Ninth House (Bardugo)
Feb. 28th, 2020 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn4/5. OK let's give Bardugo a Hugo nomination, can we?? (2 more weeks for nominations!) I don't think this book necessarily ought to win a Hugo, but it's doing some very interesting things that I don't think anyone else in the field is really doing in the same way.
This is a book about Alex, a teen dropout/street kid who can see ghosts (these two things are very related), which gets her a scholarship to Yale under the auspices of the Yale secret society Lethe, which exists to watch over the other secret societies as they do their various magic rituals, all of which basically boil down to "use magic to consolidate money and/or power." And the book leans hard into that, and -- oh, here, have a quote fromskygiants's review which you should all read anyway because it's much more coherent and awesome than this rambly review is going to be (and indeed ensured that not only did I decide I was going to read it, but I downloaded the Kindle sample that day):
It's horror/dark fantasy, but apparently the kind of horror that doesn't squick me out? There's a lot that could squick someone -- it gets pretty graphic at times -- but it's usually heavily telegraphed and has so much plot surrounding it that I think there was only one place where I started flipping to get through it quickly. Also I think part of it is because the real horror of it is not the rape or the violence (both of which are present in this book), but the institutionalized horror, the horror that seems on the surface pretty and nice.
I also thought it was really interesting how Bardugo talked about power and the ways that power corrupts, all of which is very much woven into the worldbuilding and the plot. I mean, there's the whole institutionalized privilege thatskygiants talks about, and then in sort of the personal version of that, there's how individual people react to having power (often in an institutionalized fashion, but not always): almost always badly, often very badly. But not always. (And in that "not always" is what hope there is, in the book.)
I also found the parallel between Alex's ability and mental disorders quite interesting. Because Alex can see ghosts and no one else can (and sometimes the ghosts are violent towards her -- but others can see her reaction and not the ghosts, of course), she gets into all kinds of trouble, primarily socially. And eventually she starts self-medicating with alcohol and weed. And of course her mother doesn't know what to do about it...
One review I saw compared it to The Magicians in the sense of talking about how magic isn't like Narnia, it isn't an escape, it isn't numinous. The way magic can be misused is an explicit theme in the book -- and yet I liked Ninth House rather more than I liked The Magicians.ase wondered if this was because it didn't have terrible Quentin POV, which... yeah, is probably a large part of it. (Alex is a great POV!) I think also that Bardugo gives it more ambiguity; magic is usually awful and because people are usually awful, people usually use it in awful ways. But occasionally... yes, it can be numinous; occasionally there is grace. But it's a kind of grace that is dependent upon people, really; not as intrinsic to the magic itself as we might like to think.
It also, like Six of Crows, ends on a cliffhanger, so be aware of that. I mean, the main storyline is wrapped up well, but there's one significant loose end that is dangling out there the whole time, and that is the cliffhanger to jumpstart the (presumed) next book.
But what I really want to talk about is that I had a... rather visceral reaction to this book in a lot of ways, not least because my alma mater was... more like than unlike the university in this book. (This is a big reason why I was so interested in reading it.)
Some of the things I thought about while reading it:
-Yale has ~6,000 undergrads, and the book honestly felt like there were about 200. Which is fine! I mostly interacted with about that many people myself! But every so often I'd be all "...but the great thing about college is that it doesn't have to be like that!" I mean, yes, Alex has to be in that world for worldbuilding and plot reasons, but I kept wanting e.g. her roommate Mercy to get the heck out and into another social group. Yale is a big place! You don't have to go to terrible parties! (Also, super side-eyeing Darlington (whom I otherwise really liked!) for making the snap judgment that their other roommate, Anna, "would never quite fit. She'd end up in a singing group or maybe get heavily into her church"? What's so wrong about that again?? She'd never fit in Darlington's Yale, but... it's actually true that there is more than one way to fit into a place like Yale.)
-My parents very consciously tried to make my sister and me into one of the "haves" portrayed in the book. (My dad spent a lot of time receiving charity from upper-middle/upper-class people in high school after his own family failed miserably at parenting him, and spent a lot of time thinking about how to replicate that sort of life, if not for himself, then for his children. He's writing his memoirs right now and they are really extremely interesting and also really kind of awful -- but anyway.) Music lessons from a young age, tennis lessons for literally years (which sadly for my parents never worked; my tennis skills are significantly worse than D's, and I think his tennis is basically "went out and faffed around with his family sometimes during high school"); they made sure I knew how to ski. In case, they said, someone invites you skiing or playing tennis, then you'll know how to do it.
Interestingly, my parents got it very right and not right at all. The not right at all: it's not really about playing tennis, exactly (although maybe it would have helped had I been any good at it); there's a social aspect of being a "have" that there is no way in heck my parents would ever have been able to teach me, if they had even understood that it existed, which they didn't. (I wouldn't have been able to learn, either, but that's a separate issue.) I mean, I think it can be taught, and is taught -- but by people who move in that world and understand how to move in that world, which definitely wasn't my parents, and isn't me. (This is very, very visible in Ninth House. I was totally not surprised to find out that Bardugo lived this.)
The way my parents did get it right is twofold.
(1) Going to a certain type of college, all by itself, makes one a "have." (And that's what my parents were hoping for, too.) In some ways this happens in a good way -- we were always told we could do whatever we wanted, and mostly let alone to do whatever we wanted, and we were mostly driven type A personalities anyhow; and so one came out pretty sure that one could change the world if one really wanted to, or at least rise to the top of whatever random thing we were working on. (Of course, many of us then had crises in our 20's or 30's, when it became clear that we weren't, in fact, changing the world. But that's another story for another time.) (But on being left to our own devices, I found it utterly believable that the world of Ninth House just... let the undergrads loose with all these horrifically powerful things. Yup.)
It also happens in a not-great way; when one tells someone one went to that type of college and their eyes widen and you know they've just updated their prior beliefs in a specific and rather unfortunate-in-the-way-of-propagating-institutional-privilege way.
And that is, of course, exactly the kind of privilege that Alex herself wants very much, and you really can't fault her for it. Which, of course, ties in to all these structures of power that Bardugo is interested in examining.
(2) There's another, parallel, group of haves, though the mechanism is different: the scholars, the academics. And even though I am no longer in the academic world, there's a certain kind of language, a certain kind of privilege, that one has by virtue of being in that group. And this is a group where if you're the Right Type of Person, the language can be learned by someone who didn't have a coach, growing up, the same way you can make a ton of money or go to Yale even if your family isn't going to be able to help you very much -- but obviously if your parents already belong to that group, it helps a lot, and the more resources your parents have to throw at belonging to that group, the better. (My parents had resources -- not tons of money, although they really tried to give us anything educational or quasi-educational (like tennis) that they could -- but they had the tenacity and math skills to tutor us for a while, to a rather greater degree than most parents. Although to be fair they had very few pedagogical skills, but again that's another story.) All of this is only tangentially covered in Ninth House, to a certain extent with the character of Professor Belbalm -- but it also pinged oddly to me that Mercy isn't more into that world, because she of all the characters has been groomed to be part of that world.
And... more to the point of the larger themes, D and I want our kids to belong to that group of haves. We have a lot of resources, too; D and I have the academics skills, and I also have rather more pedagogical skills than my mom, for that matter, though probably not nearly as much tenacity. The question is, when does good parenting (or good self-advocacy, in Alex's case) run up against the line of perpetuating institutional privilege? In Ninth House, when a particular mildly-spoilery bargain is proposed and taken, where does that fall? I think we're meant to realize it falls squarely on the latter side of the line, even if we totally understand and even empathize with taking it.
Anyway. So yeah, this made me think a lot. I liked The Magicians despite all the really obnoxious things about it because it made me think; Ninth House made me think, and think about deeper things than Magicians, without that particular brand of obnoxiousness. But yeah, all the content notes for this one, and curiously, although I loved it, like Magicians I will probably never reread the whole thing. (Not because of the graphic content; I can't articulate exactly why.)
This is a book about Alex, a teen dropout/street kid who can see ghosts (these two things are very related), which gets her a scholarship to Yale under the auspices of the Yale secret society Lethe, which exists to watch over the other secret societies as they do their various magic rituals, all of which basically boil down to "use magic to consolidate money and/or power." And the book leans hard into that, and -- oh, here, have a quote from
skygiants's review which you should all read anyway because it's much more coherent and awesome than this rambly review is going to be (and indeed ensured that not only did I decide I was going to read it, but I downloaded the Kindle sample that day):
Lethe House, the secret society that watches over all of Yale's other secret societies, which all specialize in different mildly horrific and unethical varieties of magic to ... boost the careers of their alumni! That's it, that's all they want to do. It's one hundred percent plausible and one hundred percent gross and a perfect literalized metaphor for the way systems of institutionalized privilege and Yale's actual real-world secret societies work in the real, non-magical world. Literally nothing about this worldbuilding required suspension of disbelief in any way.
It's horror/dark fantasy, but apparently the kind of horror that doesn't squick me out? There's a lot that could squick someone -- it gets pretty graphic at times -- but it's usually heavily telegraphed and has so much plot surrounding it that I think there was only one place where I started flipping to get through it quickly. Also I think part of it is because the real horror of it is not the rape or the violence (both of which are present in this book), but the institutionalized horror, the horror that seems on the surface pretty and nice.
I also thought it was really interesting how Bardugo talked about power and the ways that power corrupts, all of which is very much woven into the worldbuilding and the plot. I mean, there's the whole institutionalized privilege that
skygiants talks about, and then in sort of the personal version of that, there's how individual people react to having power (often in an institutionalized fashion, but not always): almost always badly, often very badly. But not always. (And in that "not always" is what hope there is, in the book.)I also found the parallel between Alex's ability and mental disorders quite interesting. Because Alex can see ghosts and no one else can (and sometimes the ghosts are violent towards her -- but others can see her reaction and not the ghosts, of course), she gets into all kinds of trouble, primarily socially. And eventually she starts self-medicating with alcohol and weed. And of course her mother doesn't know what to do about it...
One review I saw compared it to The Magicians in the sense of talking about how magic isn't like Narnia, it isn't an escape, it isn't numinous. The way magic can be misused is an explicit theme in the book -- and yet I liked Ninth House rather more than I liked The Magicians.
ase wondered if this was because it didn't have terrible Quentin POV, which... yeah, is probably a large part of it. (Alex is a great POV!) I think also that Bardugo gives it more ambiguity; magic is usually awful and because people are usually awful, people usually use it in awful ways. But occasionally... yes, it can be numinous; occasionally there is grace. But it's a kind of grace that is dependent upon people, really; not as intrinsic to the magic itself as we might like to think.It also, like Six of Crows, ends on a cliffhanger, so be aware of that. I mean, the main storyline is wrapped up well, but there's one significant loose end that is dangling out there the whole time, and that is the cliffhanger to jumpstart the (presumed) next book.
But what I really want to talk about is that I had a... rather visceral reaction to this book in a lot of ways, not least because my alma mater was... more like than unlike the university in this book. (This is a big reason why I was so interested in reading it.)
Some of the things I thought about while reading it:
-Yale has ~6,000 undergrads, and the book honestly felt like there were about 200. Which is fine! I mostly interacted with about that many people myself! But every so often I'd be all "...but the great thing about college is that it doesn't have to be like that!" I mean, yes, Alex has to be in that world for worldbuilding and plot reasons, but I kept wanting e.g. her roommate Mercy to get the heck out and into another social group. Yale is a big place! You don't have to go to terrible parties! (Also, super side-eyeing Darlington (whom I otherwise really liked!) for making the snap judgment that their other roommate, Anna, "would never quite fit. She'd end up in a singing group or maybe get heavily into her church"? What's so wrong about that again?? She'd never fit in Darlington's Yale, but... it's actually true that there is more than one way to fit into a place like Yale.)
-My parents very consciously tried to make my sister and me into one of the "haves" portrayed in the book. (My dad spent a lot of time receiving charity from upper-middle/upper-class people in high school after his own family failed miserably at parenting him, and spent a lot of time thinking about how to replicate that sort of life, if not for himself, then for his children. He's writing his memoirs right now and they are really extremely interesting and also really kind of awful -- but anyway.) Music lessons from a young age, tennis lessons for literally years (which sadly for my parents never worked; my tennis skills are significantly worse than D's, and I think his tennis is basically "went out and faffed around with his family sometimes during high school"); they made sure I knew how to ski. In case, they said, someone invites you skiing or playing tennis, then you'll know how to do it.
Interestingly, my parents got it very right and not right at all. The not right at all: it's not really about playing tennis, exactly (although maybe it would have helped had I been any good at it); there's a social aspect of being a "have" that there is no way in heck my parents would ever have been able to teach me, if they had even understood that it existed, which they didn't. (I wouldn't have been able to learn, either, but that's a separate issue.) I mean, I think it can be taught, and is taught -- but by people who move in that world and understand how to move in that world, which definitely wasn't my parents, and isn't me. (This is very, very visible in Ninth House. I was totally not surprised to find out that Bardugo lived this.)
The way my parents did get it right is twofold.
(1) Going to a certain type of college, all by itself, makes one a "have." (And that's what my parents were hoping for, too.) In some ways this happens in a good way -- we were always told we could do whatever we wanted, and mostly let alone to do whatever we wanted, and we were mostly driven type A personalities anyhow; and so one came out pretty sure that one could change the world if one really wanted to, or at least rise to the top of whatever random thing we were working on. (Of course, many of us then had crises in our 20's or 30's, when it became clear that we weren't, in fact, changing the world. But that's another story for another time.) (But on being left to our own devices, I found it utterly believable that the world of Ninth House just... let the undergrads loose with all these horrifically powerful things. Yup.)
It also happens in a not-great way; when one tells someone one went to that type of college and their eyes widen and you know they've just updated their prior beliefs in a specific and rather unfortunate-in-the-way-of-propagating-institutional-privilege way.
And that is, of course, exactly the kind of privilege that Alex herself wants very much, and you really can't fault her for it. Which, of course, ties in to all these structures of power that Bardugo is interested in examining.
(2) There's another, parallel, group of haves, though the mechanism is different: the scholars, the academics. And even though I am no longer in the academic world, there's a certain kind of language, a certain kind of privilege, that one has by virtue of being in that group. And this is a group where if you're the Right Type of Person, the language can be learned by someone who didn't have a coach, growing up, the same way you can make a ton of money or go to Yale even if your family isn't going to be able to help you very much -- but obviously if your parents already belong to that group, it helps a lot, and the more resources your parents have to throw at belonging to that group, the better. (My parents had resources -- not tons of money, although they really tried to give us anything educational or quasi-educational (like tennis) that they could -- but they had the tenacity and math skills to tutor us for a while, to a rather greater degree than most parents. Although to be fair they had very few pedagogical skills, but again that's another story.) All of this is only tangentially covered in Ninth House, to a certain extent with the character of Professor Belbalm -- but it also pinged oddly to me that Mercy isn't more into that world, because she of all the characters has been groomed to be part of that world.
And... more to the point of the larger themes, D and I want our kids to belong to that group of haves. We have a lot of resources, too; D and I have the academics skills, and I also have rather more pedagogical skills than my mom, for that matter, though probably not nearly as much tenacity. The question is, when does good parenting (or good self-advocacy, in Alex's case) run up against the line of perpetuating institutional privilege? In Ninth House, when a particular mildly-spoilery bargain is proposed and taken, where does that fall? I think we're meant to realize it falls squarely on the latter side of the line, even if we totally understand and even empathize with taking it.
Anyway. So yeah, this made me think a lot. I liked The Magicians despite all the really obnoxious things about it because it made me think; Ninth House made me think, and think about deeper things than Magicians, without that particular brand of obnoxiousness. But yeah, all the content notes for this one, and curiously, although I loved it, like Magicians I will probably never reread the whole thing. (Not because of the graphic content; I can't articulate exactly why.)
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Date: 2020-03-04 06:01 am (UTC)Now, I do get the impression that Bardugo herself had a social experience not entirely unlike the kids in the book, though hopefully at least somewhat less depressing and awful. So obviously my experience isn't the only kind one can have.