The Facts
- Published: January 10, 2023
- Original language: English
- Genre: Adult fiction, dark academia, paranormal fantasy
- Number of pages: 478
- Prequel: The Ninth House
The Gist
*spoiler alert*
“You always looked like you had trouble chasing you.”
Alex jabbed the door-close button. “So?”
“Now you look like it caught up.”
At the end of Ninth House, readers leave the scrappy, i'll-tempered Galaxy "Alex" Stern, Lethe House's latest Dante and its new favorite anomaly, with every intention of picking up Darlington from Hell. Blessed (or cursed) with the power of seeing (and possessing!) ghosts, Alex solved the mystery behind Darlington's disappearance and the intricate threads of classism, power and privilege that make up the society of every elitist school. In our case, Yale University. In Hell Bent, Alex must figure out: 1) how to travel down to Hell and back without actually having to die, 2) how to bring Darlington back in his new demon-like form, and 3) how to pass her classes without actually having to spend any time studying. What’s so special about Alex Stern is that we rarely see such a haunted and troubled female character who, in several different meanings of the expression, does all of the saving. Meaning, in this book series, it’s the female lead character who goes through Hell to save the “damsel” in distress. But more than risking death and damnation, Alex is the strong figure in every single relationship she has: she’s her mother’s emotional support, she’s her friends’ rock, she saves Lethe’s reputation after Dean Sander’s death, and every single time she’s in any kind of trouble, Alex never fails to save herself. Her beauty is one that shines through her personality, her efforts, and her intentions. She is no ordinary character, and I doubt we'll see another one like her.
“She was more beautiful than he remembered. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that she had changed or that his vision had sharpened. He was just less afraid of her beauty now.”
More than just another fantasy novel, Hell Bent (and therefore Ninth House) contains an emotional structure rarely seen in books of this genre, because it deeply explores the situations that cause the way each and every character behaves in they way they do. Somewhere in the middle of the book, Alex and and her allies must re-live personal memories where they've caused the death of someone they knew (one of the conditions for travelling into Hell is that every traveler must also be a murderer.) The mental exploration of each and every character's trauma is so dense and rich it's difficult not to justify their wrongdoings. Like real life people, these characters are flawed and thus complex, relatable, and so different from one another. Propped up by the tragic, unjust realities of our world, Hell Bent shines a light on our flawed nature, and our human need to always strive for more, to find a deeper well, to find that missing piece in the uncanny, the magical, the impossible, only to find ourselves even more dissatisfied after we’ve found that which we thought we needed, and what happens when childhood dreams meet the crushing reality of adulthood.
“Why raise children on the promise of magic?” Alex wonders. “Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied — for revelation, for transformation — and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world?”
Like the expert writer and weaver of tales that she is, Bardugo has several plates spinning at the same time: there's the problem of Darlington being trapped Hell, the mystery of Alex's origins and where her powers came from, the dangers of her abilities to see (and possess) the Greys, the impending invasion of demons of our "dimension", in addition to the more mundane problems that exist in every young adult's life (for example, the obvious crush Alex has for Darlington, and the Sisyphean task of passing all of her classes with little to no sleep.) Between chapters, Bardugo leaves hints of Lethe/Yale history through archives: from the Sterling Library (which actually exists and you can visit), and from the diaries of past Lethe members, giving readers information to build context of their own. While there's a hint of romance, this book is not for the reader looking to gush over a love story; this is a book about trauma, redemption, imposter syndrome, demons (actual demons and emotional demons), classism, greed, and about the infinitely interesting stories behind Yale University. The line between reality and fantasy is extremely thin, and I am convinced that everyone who reads these books will leave with a piece of Alex, Pam, Mercy and Darlington forever encrusted inside of them.
The Themes
- Greed
- Power dynamics
- Substance abuse
- Classism
- Sterotypification
- Existentialism
- Redemption
- Privilege
- Trauma
- Sex
The Author
Leigh Bardugo is the author of the world-famous YA trilogy Shadow and Bone, a story that shares the same universe with the Six of Crows duology. Bardugo is of Israeli-American descent, and she currently works as an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University. The Ninth House is largely inspired by her time as a student at Yale, where she discovered the real-life tombs of Yale’s secret societies down New Haven’s Grove Street. The Lethe house is based on the Anderson Mansion, the real-life HQ of the Yale society Shabtai. Shabtai is a Jewish leadership society and one of its many notable members is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who ran for President of the United States in 2020. Leigh Bardugo currently suffers from osteonecrosis, reason why she often uses a cane and why her character, Kaz Brekker, also uses a cane.
If you like this, read this:
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- The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
- Babel by R.F. Kuang
- Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab
- The Secret History by Donna Tart
- These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
- Four by Four by Sara Mesa
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
- The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
If you like this, watch this:
- The Promised Neverland (anime)
- Dead Poets Society
- Tenet
- Mr Robot
- Eyes Wide Shut
- The Riot Club
Where to buy it:
