A library where the ledger that finds the books you want contains “faint screams” and a “puff of brimstone” because its last user was researching the underworld magic that went awry in 1957, leading two students to be “lost for over a week in shadow” a Monopoly-like board game with dice made of bones that are “most likely human” an emotionally sensitive house that takes its time to decide whether it likes you - all these are a delight. It’s a tough job, involving baroque rituals, exotic magical artifacts and a willingness to leap into the unknown - and it can be carried out only by people who have been responsible for the deaths of others.īardugo is best known for her wildly popular young-adult novels this series is her first for adults, and should bring in new readers hungry for the sort of stories that enthralled them when they were haunting their school libraries, begging for more books in the vein of Narnia or Harry Potter.įantasy is not for everyone, and to love this book, which I did, you have to let yourself be carried along by the joy and playfulness mixed with the darkness. This book opens where the last one ended, with Darlington stuck in hell and Alex Stern, a scrappy, troubled Yale undergraduate who is blessed, or cursed, with the ability to see dead people, intent on getting him out.

It’s not mandatory to read “Ninth House” to enjoy “Hell Bent,” but readers who start here will miss out on crucial back stories and world-building details. Elmo conjures storms Book and Snake can reanimate the dead.) A shadowy regulatory body known as Lethe presides over the societies’ supernatural rituals and polices their use of magic, like a fantastical version of OSHA. (Skull and Bones, for instance, uses human entrails to make stock market predictions for influential alumni St. Much of it is concentrated in the university’s real-life senior societies, whose fictional versions each traffic in a single arcane magical specialty. Just like its predecessor, this novel conjures a Yale swirling with all manner of magic - by turns frivolous, self-enriching, reckless, amusing and very dark indeed.

It is here that they plan to carry out a daring mission and rescue their friend Darlington, whose soul was sucked into the abyss in Bardugo’s previous book, the best-selling “ Ninth House,” and whose body is now inhabited by a particularly nasty demon. Searching for a portal to the underworld at Yale University, the magically inclined characters of Leigh Bardugo’s “Hell Bent” naturally think of Sterling Memorial Library, a Gothic temple to learning (and to hell, it turns out) that looms in the middle of campus.

Leigh bardugo hell bent release date