Book Review: Hell Bent, by Leigh Bardugo
The sophomore sequel to Ninth House has Alex trying to rescue her demon boyfriend from hell.
Flatiron Books, 2023, 481 pages
Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory-even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.
Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.
Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.
Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House introduced Galaxy "Alex" Sterns, a hot mess with a troubled past full of sex, violence, drugs, and ghosts, who because of her talent for seeing dead people was given a scholarship to Yale and made a part of Yale's secret magical societies.
Ninth House was a pretty good set-up, depicting magic as messy and dangerous and not at all like Hogwarts, and Alex was a hard-edged girl who just wanted her golden ticket out of the shit life her upbringing would have forced upon her.
As the new head janny for Lethe House, Alex is responsible for hall-monitoring the other eight houses. The main storyline in Hell Bent is Alex's efforts to rescue Daniel Darlington, a Yale Senior who was Lethe's "Virgil" and in the previous book, got sent to hell.
Alex assembles a new crew of scoobies and faces a new assortment of obstreperous, patronizing old men. She and her friends go to hell, face demons both literal and psychological, and Alex's life is threatened by literal and figurative vampires.
Hell Bent was okay. Ninth House mostly held its feminist rage in check while going off on privileged white boys, and Hell Bent has a lot more of the same. The other houses are little more than added color this time around; most of the book is about Alex and her demons. Including Darlington, who is not actually her boyfriend but since we get POV chapters for both of them in which they spend lots of time telling themselves how much they don't want to fuck each other, clearly they want to fuck each other.
This was a kind of mediocre sequel suffering from a series sophomore slump. And the book clearly ends setting itself up for a series. Every character now has some unique attributes and abilities, there is a new Big Bad to deal with, and basically it's starting to look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic. If "Buffy goes to college" is your thing, then you will probably enjoy these books, but I am hoping for a bit more edge and innovation in the next one.
Also by Leigh Bardugo: My review of Ninth House.
My complete list of book reviews.
Flatiron Books, 2023, 481 pages
Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory-even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.
Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.
Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.
Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House introduced Galaxy "Alex" Sterns, a hot mess with a troubled past full of sex, violence, drugs, and ghosts, who because of her talent for seeing dead people was given a scholarship to Yale and made a part of Yale's secret magical societies.
Ninth House was a pretty good set-up, depicting magic as messy and dangerous and not at all like Hogwarts, and Alex was a hard-edged girl who just wanted her golden ticket out of the shit life her upbringing would have forced upon her.
As the new head janny for Lethe House, Alex is responsible for hall-monitoring the other eight houses. The main storyline in Hell Bent is Alex's efforts to rescue Daniel Darlington, a Yale Senior who was Lethe's "Virgil" and in the previous book, got sent to hell.
Alex assembles a new crew of scoobies and faces a new assortment of obstreperous, patronizing old men. She and her friends go to hell, face demons both literal and psychological, and Alex's life is threatened by literal and figurative vampires.
Hell Bent was okay. Ninth House mostly held its feminist rage in check while going off on privileged white boys, and Hell Bent has a lot more of the same. The other houses are little more than added color this time around; most of the book is about Alex and her demons. Including Darlington, who is not actually her boyfriend but since we get POV chapters for both of them in which they spend lots of time telling themselves how much they don't want to fuck each other, clearly they want to fuck each other.
This was a kind of mediocre sequel suffering from a series sophomore slump. And the book clearly ends setting itself up for a series. Every character now has some unique attributes and abilities, there is a new Big Bad to deal with, and basically it's starting to look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic. If "Buffy goes to college" is your thing, then you will probably enjoy these books, but I am hoping for a bit more edge and innovation in the next one.
Also by Leigh Bardugo: My review of Ninth House.
My complete list of book reviews.