Hell Bent: A Novel (Ninth House Series Book 2)

The follow-up to Ninth House, Hell Bent tells the story of Alex Stern’s determination to restore the Virgil to her Dante at Lethe. Lethe is ninth house introduced in the first novel, the oversight house at Yale University, where long standing tradition means that eight powerful houses, or societies, use the arcane and magic to alter reality or prognosticate or otherwise guarantee their alumni continue to live lives of privilege and prosperity. Lethe observes their rituals and workings to keep them both unobserved by outside eyes, and also undisturbed by the occult, any ghostly forces that would interrupt or play havoc with the magic integral to the ceremonies and rites being conducted in secret by these eight houses inside Yale University’s venerable tombs and classroom buildings.

Alex Stern’s mentor at Lethe,Daniel Arlington, is sucked through a portal of some kind in the middle of the first book. With the assistance of Lethe’s Oculus, Pam Dawes, Alex is determined to rescue Darlington and bring him home. The circumstances surrounding this random accident are suspicious and Alex isn’t having it. Working against this goal are many obstacles, ranging from past to present. There’s blowback from Alex’s lurid and unsettling past as a strung-out teen in California; there’s the distrust and resistance Alex and Dawes encounter from the adults in the Lethe organization, from the Lethe-liaison police detective with whom they worked to solve a murder in book one, Ninth House, to the faculty and university administrators within whose imprimatur they must work, who discourage investigation and sadly shake their heads and write off a young man’s loss—his assumed death—as an unfortunate hazard of the job.

Determined as Alex and the reluctant team of other characters who join the quest are to bring Darlington home, their objective becomes enormously daunting, nearly unthinkable, when it becomes clear that they must steal back Darlington’s soul from hell itself, and that they won’t be the first Yale students to make the trip to the underworld and back. What price will they pay to save Darlington, Lethe’s “golden boy” who was intentionally sucked into the demonic realm? The action is fast-paced, urgent, and suspenseful. It cost me as a reader to go slowly, to savor the story instead of devour it. This novel builds a rich and layered world with a strong central narrative objective (getting Darlington’s soul back) which is further enriched by all sorts of extraneous and intertwined complications: —like the reappearance of Eitan, the West Coast Israeli drug kingpin who ensures Alex’s compliance in working for him by obliquely threatening her mom’s well-being; —like Alex’s realization that the spirits of the dead, the Grays she’s always seen, can speak to and through her and can even momentarily hijack her body to talk to living people; —like the fact that human souls can be ripped out of bodies, and a such a body can return to the regular world, sans soul, to hang out in a warded circle in his childhood home, naked, beautiful, bearing glowing golden badges of demonic indenture, featuring horns, and a robust erection; —like the fact that vampires actually exist(!); and —like the inclusion of Alex’s roommate, Mercy, who has not hitherto been aware of the magic suffused into the fabric of her university, into the elaborate Darlington rescue plan— all these twists and turns, make the story both more relatable—life throws complications at us constantly, even when we are in the midst of Big Things—and also more complex, lending the book the wonderful, fully-developed richness that readers so love and expect from Leigh Bardugo’s novels.

This second Alex Stern novel is an easier read than Ninth House, I thought, because the time line is relatively straightforward. I reread Ninth House before launching into Hell Bent (I often reread a novel before I read its sequel), and I was once again struck by Leigh Bardugo’s use of a wildly fractured narrative time line. The reader has to piece together what has occurred to get to Alex’s enrollment at Yale, then figure out Daniel’s a sense and what caused it, and how the past has shaped him almost as much as Alex’s has shaped her. Reading it feels disjointed, complicated, disassociated, something like being in a fugue state—like waking up on a stained mattress and not knowing how one’s best friend could be no longer alive, or how the room around one became splintered and wrong and littered with the blood-splattered remains of people one knew, all while one was apparently unconscious.

I loved this novel, its predecessor, and I am eager to find out what happens next, though the wait for book three will no doubt be agonizing. I recommend this novel—and this author—wholeheartedly. Hell Bent is 100% great read.

SO good! Quick paced, interesting characters, unexpected twists, plenty of mystery, and a much improved toned down version of the crazy nonsensical detail that overshadowed the story in the first quarter of book one. The romantic in me just wanted a bit more from Alex and Darlington, but I get that wasn’t the focus of the story. Hopeful for a third installment!

I went into this thinking it would be the second and last installment of this series. If I had known I'd never have picked this up. The book is totally addictive and then it ends mid-air. And I'm thinking... Noooooo!!!!! She did not just do this. And no hint of a book 3 in sight.

But the plot is amazing. The characters are mostly interesting - a couple of them are downright lovable, the evil forces are sadistically, cunningly, cruel. And I would love it all were it not for the heroine who is oh, so obtuse, oh, oh, oh oh, sooooooooo obtuse, she crashes through the walls into the kingdom of dumb. She is so dumb - there I've said it. And I hate main characters who are dumb. Call her an anti-hero, it's no excuse, she is dumb. The only thing interesting about Galaxy Stern is her untapped potential. The suspense that comes from watching her go from one bad decision to the next sometimes feels like a cheap, overused trick of authors the world over that need their characters to be dumb so they don't have to work as hard creating brilliant challenges to the level of brilliant characters. It's easier if a character causes her own obstacles - it requires less ingenuity for authors to cause mischief that way.

Example - no spoiler: the heroine goes to the house of the big bad wolf, runs away, leaves her things behind. Doesn't tell anyone (not even those who share her home) - leaving everyone exposed to the big bad wolf, who anyone will tell you has a big bad nose and can follow you home. OR you discover you have magical powers and even discover there is a name for what you are, and you live in a house with a magical library, and yet... you do not look up what you are. OR you keep on repeating the same mistake, over and over, and over though people have told you it's a big mistake, and you know it's a big mistake, but you are lazy and can't be bothered to learn how to not make the same mistake again. OR.. and this is my pet peeve in any book that uses this move: you keep quiet for the most inane reasons, and withhold essential information from allies. I tell you, just dumb.

And yet... I still love it and will be looking out for the next book in the horizon, hoping it comes soon.

Hell Bent was one of my most anticipated new releases of 2023. I read Ninth House a year and a half ago, and I was so intrigued by the story and the characters. I loved the non-linear storyline, the history, the paranormal craziness... and I was DYING to know what happened to Darlington. Because the story was so complicated, I reread Ninth House a few weeks ago to prep. Definitely the right decision, as otherwise I'm not sure I would have been able to keep anything straight. In any case, Hell Bent was an excellent read overall, perfect for those who LOVE dark academia and thrillers.

The story centers around Alex and her friends trying to bring Darlington back from Hell. Of course there are SIGNIFICANT obstacles, with the fact that Darlington is now part demon being a BIG one. Many of the minor characters in Ninth House step into major roles in Hell Bent - Dawes has more of a starring role, Turner comes back, Alex recruits Mercy and Tripp to get involved. And I LOVE having Darlington back, even though he's not really on the same plane of existence for most of the book. It's kind of amazing to me how he made such an impression on these people that they (and especially Alex) will risk their lives to bring him back. The flashbacks to the backgrounds of the "4 murderers" were super hard to read, but also so interesting to see what makes them tick. And the descriptions of Hell were so cool and trippy.

I again couldn't wrap my head around some of the things going on in this book. It's got a crazy combination of Yale/New Haven history and paranormal fantasy, along with very complicated, nuanced characters that just cries out for a reread. I'll definitely be at least rereading Hell Bent before the next release, if not Ninth House too.

This is my own personal issue, but I was DYING over the unresolved sexual tension between Darlington and Alex. I think I've been reading far too much romance lately, because I was constantly complaining about them secretly pining for each other (or at least appearing to do so) and doing nothing about it. Maybe there will be something in Book 3? Besides keeping demons from streaming into Yale, that's what I want to happen in the next book more than anything else.

Finally, I could read Darlington's highbrow quips and Alex's hilarious comebacks all day. I need to post some out of context quotes from this book at some point, because their conversations are infinitely quotable.