do that unless and until I can stop clutching onto that rock for dear life. I hate feeling like a cog in the system but it seems that if you truly want to beat the system, you have to start out as a cog.
Earnestly Eccentric 