Hell Bent

The Book in 1 Sentence

Alex Stern is continuing her attempt to bring back Darlington from Hell, but researching and opening that door brings about chaos for those in town.

Brief Review

What made Ninth House so interesting is continued here without the delivery of expanding the non-supernatural world. We do get more lore about the houses, but it is hidden in unanswered or glossed over questions/answers throughout the story. While the story is complete and feels full, the expansion of the world in real time makes it very much feel like they didn’t know where to end the story, and so they just wrote till they hit the word count.

Why I Read this book

Thought it was the last in the series. I guess a third was announced, which makes sense based on how the book ends.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

I love the world that Leigh Bardugo has built. The old world secret societies, the relics, and just the layering are really well done. I want to pay a bit more attention to the relics because there is a scene here that I had never thought about, but is important to bring up because I never thought about this layer in this world. At some point in the book, they are looking for particular people and have to use this relic. The relic shows all the people in the city that meet that requirement. The key element here is the date in which this relic was created, and it's intended use during that time. This relic and probably many others was use/could have been used to find slaves. When I read this book and the previous book, I never would have put those two aspects together even though we have consistently talked about rich white guys in charge of secret societies. So this bomb drop really changed how I thought about the dates of the relics used and their described purpose. It was a really intelligent way to add weight to the history of the Ninth House.

The overall story is ok. I have some issues with the repetitiveness and stupidity of some characters here. They end up trying to recuse Darlington once and something happened. Something that should have set them down the path they ended up with in the end. Then they had to do the same thing again, but worked because of a plot point that is just there without a lot of explanation of how it worked or why other than the title "Wheel Walker."

There are some new supernatural elements that float around that I really appreciate the explanation of. I think the story being told about the origins of the houses is very interesting. I wish there were more to it and I think the 3rd book is just going to get further from the houses, which story wise makes sense. I am sure it will be a good book, but I loved the story revolving around the houses mostly.

Rating

This was a very intriguing book that I enjoyed listening to. I appreciate the inclusion of characters from the last book being brought back in this book. I am ecstatic about the layering of stories and situations that echo through each act. It tells a good story. A predictable and at time boring story, but it is a good story that allows for additional supernatural worlds. I initially gave this a 7, but as I was writing this I felt like I needed to give this an 8. However, that was until this last paragraph where I really sat down and thought about how I feel about the book as a whole. It was enjoyable, but it doesn't fall into the great status so it has to stay a 7.

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