Ninth House

Dark Academia, ghosts, magic, murder investigations, and the price of power

Ninth House has a nonlinear timeline circling around a couple fixed points. The pacing starts a bit slow with some dense world building up front, but once you get past that the momentum really finds its stride. There are multiple POVs, but you mostly follow Alex. On the surface Alex is an outsider to the clean cut, high level academic world of Yale, but her traumatic past experiences help her to see through the masks people wear down to their greed, corruption, and arrogance.

I enjoyed this book immensely but it is very bleak. Even the high points are still pretty depressing. Everything sucks, there are no consequences for the rich and powerful, and so Alex must do whatever it takes to survive. Some events are described in detail that were just past my personal line of “too dark” so read the trigger warnings. They felt like they were there just for shock value.

Overall, I loved the mystery and things slowly being revealed. There were twists I didn't see coming, but they had solid, subtle foundations that back them up. I'm definitely continuing the series and would recommend it.