Book Review: The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates #1) by A.K. Larkwood

The secret of greatness is to know when you should risk the wrath of god.

The Unspoken Name,
A.K. Larkwood

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

At 14 years old, Csorwe was the chosen bride of the Unspoken One, and had lived her life in preparation for sacrificing herself to her religion’s god. As she walks into the tunnels that lead to the shrine, a wizard named Belthandros Sethennai asks her to run away with him and be his apprentice as he seeks to regain control of his home. Csorwe chooses life, and runs away with him, and as she grows up he trains her to be his right hand, and tasks her with finding a magical relic that will help secure his power. As she embarks on this quest, she meets people who force her to examine what she actually wants for herself.

I had a bit of a rough start with this one—the first few chapters were really intriguing, but there’s a time jump that skips over a lot of Csorwe’s training and sends her directly on a mission that was not all that interesting. This section dragged some, but I was still into the fantasy atmosphere of it all and I was having a good time. After this section, there is yet another time jump, which made the novel seem rather disconnected up to this point—like a collection of stories as opposed to one novel. However, after this point I really started enjoying it so much more! The action picks up and our cast of characters grows to include many interesting characters, solving the central problem with this book: Csorwe, for most of the book, is boring.

The reason for this, of course, is that for the first 24 years of her life, Csorwe dedicates herself entirely to others and their desires. She’s raised to die for the Unspoken One, and then she takes that loyalty and places it onto Sethennai. After her decision to live, every choice she makes is for him, never for herself, and all she wants throughout is his approval. This is completely understandable for her character, but doesn’t really make for an interesting main character. Fortunately, she definitely undergoes some development in this area, and it’s incredibly satisfying when she starts questioning what she wants for herself. By the end of the book, Csorwe had really grown on me.

This does not sound like a four star review so far but I promise I really liked this book!

The other characters were really great. Shuthmilli is an interesting parallel to Csorwe; she was also raised to give up her life for her god. She’s powerful with magic, is really interested in her studies, and funny. I loved following her on her journey with Csorwe, and their romance was pretty sweet. Oranna is a powerful necromancer and her motivations and abilities made for a complex antagonist. My favorite character was Tal Charossa; he’s an asshole who doesn’t want people to know he cares about things and also really funny. I enjoyed his antagonistic relationship with Csorwe. They absolutely despise each other but for a good portion of the book, are the closest either of them has to a friend, and I loved the dynamic.

The world-building was really well done. The world consists of several different worlds, connected to each other by a series of gates that can be traveled through via airship. Several of them are visited throughout the course of the novel—dead worlds, dying worlds, as well as thriving worlds. Each world has a different god that is worshipped, with its own mythology and history, and the gods are the sources of magic. I was really interested in all of this, and the fact that there were different types of magic. There’s also a world of giant snakes!

I had a lot of fun reading this, despite it’s problems. Maybe it’s because I was just really in the mood for fantasy, but I think the world, the characters and the second half of the book really make up for the problems I had. It’s also really funny, especially during Tal’s POV chapters. I look forward to reading the next one!

Book Review: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) by Leigh Bardugo

Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him.

Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Leigh Bardugo is generally on my insta-buy list, as I’m sure she is for many. I love Six of Crows and while King of Scars wasn’t my favorite, I still really liked it (Nikolai is my favorite, of course). I was planning on buying Ninth House when it came out, but there was all the discussion over the content of the book and trigger warnings that I was afraid I wasn’t going to like it. So I requested it from the library, and was in spot 38, and four months later here we are. And I’m glad that I didn’t buy it because it was…fine. Just fine!

Galaxy “Alex” Stern can see ghosts, which has earned her a spot in Lethe House, monitoring the magical activities of Yale’s secret societies. This is a chance for her to leave her past behind her-in LA she was a drug addict and the sole survivor of a violent homicide. But things are not going to plan, as she’s struggling to keep up in her classes, her mentor is missing, and there’s been a murder in New Haven that the Dean of her house is clearly trying to sweep under the rug.

The book alternates between three timelines: it starts in Early Spring/Spring, which is the most current timeline; Last Fall, when Alex arrived at Yale; and Winter, which explains the events leading up to Spring. I actually really liked the timelines and didn’t find it confusing, because it was fairly straightforward-something would happen in Winter, then the next chapter would flash back to Last Fall or another time in Alex’s life to explain what just happened. It was somewhat formulaic and I began to expect the timeline changes, but I didn’t think that detracted from the book.

I am very familiar with Leigh Bardugo’s work, so I know that she writes both plot and characters really well. With Ninth House, the plot was intriguing and kept me interested throughout, but the characters mostly fell flat.

Bardugo sets the atmosphere really well (it reminded me a lot of The Magicians, the TV show not the book), and while many people complained about the pacing, I personally never found it to be slow, though it is true that much of the action takes place in the last 100 pages. I really liked the concept of magical secret societies at Yale, and how it played into the dominant theme of privilege in the novel. The societies are full of rich people, many of whom are white men, and the wealth that the houses have allow them to throw their money around to get them out of trouble. The rich, white men in this novel get away with a lot, as there is only Alex to hold them accountable in her own way, and it is truly horrifying to read.

Speaking of horrifying to read, I actually expected this novel to be a lot darker given the drama over the content and trigger warnings. And some of it is absolutely awful; there’s several depictions of sexual assault, one extremely violent and against a child. But outside of these moments, I found it to be pretty mild, which sort of makes me think that these moments really were just added to make it darker and “more adult.” This includes the infamous forced poop-eating scene, which shocked many when people first began to read it. It wasn’t very graphic and to be honest, it was well-deserved!

Alex has experienced a lot of trauma-she was raped by a ghost as a child, and was only able to block out the ghosts by turning to drugs, which led her to be a drug addict and in an abusive relationship with her dealer at 15. This is a lot for one person to handle, and it’s one of the reasons that she is a fish out of water at Yale. But beyond this, she has very little substance. She delivers a lot of one liners. There are glimpes of an interesting character-she cares about her friends, and will protect them in her own way, and she is dedicated to her own survival. But for most of the book, her point of view is not particularly interesting, as she tends to only respond with anger or not respond at all.

I had some hope with Darlington, Alex’s missing mentor. But he was in so little of the book that I lost interest in him, and didn’t even really care if they ever found him. This is the only time I think the structure of the timelines hurt the story-because we spent so little time with Darlington before he disappeared, when the actual event happened I was just like, well, there he goes!

I did really like Dawes, the Lethe House researcher who spends her days in over-sized sweatshirts and headphones among a stack of books. She’s a bit anti-social, but lets down her guard enough to help Alex when she needs it, and her grief over Darlington was the most moving aspect of Darlington’s disappearance. I also liked the Bridegroom, a ghost who makes a deal with Alex to solve the murder of his wife, and Turner, reluctant Lethe House ambassador to the local police, grew on me. Bardugo always writes good secondary characters-all of my favorite characters from the Grisha series are secondary characters (Tamar! Genya! David!).

I can’t say that I was necessarily disappointed, as I didn’t really have any expectations going in. As I was reading, I realized that I wasn’t really looking forward to finishing it, but I wasn’t dreading it either. It was a decent novel, with a solid plot but I really just do not have very strong feelings about it either way. I was trying to puzzle it out with this review but ultimately it just comes down to the fact that the characters were mostly uninteresting to me. I wish that, considering how long this novel is, Bardugo had done more character development, especially with regard to Alex. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone, but I also wouldn’t discourage them from reading it; however, I definitely recommend looking into content warnings prior to reading.

As forgettable as I found this book to be, I’m sure I’ll be reading the next one (I cannot guarantee that if Bardugo gets to write five, I will stick around for five. But at least one more.). But next time I’ll be requesting much earlier!