Best FMC ever written

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The Plot

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But in her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

My Breakdown

You know you get invested in a book when your anxiety gets so high at the midpoint that you read the last page to make it more bearable.

What’s the genre?

Is it romance? No. Is there romance in it? Yes. So I’m bending the rule for this one and reviewing it.

I attended a Leigh Bardugo event in Austin last week, where the genre question came up. One of the genres attributed to the trilogy was horror, which surprised me. I would never deliberately pick up a book marketed as horror because I do not consider myself a horror person. I cannot watch horror at all. My twelve-year-old son can watch things that I find too scary.

But apparently, reading horror is different than watching it on screen. So maybe this trilogy has opened a new genre for me.

I still do not know exactly where I would place the Ninth House trilogy. Horror? Dark academia? Fantasy? Paranormal? Mystery? When asked how she would define the trilogy, Bardugo joked that it was whatever genre we would buy. Fair enough.

It is very dark, though, so read those trigger warnings.

Alex Stern

There are many reasons to love the Ninth House trilogy: the worldbuilding, the mysteries, Darlington, the humor, and the sheer audacity of turning Yale’s real history into an occult ecosystem.

But Alex is the reason this became one of my favorite trilogies.

She’s a survivor without being written as an inspirational symbol of survival. She can be compassionate and ruthless in the same scene. She is suspicious of kindness, furious at injustice, and much more comfortable believing she is disposable than believing someone might choose her.

Alex knew she should stop, but she wasn’t going to. Put an animal in a trap and it would gnaw its own leg off. Better to take a bite out of the hunter instead. I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. Good to know her brain could quote D. H. Lawrence in a crisis situation. The benefits of a Yale education.

At the event, the narrator was saying how there was a lot of female rage in this book. I don’t feel this book is about female rage. Yes, Alex rages, but I feel it is more about not fitting in, not belonging, and not believing that you will ever find that place.

Can she act like a psychopath sometimes? Sure. But I think that when she does, it’s mostly because she’s actually trying to protect other people, and not because she’s raging.

I had read and recommended Bardugo’s books before, but until this trilogy, I never realized how funny Leigh Bardugo was. Alex Stern is hilarious.

The Worldbuilding

Before reading this trilogy, the only thing I knew about Yale is that it’s the school Rory Gilmore went to. I think I only realized in the third book that the societies are real; that so much of the architecture, history, and geography of Yale and New Haven is real. Bardugo has woven her magic into those existing places and institutions so seamlessly that it becomes genuinely difficult to separate what she invented from what was already there.

Yale is a character, and occasionally a monster. The rituals are never separated from politics. Magic does not create inequality; it becomes another resource the privileged have learned to control.

The Romance

In the event Bardugo said she’s the queen of slow burn, and so she is.

Darlington is the good Boy Scout, the gentleman of Lethe. He is knowledgeable, good-looking, and sometimes a little uptight, but he is definitely an MMC I loved, even if he’s not a shadow daddy. The way he falls in love with Alex, becomes completely devoted to her, and reads her and what she needs so well is charming.

Alex grinned and Darlington knew that if he ended up dead, drowned, or simply damned, he had done at least one good thing in this life.

The connection between Alex and Darlington works because they are not opposites in the obvious way. He wants magic to mean something noble. She knows nobility is often branding. But they recognize one another. And beneath the manners and armor, both are profoundly lonely.

The found family

Bardugo created a strong found-family trope here. From the second book, we start to see the members of Lethe becoming united, with Tripp and Mercy gradually added to the group.

Dawes is the caretaker and researcher, while Turner is the skeptical detective who slowly becomes someone to rely on. Mercy starts as Alex’s roommate and a link to a more normal college life, but she becomes involved in the supernatural world as well. Tripp, a privileged member of Skull and Bones, is the least likely addition to the group, but also one of the funniest.

And we all need a Daws.

What might not work for you

As much as I love the Ninth House trilogy, it occasionally feels like an info dump. There are a lot of historical details, magical rules, societies, rituals, and poetry. On one hand, those details are exactly what make the books so fascinating and give the world its character. On the other hand, they can sometimes become a little exhausting.

The epigraphs at the beginning of the chapters did not always help. Sometimes they added important context; other times, they left me feeling a little lost.

All to say, this is not an easy read. These are not binge books. They require concentration.

Of the three books, Hell Bent was the weakest for me, especially after Ninth House, which left me desperate for more. At times, Hell Bent felt like filler between the first book and the third. Hell Bent is still a good book. But if you feel that you need to push through it, do it. Dead Beat makes it completely worth your while.

More Bardugo’s books you need to read:

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