Dead Beat

Dead Beat is the third and last book in Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House series. It is 6000% a sequel, so if you haven’t read the first two books, Ninth House and Hell Bent, stop reading this and go read them. If you like brilliant urban fantasy, you won’t regret it.

When we last saw them, the Lethe House team had made it back—again—from hell. (Lethe is the Ninth House of the series title, the secret society that keeps watch over Yale’s other eight.) But unfortunately, Golgarot, hell’s resident lord, managed to swipe some of Alex’s blood and used it to prop open a door between hell and New Haven. Now demons are running amok in the city, and our heroes—and I use that word loosely—are badly outnumbered. This is a big problem, because the demons are really good at their job, which is stealing all the joy and life out of humans. Worse, they’re getting cleverer, and the way they prey on people is becoming both more devastating and harder to stop.

Soul-sucking demons are only one of their problems. As Alex and the Ninth House team work to figure out how to shut the breach, they begin to dig up the history of Yale’s secret societies. The societies do not like this—rich, powerful people rarely want their secrets exposed—and the more Alex and her colleagues unearth, the more the societies’ power is threatened. Alex, in particular, is in all sorts of danger. Golgarot wants her back in hell, scary, high-placed society alums want her for her Wheelwalker power, and, very disconcertingly, the Grays—the dead whom she can see and hear—are becoming more difficult for her to control.

Alex, however, is up to the challenges before her. She’s a kick-ass woman Buffy would have been thrilled to fight alongside, although Alex is much more Faith than Buffy. Much of her strength comes from her lack of faith in almost anything, and watching her do ugly, necessary things in the middle of all that Ivy League privilege is a real pleasure. She’s not interested in being a hero, and she’s comfortable with the idea that almost every solution that might work against the evil she faces will come at a significant cost.

It’s not, though, a cost that only she must or even can bear. In Ninth House, Alex was a loner who was only willing to help Lethe House because of what a Yale degree might bring her. Now, very slowly, it’s dawned on her that she can’t save New Haven—and probably the world—without trusting others. She can only survive by working with what has become her found family and, man, is that great to see.

Dawes, the house’s witchy scholar, and Turner, the prescient cop who has never trusted the societies, both shine in Dead Beat, and it slowly becomes clear that Dawes’ soups and Turner’s hunches are more than they seem. Not-Tripp, rather hilariously, shines too. A fratty Skull and Bones member who is now a mostly well-behaved demon, he hasn’t been changed much by becoming a demon. He still plays video games, he’s still clueless about anything intellectual, and he cracked me up every time he showed up. All three characters and their fates give the book a richer emotional heft than the first two novels have.

Then there’s Darlington, back from hell and profoundly changed—glowing penis, anyone? He and Alex finally fall for each other—this surprises no one but themselves—and it’s not easy. The roles they held when they met no longer fit, neither of them really knows who they are now, and neither can see what the future holds. I’m happy to report that their romance is far more interesting than I thought it would be.

Dead Beat—and really, the trilogy—weaves together three compelling stories. It’s a love story that explores both romantic and (found) familial love. It’s a thrilling urban fantasy that tips into unsettling darkness. And, perhaps most clearly, it’s a reckoning with power, especially the arrogant kind wielded by society’s most privileged. Each strand amplifies the others. By the novel’s end, I was awed by how fricking brilliant a writer Bardugo is. Really, the woman makes the rest of us look like mental Munchkins.

Dead Beat is a terrific finish to a series I’ve loved from the start, and it gets my highest recommendation.