Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read this book in advance.

Unfortunately, the writing style was not for me. It felt rambly and repetitive. The sentences started, "she _____" 5 times in a row in a paragraph. There is also a ton of vocabulary thrown at you right away, including many proper nouns, and 3 time jumps between the Preface and Chapter 2.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher. Great concept. Really great actually. There are ethereal beings assisting humanity and some who are opposed. But the problem with this book is the author cannot write dialogue at all. No one talks like that in reality and it's very child like writing. It's stilted and makes no sense. Also, there are a ton of anachronisms (Uber didn't exist in 2007) which maybe shows this is an alternate reality?

Hopefully there's improvement in the second book.

The Ninth Choir started off so strongly. The premise immediately caught my attention, and it felt like exactly the kind of strange, ambitious story I would normally love. I could see very early on that there was a great story underneath it, and that was probably what made my frustration with the book so strong. What did not work for me was the way the story was presented. The juxtaposition of nonlinear plotlines, shifting points of view, and fragmented storytelling made it increasingly difficult to understand where I was in the story or how the different pieces were meant to connect. Just when I thought I had finally gotten hold of what was happening, the narrative would shift again and I would find myself lost. It was not the kind of confusion that made me curious to keep piecing things together. Eventually, it became difficult to stay emotionally invested because I was spending too much time trying to work out what I was supposed to understand.

I think the problem may partly come from how clearly the author knows his world and his story. There is a particular difficulty in writing a complicated narrative when the writer already knows every connection, history, and explanation behind what is happening. The author does not experience the story in the same way a first-time reader does. What feels like a carefully placed clue to the writer can feel like missing information to someone who has not yet been given the context to understand it. Sometimes a writer knows so much about a world that it becomes difficult to see which details the reader actually needs in order to find their way through it.

That is what I felt happened here. The story itself was not the problem. There was clearly a lot of thought behind the plot, and the premise remained intriguing even when the execution lost me. I kept feeling that I was very close to understanding what the book was doing, only to lose that understanding again. I did not want the story simplified, but I did want more points of orientation as a reader. There is a strong book somewhere in The Ninth Choir, and I genuinely wish the narrative had allowed me to experience more of it rather than making me work so hard to understand it. The beginning gave me exactly the kind of strange and intriguing premise I was hoping for, but the fragmented structure ultimately kept me at a distance from the story.