Everyone has their demons. Literally.

Yeah, it's a cute metaphor. And there were some good extensions of that metaphor, like how having depression/traumatic guilt is like having a doppleganger vampire who consumes your every feeling and leaves you hopeless. But the rest of the book... The rest of the book was messy, and kind of boring. Some metaphors were repeated too often and lost their impact. The "twists" were obvious, too heavily hinted at in dialogues or prescient dreams. And even though - with codenames like Dante and Virgil - you knew a descent into Hell was imminent, it was still disorienting and dissatisfying to repeat the ritual and endure the dreamscapes of Hell over and over again. The gate is open, it's closed. Oops, it's not closed, but let's reopen it. Okay, close it this time. Whoopsies, we left it open AGAIN? Definitely close it this time, for sure. After we open it again - AHHHH!!!! Yes, ok, as a metaphor it makes sense, you never really shut the door on your trauma, something will always stay with you. But plot-wise, it was a lame fake-out every time, like thinking you're awake when you're still in the dream. A lot of this book felt like being stuck in the protagonists' hypno-therapy sessions. Yes, you learn a lot about them, their flaws, their shame, their resilience, (their redemption?). But you also wade through their mommy issues, and their sexuality, and their dream journal, and the death of their pet, and - AH Sudden bunny-headed daddy demon means... something?

But mercurial and personal as Hell is, metaphors alone cannot carry a book. The plot of this book didn't work as well as Ninth House. In the first book, the murders on campus are related to the opening of a gateway (a literal Hellmouth; a giant hellhound ate Darlington), and Galaxy is slowly revealed to both have a traumatizing past and a mysterious, magical future that inform her desire to fight for the present. She has a reason to sleuth. In Hell Bent, Galaxy learns about even more murders on campus, but she has no reason to assume that they are personally connected to her, so she doesn't go digging for answers. But because she's got that Main Character Energy, she stumbles into answers regardless. And wowzerz... the answers are stupid XD.
SPOILERS BELOW....
.
.
.
A demon piggyback's out of Hell when Galaxy botches a rescue attempt for Darlington. That demon is supposed to be Darlington's personal doppleganger vampire, it is supposed to consume every feeling until Darlington is a husk and it can wander the world in Darlington's place. Except, no wait a minute, it's actually a prince of Hell, and it made a deal with Darlington to give him all the knowledge he'll ever want in exchange for... something? Except no, that didn't happen either! It's a prince of hell who promotes Darlington into a half demon, and the two halves of Darlington playact a purgatory where Demon Darlington forces Human Darlington to raise his crumbling family home stone by stone without end, a la Sisyphus? Wait, no, wait... it's a prince of Hell who piggybacks out during a botched rescue, but it's interested in Galaxy, not Darlington, because Galaxy was a promised payment to this demon when four Yale frat bros opened a gateway to Hell 90 years ago?... WHAT?!?! OK, so, does Princey collect that payment immediately? No! He goes on a vampire pub crawl, sucking the life out of Yale professors and staging their corpses in semi-elaborate tableau to entice Galaxy to investigate the mystery of their demise... even though puzzles are meant to ensnare demons' attention, not humans... and even though... you're supposed to feed on the one person you're haunting... not...
Yeah, it's a mess. And we are no closer to understanding what Galaxy IS by the end of this book than we were in the first book. The character growth was too minimal, practically stagnant. The PLOT was stagnant (rescue Darlington, rescue Darlington, rescue Darlington)! And the different threads of the plot didn't weave together neatly, even when Darlington Explains it All about 80 pages before the end.

Aside from some decent (often too heavy) metaphors, and a messy plot that was more Inception than Paranormal Noir - aside from that... the book suffered for its setting. I think Leigh Bardugo let too much of herself bleed into the book this time. The different buildings or rooms at Yale are often name dropped with little or no description, making them inaccessible to the imagination if you haven't been there before (or paused your reading to do a Google search). The odd choice to make Galaxy's past try and catch up to her, and to keep L.A. and Yale as relevant settings to each other, by making ONE drug dealer who wants to run both coasts was... just laughable, to me XD. If Breaking Bad taught me anything, it's that rival cartels will lock up the shady business of ONE CITY, never mind TWO coastlines! XD Besides, when your two antagonists are the Prince of Hell vs. That One Rich Kid Who Won't Stop Texting Me, there are no stakes. You know the kid is a non-threat, he's a flea on a rhinoceros! Eitan would have been scary, another time, another place. He's not anymore, he's just annoying. And retconning the part of the first book which had Galaxy in the clear, had her literally get away with murder, just screams SEQUEL Energy. Let's peel back the curtain a second and see the wizard: The only reason L.A. and Yale are being smushed together as locations of equal, present importance, is because they are important to the author in her real life. They are what she knows, what she feels strongly about. In parts of this book, Galaxy became insert fiction, enjoying architecture and nature and a lazy day reading with a cup of tea... I don't feel the set dressing was always true to Galaxy's character, or propelling her character where it needed to go.

And speaking of characters trapped by Bardugo's own bias... HMMM, where have we seen a witty, curious, chivalrous prince turned half-demon by trauma and whose savagery is soothed by a dark, guarded, wounded, ruthless, brave queen? Hello, Nikolai and Zoya. Are we seriously recycling King of Scars? It hurts to see Darlington and Galaxy reduced to silhouettes, a pattern that Bardugo already knows how to cut out and deliver.

All in all, as much as I was chomping at the bit for a sequel... I think this book needed more time, more thought, before it was given to us. There needed to be an editing eye that said, "This seems convoluted", "This needs extrapolating", trust your readers here, hold their hands here... and Hell's Bells, get out of your own way. Take the author out of the book, and just let the characters tell their story. There was something in here about survivors that wanted to be told, but it didn't live up to its predecessors, and it didn't say anything new.