Ninth House

There’s something about the “writing community” that has bothered me for a long time. For a group of people that claim to be interested in social justice and improving access and equity, we sure have a real elitist set up for accessing certain aspects of said community. To me, if you have written a thing, whether you intend to publish it or not, you’re a writer/author. You should be able to enter into conversation about that without having to pass a bevvy of tests. Alas, that often isn’t how it works. Got an agent? Awesome! But you still can’t join that private discord until you have a publishing contract. Oh, you have a contract? Awesome! But unless you’re a lead title at a big five your opinions aren’t worth much and you should stay quietly lurking in the corner. Went indie or self-published? That’s so lovely for you, but our debut group isn’t interested in that right now. And don’t get me started on what it means for a writer to be told “no response is no” from some agents who are simply “too busy” to extend the courtesy of a one line form rejection to queries.

While there are many oases of kindness, they are unfortunately exceptions to the rule that plays itself out on social media over and over for the discerning observer to spot. I have never seen anything so hilariously sad as the author who desperately tried to backtrack after she showed her entire rear end by stating that she was “an actual author” only after her big five published book was out. Way to anger half the readership and almost everyone who might help market said big five published book. I’ve been pretty lucky in my publishing journey, but it still grates on me to watch this happen, because I’m not big on prestige based societies that require applicants to figure out an arbitrary secret set of rules that nobody will even talk about. Which is why I absolutely adored Leigh Bardugo’s dark, adult, contemporary, paranormal Ninth House. 

The story involves Alex Stern, the most unlikely of candidates, finding herself enrolled at Yale. Only it’s not the regular Yale that run of the mill students enjoy. Alex’s Yale is a Yale that includes secret magical societies which only a select elite student body has access to. How does Alex, a former teen runaway whose last known associates were drug dealers that died under suspicious circumstances, find herself in such rarefied company? Well, all those behavior and mental health issues that lead to her downward spiral in life were caused by her exceptionally rare ability to see ghosts. 

Alex is recruited to Lethe, the society established in order to police the other societies, as her unique gifts make her well positioned for a job in containing the supernatural. Turns out, her mysterious benefactors at Lethe have been aware of her abilities for a while, but as Alex is quick to point out, they did absolutely nothing to help her until they thought she could be useful to them. Rather than being grateful and taking orders, Alex pushes back against any narrative that establishes her as the unworthy recipient of generosity from such a saintly group and points out their flawed ethics every chance she gets. And she is absolutely right to do so, because mixing magic of epic proportions with young adults that have known nothing but a life of privilege in which they have never met a real consequence is – shock! – not such a great idea.

What everyone else sees as a normal extension of the natural social order, Alex sees as some of the worst moral corruption in existence. And the reader is hard pressed not to agree when viewing the world through Alex’s outsider eyes. Some of the uses these coeds put magic to are stomach churning, including the opening scene in which an undomiciled person’s mental illness is used as a cover for subjecting them to magical experimentation and undesired surgeries. Remember that freshman orientation speech about consent and what drugs and alcohol can do to that scenario? Now imagine there’s mind altering magic in the mix. Yet nobody, including the adult alumnae of these societies, seems to care so long as the magic and the money keep flowing- until the bodies start showing up. That, unfortunately, they cannot ignore.

Alex is like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go of the investigation into magical corruption even when she is ordered to stand down. I was able to spot the major plot twists, the red herring, and the ultimate villain coming from a mile away. What kept me reading Ninth House was not the plot. It was Alex and her constant refusal to play by anyone else’s rules. It was pure joy to watch her gain the upper hand in several situations simply for doing things nobody thought she would do. Because they grew up rich and with certain expectations from life. Thanks to Lethe’s staunch refusal to intervene and help Alex when she first began to see ghosts, Alex grew up fighting.

I can’t help but think about the current nature of traditional publishing and the million of ailments that plague it. It is an institution almost as bloated as this fictionalized version of Yale with offenses that grow ever more egregious while everyone pretends that this is totally normal. It is now common for editors to ghost submissions, publishers are slicing up advances into smaller and smaller installments, and allocation of marketing funds and support is such a black box that the CEO of Simon and Schuster stated under oath that there’s a reason the word “random” is included in the name of Penguin Random House. Not to mention the idea that authors works can be fed willy nilly into AI, often without their consent, to actively train their “replacement.” Meanwhile, authors are told they must follow a specific set of rules, be patient, and take what crumbs they are offered, or nobody will give them a key to the castle. Well, perhaps it’s time we all took a page from Alex’s book and point out that the castle is, in fact, on fire.

The language of Ninth House is dark and gritty which fits the setting and overall vibe. There is a cool use of ladino as a diaspora language having special power over the dead. But most of all, it was satisfying to read about someone who actually has the guts to look privilege in the eye and give it the middle finger. Because maybe it’s not always worth the self flagellation required for the chance at being condescended to in elite social circles. This book will light a fire in you. Don’t let it be for nothing. 

There are many valid paths to publishing, and they’ve been quite good to me as a whole, but I can’t help but notice what goes on around me. Maybe because like Alex, I did not grow in the soil from which the publishing elite springs. No MFA. No Iowa writers course. No Clarion or Viable Paradise workshops. No invitations to fancy exclusive discords (although huge shout outs to all the Jewish writer Discords that are open to all and welcomed me. Same goes for Dream Foundry and the like. You do good work!). So I take great pains to look at ALL options available to me without judging any as more prestigious or better than the other, and when any of them start prioritizing corporate profit over the creatives on whose existence they depend for their very life’s blood, there is a problem. Sometimes it just takes an outsider to see it. 

So what can we do about it? Well, in preparation for the sequel (which I am excited to read) Alex forms a posse. Maybe we can stop judging each other for going trad or indie, having an agent or not, being big five vs. small house, six figure or no advance. Maybe we can try and acknowledge that we are all people striving to create in an environment that is often hostile. Writing relationships shouldn’t be about what we can get from one another but how we can support each other. There’s power in numbers. Kaminando kon buenos.

---

Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon