I have been a big fan of Leigh Bardugo ever since I read Shadow and Bone and then proceeded to read all of her books.
So when I heard she had an adult fantasy book called Ninth House out, I had to read it, and guess what? I loved it as well!!
Then, she goes ahead and announces the sequel to Ninth House, and of course, I have to jump right on it. In fact, I started it the day I picked it up.
Hell Bent starts off where we left Alex and all the other characters. She still attends Yale and is still trying to find a way to free Darlington. The adventures that follow are intense, fun filled, and thrilling. It does start off slow, but once it picks up pace, it doesn’t ease up and will keep you on the edge of your seat to the end.
There are so many great aspects of this book, but I especially love the character progression and finding out more about Alex’s past. Throughout the book, Bardugo teases us little tidbits of information about who exactly Alex is, and she leaves you dying to find out more, which is sure to be revealed in the third and final book in the trilogy.
I love it when a fantasy is set in a real-life location, which in this case is Yale. The mixture of reality and fantasy has always been a fascination to me as i like to believe there is still magic in the world. So books like these and those by Ben Aaronovitch have always been of interest to me.
You will find that many series or trilogies often suffer with that middle book syndrome, where the middle one tends to be slow and at times a bit tedious as they need to set the scene for the last novel or last few in the series. However, this isn’t the case with Hell Bent as the adventure simply continues and Bardugo cleverly mixes the character progression and the self discovery of the characters into the plot line seamlessly so that once the pace picks up it never drops.
Alex has always been a fascinating character ever since Ninth House, but we have always had this underlying mystery of who exactly she is and why she has these abilities, which still continues partly through this novel. Once again we also get to see Dawes who i grew to love in the last book. In the Ninth House we often saw Alex as a bit of a lone wolf believing she could do everything alone as she has always done it. But it’s good to see in Hell Bent that she lowered those walls down at times and relaxed more in front of her friends and those close to her, especially Dawes who always has her back, even if it meant going against her boss.
One thing I will say is that Leigh Bardugo has set the story up for what is bound to be an epic finale.
And yes, I did buy two versions, one standard and one special edition (just look at that stunning spine) but in my defence I ordered the special edition, which took a while to arrive at the bookshop and Waterstones said I could have the standard edition for half price so who was I to say no to such a fantastic offer??
Many writers are great at YA or great at adult books but being able to switch between the two and make a clear distinction between ya and adult writing is a very difficult thing but Leigh Bardugo carries it off perfectly. This series is darker, more mature in writing and setting and plot than her grishaverse series and it has given her a platform to really write something dark, gritty and tense but still full of the magic and mystique we loved from the grishaverse.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – dark, gritty, magical, and at times steamy (read it to find out) a fantastic read from start to finish
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