“Ninth House” by Leigh Bardugo is a 2019 dark fantasy novel that is sure to keep you up all night. “Ninth House” was followed by “Hell Bent,” which was released in January of 2023. This duology took dark fantasy lovers by storm and left readers wanting more.
“Ninth House” follows Galaxy “Alex” Stern in her adventures attending Yale as a very unlikely member of the freshman class. Alex was raised in Los Angeles by a hippie mother, and she dropped out of high school because she fell into the shady world of her drug-dealer boyfriend, bad decisions and dead-end jobs that left her nowhere.
Alex is the sole survivor of a traumatic, unsolved, multiple homicide. In her hospital bed, she’s given a second chance at everything: a full ride at Yale, one of the most elite and selective universities out there. What’s the catch, you may ask.
Tasked by this mysterious benefactor, Alex must keep watch over Yale’s eight secret societies with the help of the ninth society, Lethe. Seems easy enough, right? Wrong. This second chance takes Alex through enigmatic situations, murders, sinister activities and so much more.
Despite these precarious conditions, Yale isn’t all bad for Alex. She’s the apprentice of the “gentleman of Lethe” himself, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington III. Darlington teaches Alex everything she needs to know to succeed at her second chance. He’s intelligent, charming, an expert at his job, and of course, a gentleman. Darlington and Alex are polar opposites, yet they get along so perfectly and cannot help but feel a magnetism towards each other. But then everything changes for both on that one fateful night.
Warning: moving on to “Hell Bent”, there will be some spoilers of “Ninth House” at this point.
“Hell Bent” continues right where “Ninth House” left off and follows Alex as she tries to fix her biggest mistake: letting the beloved Darlington get swallowed by a hell beast and dragged down to the depths of hell. She is determined to break Darlington out of hell, even if that means jeopardizing her position in Lethe and at Yale.
Having only one member of Lethe, Pamela Dawes (who is even more of a stickler for the rules than Darlington) on her side, Alex devises a plan to break him out. It plays out to be much more difficult and daunting than either Dawes or Alex imagined, but they refuse to give up until Darlington is safe by their side. If there’s one thing that Alex and Dawes can agree on, it’s breaking Darlington out of hell, no matter what needs to be done to make that happen.
Alex begins to question exactly what she’s working with when faculty members at Yale begin to die off, each in suspicious ways. She knows these aren’t accidents, but what forces are at play here? Alex puts everything on the line to bring Darlington back, including fighting with the monsters from her past and the darkness that surrounds Yale.
This novel begs the question, can Alex and Dawes pull it off and bring the gentleman of Lethe back home?
Brooklynn Jolley can be reached at [email protected]