 Hey guys, it's Liana and I'm here today to talk about Ninth House by Lee Bardudio. This book is pretty well known I think and highly anticipated and I think everybody on YouTube has already talked about it and I'm very late to this party. But I finally read it after like pre-ordering 10 copies of it. Well four copies of it but that's still excessive for a book that I had no guarantee I would like. So yeah, Ninth House if you don't know is Lee Bardudio goes first foray into adult fiction and it's a dark academia with magic because dark academia does not necessarily in fact often does not have magic but this is based on her experience um in Yale. She went to Yale and there became familiar with the secret societies that are prevalent in Yale and then wrote a dark academia magical version of those secret societies in Ninth House. I didn't really know what to expect going into it other than it's adult fiction not lying. It takes place at Yale and it's like modern day which is different from her other work which takes place in a fantasy world that is very old and old-timey that a lot of people were saying that there were like a ton of trigger warnings and content warnings and I didn't really do a deep dive into like what exactly I was being warned about but I knew that there was apparently some very adult content in here so like everyone was saying like this is our Bardugo's first adult but it is very adult and I would agree with that. So be warned word-to-the-wise. Look up the content warnings before you're picking up this book if you are at all worried like about something being triggering to you because odds are it will be. This is this is not Pulitzer Punches so I don't really ever there isn't really anything that I'm like that triggered by or things that I end up not liking but not to the point where like I need to avoid it. So I didn't look at any specific content warning before reading it but again if you are worried about that you should look it up because I would imagine if I was very very scarred and triggered by these types of events this book would not be a good experience. So yeah I initially found it very difficult to get into and I would even after having read it now and giving it four stars and coming to the conclusion that I like it there are things about how she structured it and how she pasted it that I think hurt it and if she didn't she hadn't done it that way if she hadn't structured it that way if she hadn't pasted it that way the book would be five stars because it has the potential to be. I think there's some really good things in it and it's holding itself back and I don't know why she would choose to do it that way I honestly don't um so part of what really didn't like gel for me to begin with is that it's not mysterious it's not at all mysterious this book doesn't get mysterious until much later on and I would think would be the other way around like to me a dark academia mysterious story should open with mystery and then by the end you've begun to piece it together here it felt like the opposite here when you start the book your main character is aware of the secret societies is already a part of the secret societies already kind of knows she's a novice but she kind of knows all the rules related to the sort of magical necromantic powers wielded by the secret societies she's fully aware fully immersed it's not a mystery and there isn't anything really going on with the secret societies yet that is mysterious so she's kind of just taking you through her daily life and she's got a lot of emotional baggage which that's kind of mysterious like you don't exactly know all all all her baggages but she can see ghosts which again it's not like slowly revealed to you you kind of know it from the get-go so I just I kept in the beginning I was reading it I was like okay I guess we just like know everything already fine you know it lacks that that experience of discovering something which is what I feel like when I think of a mysterious academic setting that's what I think of I think of of a school that looks you know from the outside really put together and safe and professional and official and whatever and that like through following leads and shadows and corners and mysterious things that you begin to notice that something else is going on here and that that there's might be more to these secret societies that meets the eye and to discover that there's actually magic going on and like I think if it had been told that way where Alex you could even her name is galaxy by the way but she goes by Alex understandably even if Alex already was aware of her own necromantic kind of oh I don't know if that's necromantic but she can see ghosts like she sees dead people she's literally a little awesome when we started the book with her having that um as like baggage but she thinks she's the only one and that um if she was because she's recruited to come to Yale because she has this ability so arguably you can't have her not know that this is going on at the school because when you started the book she's there at the school because of this but it doesn't have to be written that way it could be written that she's recruited to come to Yale but she doesn't know why and that but she does know that she can see dead people and she's really afraid they're going to find out because she'll lose her place at Yale if she thinks that they find out that she's just weirdo that can see dead people and that she slowly discovers that the secret societies may or may not be involved with something like that and she realizes that that maybe even the reason that she was recruited like that would have been so much more compelling and mysterious and would have been like that slow piecing together of information but instead we already know it all we already know they exist these secret societies we know that's why she's there we know she can see dead people like i was like i there's no hook there's no mystery there's no like just creeping through shadowy corners halls mysterious passages and finding things out now ultimately there is a mystery ultimately because of the goings on of the secret societies and it's told in kind of a dual timelines so like there is a mysterious disappearance that is related to secret societies and she's piecing together what happened and like somebody dies and she's trying to figure out what the society's involvement is in this person's death so she's there's like a murder mystery and a disappearance that she's solving but it takes away so much of the magic and mystery when part of the mystery isn't the secret societies themselves the secret societies are just like a fact they're already a feature it's not part of the mystery we already know the secret societies exist we already know they are secret we already know they do magic it's just a matter of figuring out whether or not they are involved in someone's murder so you know how harry potter like ultimately once you realize that the wizarding world is a thing like it's no longer the mystery isn't there that wizards exist you know that and now it's a mystery about what's going on in the school and that's fine but harry potter is better because in the beginning harry does not know wizards exist so you still get that beginning bit where he's like why are there weird things happening like you know like when the owls start coming to his house and like he's able to do something to the snake and the zoo and he doesn't know why like that part of it where like the fact of magic is a mystery and then once he realizes that magic is real then he's discovering magic and then he discovers there's something nefarious going on and then he discovers like more and more that builds over time and we go from like whimsical mystery to sinister mystery and that this thing in adult book it can start out sinister because she can already see dead people but if she's trying to keep that secret we'll also figuring out other people's secrets and then we could still have the murders and disappearances once she discovers the mystery of secret societies existing then have the mystery of the disappearance and the death you could do it that way and i don't know why it's not written that way like i don't know why you would not choose to do it because that would make it so much better so by the end of the book i ended up finally connecting with alex because she's kind of a hard person to connect with i did ultimately feel a connection with her as well as with um her kind of like mentor within the secret society is the guy who's been kind of teaching her what they're about and like how they work and her sherpa at first like he was kind of a cold fish to me too like he seemed like a character out of a donna tart book but i felt like i was meant like with a donna tart like i don't feel like i meant to care about this character so i don't care that i don't here i felt like i meant to care about this character um at the end i finally did by the end i did care and by the end like the mystery when it became an actual mystery like that hooked me and i was interested and it was done well and the atmosphere was cool and i ended up enjoying it and i gave it four stars i just don't know why you wouldn't capitalize on the mystery of this atmosphere of this situation of this place of all of it like it makes it so much less mysterious like it's imagine if you started harry potter and he's already had hogwarts that would be so much less fun right imagine if you started lord of the rings and froto already knows about the ring already has the ring and already knows and he needs to destroy it you know what i mean like yes the rest of the story is interesting but the discovery of this being the story is also interesting and makes it that's what hooks you that the fact that you've gone on this journey of discovery with the main character is what kind of allows you to form a bond with them because you and that character learned about this world together and then now that you guys know about this world together now you can go and explore it and discover what is what else is going on what else is mysterious about it but when your character already knows what's going on i feel like then you feel divorced from them you don't you're like well they already know so i guess they're telling me now like you know so that's a really huge missed opportunity in my opinion and the rest of it yeah again super duper content warnings like there are some moments in it where like it's clearly like a moment in the story where we are stopping to have this very adult thing where i was like this is the part that i was being warned about this is what this is but peppered in throughout there are multiple instances like smaller brief instances where it's just kind of like thrown in some like extremely adult thing that is just like there and i was like oh okay that's also whoa righty then are yeah yeah yeah yeah all right all of this is very all right okay okay so if that's gonna bother you like they are not exaggerating there are a lot of adult things in this book so it is as adult as it really can possibly be so if that's gonna bother you even a little bit don't read it so yeah that's my assessment of ninth house by lee bardugo this is a series apparently it's gonna be like five books i've heard multiple like from different sources i've heard it's gonna be two books i've heard it's gonna be five books i've heard it's gonna be 10 books i feel like two to five is like should be more than enough for what's been set up here maybe i have no idea as such at the tip of the iceberg and there's just like so much more yet to be discovered for like 10 books great if that's true then sure let's let's see where we go but based on this i can see another book maybe another two books max but we'll see i'll definitely pick up the next one because again i ended up enjoying it and now we're in the mystery we're in the situation so like the opportunity was only in the beginning and we missed it already so the rest of the books like harry's already at Hogwarts so we'll see where we go from here let me know the comments down below if you read ninth house if you felt similarly if you felt differently if it was everything that you hoped and dreamed and lived up or you were hugely disappointed with it if um you know if you hated it if you loved it if you felt it was a mediocre whatever you felt whatever you thought let me know the comments down below i 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