Hell Bent: A Novel

Why raise children on the promise of magic? 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?

(Well, C.S. Lewis has quite a bit to say about that, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

I've grown quite a bit as a reader in the years since I read

Ninth House, but I don't think that's why I didn't like the sequel:

Hell Bent is just a mess.

Basically everything that I enjoyed about the first book is gone. Gone is the focus on the secret societies Lethe oversees with their ancient rituals that draw from a rich collection of cultures and myths. Gone are the constant allusions to art and poetry and history. Gone is the coziness and charm and sense of wonder and sophistication. Instead of the “dark academia” fantasy of

Ninth House,

Hell Bent has devolved into, I don’t know, a high paranormal fantasy (edit: or maybe urban fantasy?) with a confusing number of Halloween monsters thrown into the mix.

The plot is all over the place and the pacing is downright bizarre. The murder mystery and Eitan errands are unnecessary, uninteresting, and difficult to follow: they don’t feel organically integrated into the plot. Even worse is how the novel handles the main plotline, which…is over

before the 80% mark? That’s right, the conflict builds and builds and builds and builds, only for the central climax to be over in the blink of an eye and without too much effort. There is no emotional payoff, and the characters don’t seem to be impacted much by what has happened. I’ve reacted more strongly to things that happen at the office. The remaining fifth of the book (that’s only slightly shorter than what should have been the

entire third act, by the way) is spent cleaning up leftover plotlines, handled with about the same level of enthusiasm as doing the dishes after a dinner party: there’s a second, much smaller climax to wrap things up, which goes more or less as planned and completely as expected. The stakes—physical and emotional—don't feel particularly high to the reader, and the characters don't seem to feel so, either. The “twists” don’t have much impact.

The characters, and their relationships with one another, have stagnated. Actually, it’s much worse than that: they’ve atrophied. The first novel was about Alex’s journey coming to a place where she could accept that, even with her background, she belongs at Yale and Lethe; the sequel is about how miserable she is all the time. The first novel was about Alex getting to know and work with her Lethe peers and navigate the Yale social scene; the sequel is about Alex continuing to exist with them. She ends

Hell Bent in the same emotional state where she began, but with some new paranormal fantasy powers to make her even more special. Boring.

The writing was okay. Either it got worse as the book went on or I just was losing my patience, but by the end it seemed like Barduogo was running out of steam. The prose lost color and vibrancy until it was just kind of bland. Thankfully

Hell Bent left out graphic depictions of assault this time, but there was still way too much blunt sexual content that was out of place and unnecessary, like it was only there so that Barduogo could point to it and say, “Look! It’s definitely not a kids’ book!” There’s also a moment in first chapter where she calls a soup turreen a soup

terrine and I just don’t know how that got past her editors.

I will not be reading on in this series and wish I had DNF’d

Hell Bent around the 60% mark as I’d contemplated doing. To be fair to me, it started off much, much stronger than it ended.

Some favorite passages:

This was their dream time, the magical early days of fall semester, the happy haze of meeting once again, old friendships rekindling in firefly sparks before the real work of the year began.

Had he thought there would be dignity in this? But this was what real magic looked like—indecent, decadent, perverse. Welcome to Yale.

and the truth was that Alex didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to sleep in her old bedroom with the sounds of the 101 like an angry ocean in the distance.

She read paperbacks too, one after the next like she was chain-smoking—romance, science fiction, old pulp fantasy. All she wanted to do was sit, unbothered in a circle of lamplight, and live someone else’s life.

One book had a spine of actual vertebrae, another released a cloud of soft mist every time she opened it, and another was so hot to the touch she’d had to scrounge around in the kitchen and return with oven mitts.

The Coat of Many Foxes Provenance: Goslar, Germany; 15th century Donor: Scroll and Key, 1993 Believed to be the work of Alaric Förstner, who was subsequently burned at the stake for his decimation of the local fox population. The coat changed hands multiple times, and there are records that indicate it belonged to an Oxford don around the same time that C. S. Lewis was teaching there, but this has never been fully substantiated. There is speculation that at one time, hanging the coat in a closet, armoire, or wardrobe would create a portal, but whatever magic the coat may or may not have possessed is long gone. Yet another example of the instability of portal magic.

She could see the rush of the 405 below, red blood cells, white blood cells, a flood of tiny lights.

She could hear the sound of the freeway far below. It was the sound of your own blood moving through your veins when you cupped your hands over your ears.

Pam grabbed hold of the banister and dragged herself up the stairs. Dread made her feet heavy. She spent every day afraid, of saying the wrong thing, asking the wrong question, humiliating herself. Standing in line, scrambling for change, she felt her face flush, her heart race, thinking of all the people behind her, waiting. That was all it took to flood her body with terror. She should be used to fear. But God, she did not want to climb these stairs.

And did it need a point? The windows were beauty for its own sake, for the pleasure of it, smooth limbs, flowing hair, boughs heavy with flowers, all of it hiding in a lesson on virtue, meant as a memorial. But she liked this life full of pointless beauty. It could all disappear as easily as a dream, only the memory of it wouldn’t fade the way dreams did. It would haunt her the rest of her long, mediocre life.