on paper, this seems like a book that would be perfect for me: dark academia, a solid murder mystery, some really fun world-building regarding various world mythologies and languages. unfortunately, the murder mystery was only good until the final reveal, at which point it felt like Bardugo had run out of the necessary time and pages to flesh out the mystery she wanted to write at the beginning of the book. a good murder mystery should have a conclusion that can be easily traced through foreshadowing and clues upon a reread, which this conclusion is not. perhaps it’s because Bardugo ended up introducing a second mystery halfway through the book, which gave her a much shorter timeline in which she could flesh it out, resulting in the lacklustre and rushed ending.

the pacing of the novel doesn’t help matters either. the alternating timelines and chapters make the beginning of the story drag on for ages, and the pace doesn’t pick up until much later. I think it would have worked had Bardugo set a faster pace from the beginning, but unfortunately her writing style leans more towards the slow, descriptive end of the spectrum. it’s nice, to be sure, but it does mean that it was very hard to get invested in the story when everything felt like it was dragging the narrative out ever longer. the story really only picked up enough for me to get interested in the plot around the 30–40% mark, which seems rather delayed.

furthermore, the world-building either didn’t delve into the parts I truly found interesting, or was simply incorrect. if the Manuscript tomb is based on Chinese mythology, why are there only eight secret levels when there are ten courts of hell? even if you just base it on auspicious numbers (which is not mythology, btw; that’s numerology), I’m pretty sure nine was generally considered a luckier number than eight in history. I suppose the number eight could’ve been derived from the Eight Immortals, given the presence of Lan Caihe, but it’s still a bit weird to me (though if you think about the fact that the Manuscript tomb was built by white men based on their knowledge of Chinese mythology, everything makes sense lmao). speaking of Lan Caihe, the inaccuracies continue with him being said to be able to “move between genders at will.” he’s male, he just often cross-dresses or is depicted in feminine attire, and his features lean feminine because he’s very young. that’s also why shows often cast actresses to play him, such as in the recent animated movie 八仙！ all wishes come true. it would’ve been better for Bardugo to claim that Manuscript’s version of Lan Caihe shifts between genders because he’s as free and unrestrained as the wind (the Trigram he’s associated with), or for Manuscript to choose their youngest member to preside as Lan Caihe during each ritual.

anyway, despite my gripes with various parts of the story, I will be continuing the series, because I am still interested in the overall plot, and also I think Darlington’s hilarious, but this will unfortunately not be making the list as one of my favourite series.

i’ve read two hundred and ten pages of this allegedly academic book and all i’ve come away with is the fact that i can’t stand rf kuang’s writing style. the author’s note in the beginning is completely unnecessary and feels like it’s no more than yet another way for her to flex the fact that she studied in oxford unlike the rest of us plebeians. “the trouble with writing an oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at oxford will [nitpick] your text” yes, yes—is that not exactly what happens with any other real-world setting? you’ll have to forgive me for not understanding how ivory-towered oxford is any different.

now for my review of the actual book, which will be done in bullet points because this book is not worth the time and effort a full-length review will require:

• rfk can’t seem to decide whether she wants to use pinyin (with godsforsaken diacritics) or the actual characters themselves when she inserts chinese words into the narration. there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason to which she chooses to use at any point in time and i absolutely loathe it. if you want to switch between transliteration and using the actual characters, i beg you to come up with a coherent system for it.
• robin speaks mandarin in 1820s guangzhou, which is the most absurd thing i’ve ever heard of in my life. unless you had to deal with the imperial court, most chinese people would simply speak their own local variety. indeed, most chinese people today speak their own regional variety, be it of mandarin or their topolect. watch literally any variety show, particularly if you speak a southern topolect, and you will notice that even the form of mandarin most celebrities (being northerners) speak differs from standard mandarin. rfk inserts a footnote two chapters later to explain that it’s because robin’s family migrated from beijing recently, which would be a logical explanation for why robin speaks mandarin in his own home, but then claims cantonese is robin’s “preferred native tongue”? and yet he seems to instinctively revert to mandarin? make it make sense.
• the fact that pinyin is used in a book about languages and translation set in the 1820s KILLS me. the 1820s predates even wades-giles, which—no matter how much i hate the sight of it—would at least in turn predate pinyin, which was only created/formalised in the 1950s. that’s more than a century later. rfk would’ve been much better served doing less research on oxford for historical accuracy and more on the languages her protagonist speaks, i think. also, there’s that glaring (but unfortunately lost) opportunity to make some meta-commentary on the colonisation of language and translation (very relevant for this book, i believe!) in using wades-giles (a transliteration system created by white men) instead of pinyin (which was created by chinese people).
• speaking of historical accuracy and oxford, there are a bunch of things rfk openly admits to changing—not for any narrative purpose, no, but simply to parallel her characters’ experience to her own. for instance, despite “oysters being a staple of the early-victorian poor”, rfk “choose[s] to make them a delicacy” because “heaps and heaps of oysters on ice” was her “first impression of the 2019 may ball at magdalene college, cambridge” (which, i think she could’ve made a really good colonialism point re: the gentrification of the palate). anyway, the fact that this paragraph is then followed up with the sentence “if you find any other inconsistencies, feel free to remind yourself this is a work of fiction”—which, in fact, suffices to sum up her entire two-page author’s note—makes this justification completely fucking insufferable. either own your inaccuracies or cut them. quit dithering.
• rfk mistypes 無形 / incorporeal as 五行 / the five phases, despite 無形 being used correctly in the previous sentence. in the same page, she proceeds to translate “help me” as 幫忙 / help, which is such a clunky and awkward translation from a professional chinese-english translator that i am embarrassed on her behalf. i would’ve translated “help me” as 幫我 or 助我 (a more formal alternative which i think fits better in this context).
• the politics really are just twittercore but couched in a vaguely victorian-sounding register. i say “vaguely” because it really isn’t all that victorian. it just sounds like a slightly formal modern register. and apparently this problem is consistent with her other books, particularly yellowface, though it would at least make more sense for her to be responding to a very online form of criticism there.
• the fact that she uses a long-running stem/arts joke as an explanation for why babel hasn’t noticed the hermes society stealing their silver is just astoundingly beyond any capacity for suspension of disbelief i have. “for the virtue of a humanities faculty … was that everyone was hopeless with numbers” are you joking. is this a joke to you. you cannot possibly expect me to take this seriously.
• everything they’ve said and been taught about translation so far has been incredibly basic, and i’m only an amateur translator. i’d be embarrassed on oxford’s behalf if they truly taught this to third-year undergraduates.
• chattel slavery is a “wholly european invention” now :)
• despite this being an adult novel and therefore requiring some level of sophistication and maturity on the reader’s part, rfk can’t seem to resist the urge to shove her opinions—all entirely correct, of course—in the reader’s face. it’s pretty humiliating to read a book whose author seems to believe that the reader can’t go two sentences without being reminded that “racism bad” in the footnotes. of course it is, but i’d like to believe that it’s also possible to write a novel critiquing racism, elitism, and colonialism in academia without such hamfisted arguments.

anyway, i do think this novel does something good for the dark academia genre, in that it critiques the elitism inherent to academia, and it does have some good points about translation and colonialism and the like, but i think more subtlety and elegance would’ve served it better—and also better editing and proof-reading, because it’s genuinely embarrassing for your protagonist to make such errors in his native language(s).

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: .✦ . :★. ───✧

pre-reading

why is he speaking mandarin in canton...

edit: they’re also using pinyin despite it not having been created until the 1950s? correct me if i’m wrong but the transliteration systems in use until the mid-19th century were based on nanjingese? so even if they did have a reason to speak mandarin it wouldn’t have been romanised this way

"VOORHOOFD."

Disclaimer: I read this book solely for a quest, as I have a friend that goes by Lethe in some circles and I thought it'd be really funny to have a badge with her name. With that said, I definitely would have DNF'd this book early on without badge motivation, so take that as you will.

Ninth House was, regrettably for my taste, a book written by Leigh Bardugo. I do not know what it is about this author. Everything she writes feels like paper drenched in water that is coming apart as you turn the page, and you desperately try to read further and further but the more you try the more the unfortunate sensation of wet paper clinging to your fingers prevails. This is a really impressive feeling to convey, as I only have read this author digitally. Also, I think the most Leigh Bardugo has ever made me feel is, indeed, aversion.

I spent a lot of this book wondering why I couldn't connect to it. As it always seems to with books I label horrid, one of the main reasons was the way race/racism was handled. I want to take away biracial girls from white authors forever and always until they learn how to write us... not like this. For all I've seen her praised for her representation, the only way Leigh Bardugo seems to be able to write characters of colour is to make them a stereotype. It reminds me so much of Rick Riordan being the exact same way; praised for his diversity yet lacking in its execution.

On a technical level, I think Leigh Bardugo is alright. Her dialogue feels realistic, her prose isn't bad, but her book does not hit home. The mystery is unsatisfactory, and - I am going a bit off track here, my apologies, but I really can't ignore this - the book feels like Darlington imagining Alex's story. Like a rich kid^1 making up a poor kid and leaving all the depth behind. Avoiding the very real repercussions of addiction, side-stepping anything that feels real, offering trauma upon trauma for merely trauma's sake.

As a final note, Dutch - and Cantonese - are not... what I would call... whispery languages....

(thank you rui for keeping me sane. idt i wouldve survived without you)

^1 Darlington was rich right I can't remember too clearly to make a good metaphor on this book it was. Really not my favourite. To say the least.

first, before I say anything about the contents of this book: Sourcebooks, just so you know, an editor is not an optional element in the book publishing process. they’re quite critical to it, actually, especially when your final copy has so many grammatical errors that it continually jars the reader out of their reading immersion. I’m pretty sure there are at least three in the first two chapters alone, and it hardly stops there, which is completely ridiculous. you can’t expect your readers to respect you if you don’t even respect the books you publish.

funnily enough, an editor would also have been immensely helpful in working out a lot of the kinks in the plot, namely the fact that the domestic violence subplot comes in only after at least half the book is over and hits you like a train wreck to the face. there is not nearly enough build-up to support everything Hibbert wants to discuss in this subplot, and the gravity of the matter suffers a lot for it. the situation is resolved almost immediately after it is introduced (and far too cleanly as well), which makes it feel as though it was only introduced to either take up space or to dramatise the novel’s already pretty dramatic premise even further. Ruben’s family issues are glossed over too; the progression of his realisation feels way too fast for how deeply his siblings have affected every aspect of his life.

this problem, quite unfortunately, also extends far beyond this subplot. the focus of the novel is overwhelmingly centred on the romance—which, to be clear, is a decent romance—and everything else suffers for it. Cherry’s family only shows up when it’s convenient for the narrative (and it almost never is), and her friends appear only once after she leaves England. sure, it does create the impression that she’s been swept up in all the royal glitz and glamour and the rot that lies beneath, but I personally think her development would have been more interesting and fleshed out had there been a contrast between the royal life she’s now meant to lead and the ordinary life she’s left behind. as it is, Ruben’s character development is prioritised over Cherry’s, and yet it also suffers because of the aforementioned pacing issues regarding the subplot.

anyway, for the most part, the romance itself was more enjoyable than most of the romance novels I’ve read in English over the past year. it’s particularly interesting that Cherry is so obviously well-versed in manipulating men to do whatever she wants with a single look, whereas Ruben thinks of himself as more “enlightened” than the average sex-obsessed man—and he is, but only enough to recognise what Cherry is doing. he still falls for it anyway, which really adds to the hilarity of the whole situation. even the insta-lust plays a more plot- and character-relevant role here. unfortunately, my aversion to insta-lust and their constantly-tightening genitals negated some of my interest in the romance. I also found myself particularly concerned about how the narrative brushes over a certain scene in which Cherry deliberately chooses a heavier object (one that will cause more damage) and then proceeds to throw it right at Ruben’s head. that’s not cute or charming; in fact, considering the domestic violence that gets brought up in the later half of the book, I think the fact that this scene is so quickly glossed over casts a grim shadow over both Cherry and Ruben’s relationship as well as the more serious themes Hibbert tries to discuss, and that is what detracts from the overall quality of the story.