strange and random happenstance: Hell

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: January 10th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 496 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Michelle Alameddine has a warning for Alex Stern. Whatever is out there, beyond the Veil, it isn't just Grays. And while this advice is prescient it won't sway Alex. The late, unlamented, Dean Sandow planned for the Hellbeast to devour her Virgil, Darlington, because he was too smart for his own good. But those smarts meant that he survived. As a demon. A gentleman demon. Trapped in hell. And Alex is going to rescue her gentleman demon. Because that night, almost a year ago, she did nothing to save Darlington and has been struggling with her responsibilities and her guilt ever since. The members of Lethe are going to stage a sulfurous jailbreak. The problem is, hell doesn't like thieves. But it does like its murderers. Which might actually come in handy. It's not exactly like Alex's hands are clean. The problem confronting them is that first, they actually have to find a way into hell, and second, they have to do it without the Lethe board finding out. And they only have one clue, that the portal to hell, the Gauntlet, is on hallowed grown. They have literally searched all of New Haven's copious churches to no avail. Approaching Scroll and Key would seem the next logical step as they deal in portals but Alex isn't exactly their favorite person. Especially after her and Dawes trick them and things go catastrophically wrong. As in Darlington, the demon, is now trapped in a protective circle in the ballroom at Black Elm. And while the board doesn't know about Darlington's "return" they do know about the damage to Scroll and Key and strongly suspect what they were up to. What they were specifically told never to attempt. And while Darlington is "back" his soul is still in hell, meaning, this heist is just beginning. With time running out and all eyes on them they need to get Darlington's soul as soon as they can. Dawes has pieced together a ritual and once they realize that the Gauntlet is in Sterling Library, a very different kind of hallowed ground, they just need to assemble four murderers willing to take the journey. Thankfully anyone who's worked with Lethe long enough has gotten their hands dirty, which means that Alex, Dawes, and Detective Turner fit the bill. They just need a fourth, and they find that fourth in the surprising form of Bonesman Tripp Helmuth. He's a ray of sunshine with a surprisingly dark past. They are ready to die and go to hell. Who knows if they will make it back. Who knows if they will succeed. Who knows if they will come back alone.

Originally viewed as an epic series Leigh Bardugo has honed Alex Stern's story down to a trilogy. Which means that Hell Bent is now that problematic middle child. And it's an odd problem here. Because while fixing that which I found originally annoying in Ninth House, specifically the insular and esoteric details that only one who attended Yale would care about, and focusing more on the characters, she has lost some of the originality in this series. Hell Bent feels like it could be any other urban fantasy series, and at times there were strong Buffy the Vampire Slayer overtones. Hell Bent lacked the polish and precision of the first volume which is painfully obvious in the copious timeline errors. If there's one murder on a Saturday night and another on that Sunday morning, they aren't days apart. They aren't even day apart. But what we lose in the tight plotting and editing we gain in character development. By narrowing down the focus to only six characters and their journey to hell and back we can understand them better. In Ninth House Alex seemed to not only be fighting the Grays but fighting her very existence. She didn't understand her place in the world or what she wanted so she was all reaction not action. Which, yes, you can build a story that way, it's just not as compelling. Here we see how special Yale has become to her. It's the first real home she's ever had. There's always a roof over her head and breakfast foods in her pockets. She has friends she can rely on to help, not hurt her. She's falling in love with literature and spends copious hours just reading old paperbacks for enjoyment. The academic life suits her. This also makes her more protective of others, she's not just looking out for herself but her friends and, in particular, her mother. She is learning what it is to be an adult and survive in this world and it makes you care about her and Dawes and all the rest of them, even golden retriever Tripp, all the more. Which is why Leigh Bardugo's interpretation of vampires is so interesting and terrifying. While I don't consider myself an expert on vampires I know enough and the fact that in this universe vampires are actually demons that drain a human into nothing more than a husk and then become them is genius and terrifying. I don't know if it's been done before, but it felt fresh and original and, as previously mentioned, terrifying. Add in the soul revelation, and, well, yes, hints of Angelus, but also, something so unique that I almost forgave the more pedestrian plot points. Almost.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Alex Stern, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Character, Darlington, Dawes, Ghosts, Grays, Hell, Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo, Lethe, New Haven, Ninth House, Portals, Secret Societies, Summer School, Trilogy, Tripp Helmuth, Vampires, Yale

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Published by: Penguin Classics
Publication Date: 1967
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

How does the devil prove that he exists? By proving the existence of God. Satan, in the guise of one Professor Woland, arrives in Moscow with his retinue. His companions are Koroviev, his valet, Behemoth, a black cat who walks on two legs, Azazello, a hitman, and Hella, a vampire. Their goal is to sew chaos and confusion. Woland targets the head of the Massolit, Berlioz, a corrupt toady. Berlioz embraces Soviet atheism and is in a heated discussion with the poet Bezdomny about how Jesus is a mythical figure. Woland, needing to prove his own existence, tells Berlioz that he will be decapitated by a Russian woman. Finding this death prophecy absurd it comes as quite a shock when Berlioz slips in the street and his head is forcibly removed from his body by a tram car driven by a woman. Bezdomny sees this as the proof Woland promised and is driven insane trying to stop the spread of their evil while warning his fellow citizens. He ends up being committed to an asylum. This is where Bezdomny meets the Master. The Master is a failed writer who was working on a book on the life of Pontius Pilate that was rejected by the Soviet state. Driven insane by critics he burned his manuscript and forsook his love, Margarita. Poor Margarita. She is about to fall under the spell of Woland, just as all of Moscow has with his show performed at the Variety theater. Azazello gives her the power of invisibility and invites her to his master's ball. There Woland gifts her with witchcraft. She flies through the night, over rivers and forests, and arrives to be hostess of Satan's spring ball, welcoming the luminaries of hell. All she asks for in return is to be reunited with the Master. They will spend an eternity together. In hell. The ball ends. The spirits all depart. Moscow is free. As is Pontius Pilate, whose story has also come to an end, and now he too can walk beside Yeshua.

Ah, the greats of Russian literature. Tolstoy is epic, you could literally bludgeon someone to death with one of his book. Chekhov is annoying, trust me on this, once you watch an undergraduate production of Three Sisters or reread The Cherry Orchard ad infinitum for a semester you will want to travel back in time to stop him from ever having written a word. Pasternak is basically why I exist. And Bulgakov is surrealist art in prose form. I think. I mean it's the only way I can make any kind of sense of whatever this is I just read. Wait, was this supposed to be funny? Oh, it's supposed to be darkly funny with a Faustian twist. Yeah, totally didn't get that. The humor that is, the Faustian part is kind of obvious. And the thing is, this is a book I felt somehow intimidated by for years but after watching the adaptation of Bulgakov's A Young Doctor's Notebook I thought that I had a handle on his humor. I was wrong. And I also shouldn't have been intimidated. Because this book is a whole lot of nothing. Sure, you can make it into something, you can analyze the Christian imagery and parse the text and basically find a way to justify whatever your point of view is, but in my mind a book can't just be there for scholars to spar over. There has to be a story, there has to be something more. The one part of the book I liked was the glimpse we got into the Master and Margarita's life before he went insane and she became a witch. That was sweet and harrowing and bored everyone in my book club. They were all about the cat and the witches and seriously, how did I not like this book? There's an anthropomorphic cat! But Behemoth was just somehow too creepy for me. Too mean. And I know cat haters out there will say, but that's just a cat. I'm sorry, but no. No it's not. And as for Pontius Pilate... Why is there basically historical fiction about the life of Jesus intercut with the devil in Moscow? And don't say because it's all biblical. Because it feels like unnecessary filler. Like an idea for another book that was just grafted onto this one. In the end, who cares? Not me. Those who decry that everyone should read and love the classics are partially right. They should read them to find out their own tastes. And this book left a bad taste in my mouth.