Just Finished Ninth House By Leigh Bardugo….and It Knocked Me Out. There’s Been A Whole Trend Of

just finished ninth house by leigh bardugo….and it knocked me out. there’s been a whole trend of feminist dystopia books lately (vox, red clocks, only ever yours, etc.) and something about them has always turned me off but i could never quite put my finger on it…now though i think i can say that all those books so severely sensationalize the horror done to women that the commentary almost falls flat because it’s so singular in tone. ninth house however is so focused on the worldbuilding of the occult that the politically minded messages don’t come through in the same heavy handed way they do in other books where the commentary is the plot and vice versa…because of that the themes in ninth house about women not being believed, poor girls especially poor immigrant girls being treated as disposable, boys/men  abusing power just because they can….these themes don’t feel like themes for the sake of themes they feel like the very natural effects of the plot…i don’t know if this is making sense but basically: 

ninth house feels like a book that was written about the occult but by nature of being a book about a young woman with her eyes open to the way others are mistreated it includes certain political commentaries whereas with feminist dystopian books oftentimes it seems like the plot was written to serve the commentary and the commentary itself was the original idea and those types of books tend to suffer for that