When I reviewed Leigh’s first adult Fantasy novel, Ninth House, I said that “Ninth House is worthy of the accolades being given it. I am usually very wary of handing out such exemplary praise myself, but I’m very pleased to type that I think this one actually deserves it. Be warned – this is not something I usually say, but you will give up lots of time reading this one, or spend time wishing you were reading it.”.
This story of Ivy League secret societies, a tough heroine with a difficult background and magic artifacts was a much more grown-up version of Hogwarts that I really liked – so much so that it became one of my favourites of 2019.
Well, in 2023 Galaxy/Alex Stern is back, pretty much straight after the events of Ninth House. After a gap of over three years, you may find that you need to read/reread Ninth House before tackling this one, although to be fair there’s enough exposition along the way for you to follow what’s going on.
It also means that in order to review the new book I will have to explain some of the events of Ninth House here – skip the next three paragraphs if you don’t want spoilers.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Alex Stern is a bright teenager with a troubled past that involves drugs, sex and murder in California. She is the only survivor of a multiple homicide, which has clearly affected her life. Despite this, she has been given the chance to start a new life at Yale as “Dante” for a secret society known as The League of Lethe. Lethe is the group who monitor and keep all the other eight secret groups at Yale known as The Veil under control, and Alex’s new role involves her not only reading for an English Literature course at the university but also as “Dante”, the trainee person who in her senior year will become Virgil and then train another freshman.
This involves her being mentored by Daniel Arlington, aka Darlington, the good looking (of course!) Virgil whose role is to mentor Alex and ease her Alex into running The Veil.
So far, so Buffy. Where things got really interesting last time was that things went wrong. Far from being Alex’s escape from a life of casual sex, squatter properties, drugs and little money, there were gruesome murders and a homicidal Dean at the university, whom Alex defeated but at the same time unfortunately ended up with Darlington being eaten by a Hellbeast and consigned to Hell – literally.
END SPOILERS
This is where Hell Bent picks up from. Alex is determined to retrieve Darlington because she feels that it is her fault that he is in eternal torment. Consequently, at the beginning of Hell Bent Alex and Pam Dawes, the Oculus (archivist) of Lethe are involved in an attempt to retrieve Darlington and return him to their world.
It fails. Darlington remains in Hell, but due to Alex and Dawes’s botched attempt at retrieval, part of him is also imprisoned in Yale at Black Elm.
Not only that, but through her efforts Alex inadvertently creates a gap through which other demons can escape to our world – something which has consequences for Alex and all of her friends. The rest of the book involves Alex, in defiance of the Lethe board at Yale, being determined to retrieve Darlington and close the portal before greater damage is done.
This involves Alex relying on a number of allies to do this. As a result, we also find out more about Alex’s friends – ever-loyal Dawes, flat-mates Mercy and Lauren, stoic policeman Turner and new friends as well, all drawn into Alex’s attempts to put things right. Even Alex’s past is given a once-over, as there’s a subplot involving Alex’s past life and a threat to her Mum, blissfully living a separate life back in Los Angeles.
Leigh has a lot of plates spinning in this novel. Not only has she got Alex at loggerheads with her superiors in attempting to retrieve Darlington and close the portal, but she also has to maintain her usual duties such as assisting Tanner in solving the murder of two professors on campus.
It’s an ambitious plot, but one Leigh manages pretty well. There’s a few shocks and revelations along the way. (And if that cover scares you – be warned – there are other horrible events, as well as an explanation of that rabbit, inside.) Without going into greater details, we also have a bigger overriding plot-arc that Leigh sets up and will come back to in the next book.
Having spent time setting up the societies in Ninth House, there’s less about them in this one, leaving the book to focus upon characters. Nevertheless, the combination of an academic setting and an ancient arcane history continued to work well for me, and although there is less of it, the short descriptions of occult objects throughout the novel continued to create a background history that I loved. At the same time there’s that element of money and power brought to the setting by the elitist world of Yale academia that Alex still finds difficult to deal with.
What also made the novel work for me is that Alex is not perfect. Despite her elevated role at Yale, Alex is still an outsider with relatively little concrete experience. She continues to make mistakes, and forever feels like an imposter in this world of elevated achievement. Much of the book reflects that as an analysis of both grief and guilt. Yet at the end of Hell Bent Alex is is a better person by facing her own personal demons as well as those around her. One of the key actions of her antagonists in this novel is that they feed on a person’s doubts and fears, something which Alex, as indeed all of her friends, seem to have in spades. Part of the tension in this novel is about how Alex deals with her past as well as the present, not to mention her acceptance of things in the future.
On a slightly negative note, there are times when Leigh seems to be trying a little too hard to remind readers that this is an “adult book” and not one from one of her Young Adult series. There’s mentions of sex, drugs and naked Darlington body parts that feel a little too forced, but are understandable, if a little too unsubtle at times. It almost feels as if the writer believes that there is a need to emphasise this novel’s grown-up-ness. Personally, I felt that the book didn’t need it, that the plot would have made the situation pretty clear, even without such emphasis.
But this is a relatively minor issue. As much as I enjoyed Ninth House (and I really did!) this one ups the game enormously. With characters you’ll engage with, situations that you’ll marvel at (or wince at!) Leigh really has raised the bar on this one. Although Hell Bent is one of my first reads of 2023, I can confidently see it being a top read of the year by the end of it. I can’t wait for the next book!
Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
Published by Gollancz, January 2023
ISBN: 978 147 322 8016
496 pages
Review by Mark Yon
