This book delivers exactly on its promise: Yale is the center of powerful magic societies that form a dark heart of corruption and potential. The magic they work is disturbing in its methods and amplifies the sense of college as a place of unsafe exploration.
The story centers on a girl who is intimately familiar with the dangers of the supernatural but is dumped into both academia and this arcane discipline without preparation. Alex is keeping her own secrets, and this makes her deeply compelling in a way that matches the structure of the narrative, that runs parallel stories about her life, all coming together in one year of school.
Bardugo jumps through time in a way that keeps the conflict spinning and makes it seem effortless. The introduction shows us Alex after most of the action, but puts the big questions of the story into play: what has she survived, and is there a way out for her? This matches what is known of Alex when she first arrived at Yale--she survived something dreadful, and has been shown a path out. One that involves theoretically learning to guard the rituals done by the different societies, and actually involves trying to survive the way their magic is going sideways. It's a gripping story, Alex herself is complex and intriguing, and on this level the book is fantastic.
And yet, several times I found myself deciding if I could even continue reading it, and started to write the rest of this review in my mind as a way to get through. Though the story centers on hunger for power, and the cost of magic, there's another theme of the book that feels unexamined: sexual violence.
[SPOILER BREAK: TW for abuse]
Alex sees ghosts. And the first time she gets her period, she is assaulted by one. Not only this, but she is found in the middle of this and humiliated even though for the moment the assault ends. This starts her on a spiral of drug abuse at 12, living with a dealer and even being pimped by him by the age of 15. (The exact age this begins is murky, probably on purpose.) The awful event that triggers her being brought in by the watchdog society at Yale is the death of her friend, in more sexual violence, potentially overdose as actual cause of death that cannot be separated from this. And a thread that continues is the girls choosing to be in danger for some pay-off: keeping their home, their relationships.
Alex comes into her own, taking her own power in hand and putting away the mask she's been wearing to blend into Yale, for another friend is assaulted. It comes to light the perpetrator has been using a drug that is used in society rituals for compliance to get his way.
And all of this violence and shame has a place in stories, and I am not sure what the authorial intent was. However, it feels a little off that this never resolves more than to be a cost women pay when men have power over them. Alex was formed by her assault, but other than being a locus of anger and awareness for her, there is not a large payoff. Her friends suffer to fuel her growth, dying or surviving assault, just as she did. But why does it all have to be sexual violence?
It felt, again, unexamined. It didn't end up tying in directly to the actual resolution. It was just what they had to endure.
And possibly, because this is a college story, it makes it only realistic. Perhaps it's coming from a place of anger about the way the world is, and the lack of redemption to that is only fitting. In fact, I see other reviews that position this as a survivor's story, and I know that is 100% a valid way to look at it. But even though this allows Alex to be fueled by suffering of both her own and her friends, I wish this world could have imagined some suffering where it wasn't a matter of course that women were prey.
This book was so well-written and plotted that it kept me reading despite the fact that the depictions of this violence made me want to put it down and walk away. And the story continued to do more violence to women to the end. When the next book comes out, I'll be skimming to see if there's more of this and if there is, I can't hang in there with Alex Stern again even though I keenly desire to know what will happen.
Alex Stern
(2 book series)
Kindle Edition
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Get the series on Kindle
There are 2 books in this series.
Items
All 1 available
Kindle price
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Sold by:
Macmillan
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Items included:
Kindle price
$9.99
+ applicable tax
By clicking on "Buy now" you agree to Amazon's Kindle Store Terms of Use
Sold by:
Macmillan
Additional items, like pre-orders, may be ordered individually
