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lightreadsNinth House and Hell Bent
3-4/5. Alex, who has seen ghosts all her life, is recruited out of the hospital bed where she is recovering from an event that killed her friends to go to Yale and serve in a secret society that watches over all the other secret societies that practice magic.
Real mixed feelings about these. When I was reading them, I loved a lot of the experience – the literal brutality and viscera of the magic, the repeated themes of struggling against the legacy of magic which has been mostly used to reenforce privilege, the strong sense of place, the way Alex’s trauma spun her life out of control and made her into a victim and also a predator. But then I’d stop reading and I’d mull a bit and go but wait . . . Alex is a person of color . . . who is experiencing Yale as an overwhelmingly white place which is pretty fucking weird in and of itself because elite educational institutions are really not overwhelmingly white these days – I mean mine sure weren't and some five second googling reveals that Yale definitely isn't – and isn’t it a bit uh-huh that the one black guy is . . . a cop? And I’d mull a little bit more and I’d think, wait so she was a drug user for like seven years and then apparently went cold turkey and now never thinks about using again ever? Sure, that’s totally how that works. And then I’d think, You know . . . that seemed to be deep and interesting when I read it, but you know now I’m not so sure? It seems to be shallowing upon consideration, not deepening?
So, an enjoyable experience (for values of, you know, *points downward*) but I think I will approach the next book with a bit more distance and a bit less face-first enthusiasm.
Content notes: Hoo boy. Gore, violence, murder, attempted and accomplished sexual assault of various sorts, underage sexual exploitation, consensual and nonconsensual drug use, mind control, I’m sure I’m forgetting things. This book must have been hell to market. I’m surprised they let her do it without an open pseud. Considering she’s written YA to date and this is about a girl going to college, it had to be hard to figure out how to pitch this so younger teens wouldn’t automatically pick it up, because wow, most of them should not.
3-4/5. Alex, who has seen ghosts all her life, is recruited out of the hospital bed where she is recovering from an event that killed her friends to go to Yale and serve in a secret society that watches over all the other secret societies that practice magic.
Real mixed feelings about these. When I was reading them, I loved a lot of the experience – the literal brutality and viscera of the magic, the repeated themes of struggling against the legacy of magic which has been mostly used to reenforce privilege, the strong sense of place, the way Alex’s trauma spun her life out of control and made her into a victim and also a predator. But then I’d stop reading and I’d mull a bit and go but wait . . . Alex is a person of color . . . who is experiencing Yale as an overwhelmingly white place which is pretty fucking weird in and of itself because elite educational institutions are really not overwhelmingly white these days – I mean mine sure weren't and some five second googling reveals that Yale definitely isn't – and isn’t it a bit uh-huh that the one black guy is . . . a cop? And I’d mull a little bit more and I’d think, wait so she was a drug user for like seven years and then apparently went cold turkey and now never thinks about using again ever? Sure, that’s totally how that works. And then I’d think, You know . . . that seemed to be deep and interesting when I read it, but you know now I’m not so sure? It seems to be shallowing upon consideration, not deepening?
So, an enjoyable experience (for values of, you know, *points downward*) but I think I will approach the next book with a bit more distance and a bit less face-first enthusiasm.
Content notes: Hoo boy. Gore, violence, murder, attempted and accomplished sexual assault of various sorts, underage sexual exploitation, consensual and nonconsensual drug use, mind control, I’m sure I’m forgetting things. This book must have been hell to market. I’m surprised they let her do it without an open pseud. Considering she’s written YA to date and this is about a girl going to college, it had to be hard to figure out how to pitch this so younger teens wouldn’t automatically pick it up, because wow, most of them should not.
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Date: 2023-02-27 10:14 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's a good point about context (and the faculty, mine certainly was mostly white IIRC). And it's true -- I also went from California to not that far from Yale, with a long sojourn in between, and yes the difference is noticeable.