Dead Beat

Leigh Bardugo

More of the same

Dead Beat is the third and final novel in Leigh Bardugo‘s Ninth House trilogy. I loved the first novel, Ninth House. Here is how I described the premise of the series in my review of that book.

The title, Ninth House, is a reference to the Yale secret societies. There are a bunch of these -- Wikipedia lists 18. In the Yale of Ninth House, there are eight large and powerful such societies. All of these are real, in the sense that in each case, a secret society of that name actually exists at Yale. Alex belongs to a ninth house, Lethe, that doesn’t exist in the real Yale (or at least it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page). Each of the eight major houses in Ninth House specializes in some form of sorcery, which they use to advance their interests. For instance, Skull and Bones specializes in predicting the future by reading the entrails of victims -- they use this to predict the future movements of markets and to direct investments. The eight houses are wealthy and powerful. (The final sentence is true also of the corresponding real Yale secret societies.)

I loved Ninth House because, although it is fantasy, it felt very real. Bardugo is herself a Yale graduate and was a member of Wolf’s Head, one of the ancient eight. Most of the action of the three novels takes place in New Haven (the city in which Yale University is located) and at Yale.

The hero of the series is Galaxy (Alex) Stern, who grew up in Los Angeles (as did Bardugo herself). Alex is a tough woman who barely survived a difficult childhood in poverty.. She has the ability to see ghosts. For this reason she was recruited to Yale and Lethe House as a scholarship student. It’s all very Dickensian -- the poor kid who rises to the elite, but without ever losing her fight.

I was a little disappointed in the second novel, Hell Bent and in this final one, Dead Beat. It feels to me as if Alex’s rough edges, the things that made her compelling, have been sanded flat in novels two and three. Furthermore, there is a tad too much Yale-ology in Dead Beat. I love it that Bardugo‘s real familiarity with Yale makes the university and city feel real. But too much of Dead Beat felt like a thinly disguised guidebook to the artistic eccentricities of the university.

Bardugo is a compelling fantasy writer, and even sub-par Bardugo is pretty good. I enjoyed Dead Beat. If you’ve read Ninth House and Hell Bent, you will want to read this.

Brok3n Engines

★★★★☆ Dead Beat, by Leigh Bardugo