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I was up at 1 AM crying about this damn book and masochistically begging for more.
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At first it pained me to add this to my dark academia shelf, but honestly? It's dark academia through and through, and the fact that I viewed it as something of a guilty pleasure (at best!) when I read it as a snobby teenager with writerly ambitions does nothing to change that. Not all dark academia is homoerotic subtext and Dionysian ritual; some of it lands square in the "dad books" realm, and I guess that's okay.
Once this got rolling, I couldn't stop reading. I'm glad that I checked the whole series out from the library at once, because after the last sentence, I have questions.
Ninth House hits a lot of my spots. It's a dark academia urban fantasy with multiple spooky mysteries and strong characters, one of whom is a morally grey badass girl. Much like Emily M. Danforth's tour de force Plain Bad Heroines, Leigh Bardugo would have to really strive if she wanted to write a book that is more me.
One criticism I've seen of dark academia as a genre is that it glorifies wealth by featuring privileged characters and employing the aesthetics of Ivy League (or at least private) education in its settings. I would like to humbly, subtly, not at all snarkily, wave a copy of Ninth House at those people. Dark academia novels often use protagonists who are outsiders, who are not wealthy, to (in my opinion) serve as a relatable touchstone for readers who do not have access to wealth and the world about which they're reading. Dark academia novels also, I would argue, include subversion of the systems in which they're set, the revelation of said systems causing harm. But few do this as clearly as Ninth House.
One criticism I've seen of dark academia as a genre is that it glorifies wealth by featuring privileged characters and employing the aesthetics of Ivy League (or at least private) education in its settings. I would like to humbly, subtly, not at all snarkily, wave a copy of Ninth House at those people. Dark academia novels often use protagonists who are outsiders, who are not wealthy, to (in my opinion) serve as a relatable touchstone for readers who do not have access to wealth and the world about which they're reading. Dark academia novels also, I would argue, include subversion of the systems in which they're set, the revelation of said systems causing harm. But few do this as clearly as Ninth House.
I am really glad that I decided to read this series, and that I did so after all three volumes were released. This one wraps up the mystery of the present-day deaths at Ellingham while adding more context for the historical crimes. The conclusion was my favorite kind for a mystery: one in which I didn't figure out whodunnit (because reading a mystery is one of very few contexts in which I enjoy surprises) but thought that the reveal made perfect sense.
The only thing I consistently disliked about this series was the relationship between Stevie and David, but I suppose there's no accounting for teenagers' bad taste. (Or maybe I'm just not the audience for this particular pairing.)
I also wish that, but I can see the justification for why that didn't happen. It just would have made me smile if it had.
The only thing I consistently disliked about this series was the relationship between Stevie and David, but I suppose there's no accounting for teenagers' bad taste. (Or maybe I'm just not the audience for this particular pairing.)
I also wish that
Spoiler
Stevie had gotten the money for identifying Alice's remains
I mean, giving a Harry Potter book 5 stars is sort of ridiculous and inaccurate, just as much as it's inevitable. It's impossible to separate my experience reading this for the first time as a child from my experience reading it again as an adult. There's no way for me to truly experience Harry Potter with fresh eyes or objectivity.
But I will say that this time, I realized how very unwilling I would have been to engage in any of the heroics in which Harry so frequently takes part. Crawling down a slimy tunnel into the Chamber of Secrets. Oh FUCK no. That's why I'm a Slytherin.
But I will say that this time, I realized how very unwilling I would have been to engage in any of the heroics in which Harry so frequently takes part. Crawling down a slimy tunnel into the Chamber of Secrets. Oh FUCK no. That's why I'm a Slytherin.
The Different Story presents an alternate timeline from the Madoka anime that gives Mami and Kyoko a more detailed, shared backstory and changes some major events. I like that the original plot allows for this kind of tinkering and exploration of different ways that things could have turned out, even if the way they turn out is always depressing. But hey, no one comes to the Madoka franchise to be happy. We come to it for the magical girl trope subversion and lesbian subtext.
Edit 6.6.21:
I couldn't help but notice this 1-star review that misleadingly quotes a passage of the book. The quote appears to attribute the line, "Every woman adores a fascist" to Torrey Peters. In fact, Peters is quoting Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy."
Look, if you're the kind of reader who can't handle any book that doesn't serve as a how-to guide for good, clean, unproblematic living, and if you need Woke God to descend on a cloud to tell character and reader alike when someone has done a no-no, I cannot help you.
But if you're going to get mad at an author for that line (not that I think we need to do so at all), get mad at the right one. In this case, the cis woman poet beloved of feminists the internet over. Not the trans woman you're wrongly accusing of misogyny.
I approached Detransition, Baby with dread. How real would it feel to me, and how much would it hurt? But then it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the resulting TERF rancor inflamed my spite and gave me the motivation to dig into it. If called to discuss it--either by people who know my life circumstances, or by some Twitter wasp nest I might be tempted to prod--I needed to be informed.
Within the first few pages, my reticence melted away. Torrey Peters writes with an intoxicating authenticity and blend of cynicism and humor. It's a queer voice, a queer recognition of laughing about something because, well, what else are you going to do? And her skill shines in these moments, when she sets up a laugh and then follows it up with an image of pain. It doesn't undercut the humor; it sharpens it into something more knowing and wry. It's a voice similar to what I'm used to hearing on YouTube and from my girlfriend, and the fact that it's coming out of a buzzy book from one of the big five kept surprising me in a wow, I hope tons of people read this, I want Reese Witherspoon to pick it for her book club, I want it to win prizes so cishet people are forced to talk about it way.
This is a character-driven book, so readers drawn in by the unconventional family dynamics in the synopsis and eager for a saga might be disappointed. The baby brings the three characters--Reese, Ames, and Katrina--into proximity with one another, but much more time is spent on their pasts and their relationships to each other, to gender, to sexuality, and to motherhood. The characters are flawed and make various bad decisions, some of which feel redeemed by the end, and some not. Peters writes like someone unafraid to dwell in ambiguity, to present her characters' tangled motivations and unflattering angles. That's not an approach that works for all readers, but it works for me.
Maybe this is a book that works uncommonly well for me, and I should throw in some kind of caveat. An, "Oh hey, if you're not queer and don't have trans people in your life, maybe this won't hit you as hard or even make much sense to you, idk." There might be some barrier to entry here. What would it be like to have this book be the first time you hear about chasers, for instance? Of course, there are worse places to learn about them than here, even if it feels like you've stumbled into an upper-division course without the prereqs.
And I don't want to throw in caveats. I want to throw this book at people and make them read it. Which is probably a selfish impulse: I'm going to have these characters in my mind for a long time, and maybe I just don't want to be alone in that.
I couldn't help but notice this 1-star review that misleadingly quotes a passage of the book. The quote appears to attribute the line, "Every woman adores a fascist" to Torrey Peters. In fact, Peters is quoting Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy."
Look, if you're the kind of reader who can't handle any book that doesn't serve as a how-to guide for good, clean, unproblematic living, and if you need Woke God to descend on a cloud to tell character and reader alike when someone has done a no-no, I cannot help you.
But if you're going to get mad at an author for that line (not that I think we need to do so at all), get mad at the right one. In this case, the cis woman poet beloved of feminists the internet over. Not the trans woman you're wrongly accusing of misogyny.
I approached Detransition, Baby with dread. How real would it feel to me, and how much would it hurt? But then it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the resulting TERF rancor inflamed my spite and gave me the motivation to dig into it. If called to discuss it--either by people who know my life circumstances, or by some Twitter wasp nest I might be tempted to prod--I needed to be informed.
Within the first few pages, my reticence melted away. Torrey Peters writes with an intoxicating authenticity and blend of cynicism and humor. It's a queer voice, a queer recognition of laughing about something because, well, what else are you going to do? And her skill shines in these moments, when she sets up a laugh and then follows it up with an image of pain. It doesn't undercut the humor; it sharpens it into something more knowing and wry. It's a voice similar to what I'm used to hearing on YouTube and from my girlfriend, and the fact that it's coming out of a buzzy book from one of the big five kept surprising me in a wow, I hope tons of people read this, I want Reese Witherspoon to pick it for her book club, I want it to win prizes so cishet people are forced to talk about it way.
This is a character-driven book, so readers drawn in by the unconventional family dynamics in the synopsis and eager for a saga might be disappointed. The baby brings the three characters--Reese, Ames, and Katrina--into proximity with one another, but much more time is spent on their pasts and their relationships to each other, to gender, to sexuality, and to motherhood. The characters are flawed and make various bad decisions, some of which feel redeemed by the end, and some not. Peters writes like someone unafraid to dwell in ambiguity, to present her characters' tangled motivations and unflattering angles. That's not an approach that works for all readers, but it works for me.
Maybe this is a book that works uncommonly well for me, and I should throw in some kind of caveat. An, "Oh hey, if you're not queer and don't have trans people in your life, maybe this won't hit you as hard or even make much sense to you, idk." There might be some barrier to entry here. What would it be like to have this book be the first time you hear about chasers, for instance? Of course, there are worse places to learn about them than here, even if it feels like you've stumbled into an upper-division course without the prereqs.
And I don't want to throw in caveats. I want to throw this book at people and make them read it. Which is probably a selfish impulse: I'm going to have these characters in my mind for a long time, and maybe I just don't want to be alone in that.