Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

It had to happen eventually. I wanted to keep Booktalk generally positive, because I like listening to people talk about things they enjoy. I like to talk about things I enjoy. Unfortunately, I can't enjoy every book I read. There's always going to be something that doesn't click with me. I read all 450 pages of Ninth House waiting for that click, and it just... never happened.

If you ask me to sum up the plot, I don't know if I could do it for you, but here's what I was able to piece together. It's about a young woman named Alex who can see ghosts, and trauma related to that led her to being a drug-addicted high school dropout. After all of her junkie friends mysteriously die, she's contacted by the dean of Yale university to join the house of Lethe. It's a secret society of mages(?) that police the campus's other magical secret societies. Sounds like a cool premise, right? What sort of things would happen next?

You tell me, because I couldn't piece anything together. The story is purposely disjointed, with chapters jumping to random places on the timeline. The first chapter just throws you right into the plot without explaining anything. Now, I don't hate stories with jumpy timelines, I loved playing Lain PSX and that timeline was jumpier than a kid about to have a panic attack at a haunted house, but at least in that game I had fun piecing together the sequence of events and theorizing what lied between the gaps. Ninth House felt more like a chore to figure out. I'm not sure if I can put into words why it feels so different for me. Maybe it's because it tries to throw in so much worldbuilding, and then combine that with a disjointed storytelling method, it becomes so overwhelming to my brain that I can't keep track of what's actually happening.

I couldn't name a single one of the other Houses and match them with what magic they specialized in if you held a gun to my head. Some characters would be missing from the storyline for so long that I legitimately forgot they existed until they suddenly reappeared in the last third or quarter of the book. Alex's dorm-mates? They were introduced in maybe the second or third chapter and then vanished for the next 250 pages. Alex's nice professor? I forgot she existed until she suddenly showed up in the last few chapters for the big plot twist. There's supposed to be a murder mystery but because it doesn't explain the magic system until after a clue is revealed, it feels like there's no point in trying to piece together what happened. It's like being quizzed on something you've never heard of before, so you just wait for someone to tell you what answer to circle.

I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded interesting, and apparently there's a sequel, but I feel it doesn't justify the slow-paced slog of confusing storytelling.

I'll try to give credit where credit is due, though. Alex's flashbacks to her life before Yale were actually engaging for me to read. I really liked reading about this horrible friend group that got her into drugs, how badly it strained her relationship with her mother, the reasons why she didn't leave, and the toxic emotional bonds she had with these people. The flashbacks could have been a whole book on its own and I probably would have really enjoyed it.

But therein lies the problem. When the exposition is more interesting than the plot, maybe you should scrap the plot entirely. Backstories aren't supposed to be better than the actual story.