Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo Series: Alex Stern #2
Published by Flatiron Books on January 10, 2023
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, Fiction / Occult & Supernatural, Fiction / Thrillers / Supernatural
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781250313119Find 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.
In the review for Ninth House, I start off by talking about the difficulty I have with Leigh Bardugo’s writing at times. With Hell Bent, we’re definitely back on rockier shores. This is not to say that Bardugo is not an amazing and creative writer because she is, it’s just that for me, Hell Bent fell a bit flatter than Ninth House.
Alex and Dawes, eventually Turner (he’s probably my favorite character) are back and working to bring Darlington, Lethe’s golden boy, back from hell. Cool! I’m excited for this adventure…until I wasn’t and was ready to leave Darlington in hell to suffer. I get that there needs to be tension in books but the unnecessary obstacles that pop up to prevent Alex and Dawes to get to Darlington became ridiculous. I lost count the number of trials they did to try to get to Darlington, and he doesn’t come back until 3/4 of the way through this book. Ugh, I was so done with this whole mission. Alex’s motives made sense, at first, but after a while, her whiny, poor me, everyone who comes into contact with me is killed or disappears became aggravating. In relation to Darlington, you knew this man for what 3 to 4 months and are willing to jeopardize everything for him. Jeopardize your place at Yale by taking down the secret societies and the power structure.
The actual murder case involved two Yale faculty members who were killed by having the life sucked out of them. I’m here for this! And it felt like I was the only one. The murder case itself felt thrown together as an afterthought. It’s really telling in the fact that it was basically recycled from the previous book, the only difference is one was driven by greed (Sandow) and the other by a demon (Anselm). Hell Bent brings vampires into the mix and while the mythology about them was new, it felt like another thing to throw in just for kicks.
Another plot point that felt odd was Eitan. While he definitely got what he deserved, I didn’t see the point of him being in the book except to have him die at the end to close the portal to hell. But it didn’t feel like he needed to have as much time spent on him as he did for the role he needed to play.
All of this leads us to the ending, where of course, the portal to hell wasn’t properly closed because we have to have the characters go through unnecessary and repeated obstacles through this book.
Okay, yea, you may be thinking “are you sure you liked this book, Darcy?” I promise I did! It was enjoyable enough that I finished it and am going to read the third Alex Stern novel. I was expecting more and it wasn’t delivered.
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