Dead Beat is the final book in Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy. Do I remember what happened in Ninth House and Hell Bent? No, not really. Did I bother re-reading both books before starting Dead Beat? Of course I didn’t. I just dove right into Dead Beat and hoped I would remember stuff from the other books along the way. Dead Beat is an enjoyable conclusion to the trilogy and ends exactly as I could have hoped for. I can depend on Bardugo not making me want to throw a book across the room.

WARNING: If you plan on reading Ninth House and Hell Bent, do not read this review just yet as it contains some spoilers.

In Hell Bent, Alex, Dawes, Turner and Tripp successfully walk the gauntlet and descend into Hell and retrieve Darlington’s soul. They manage to seal the gateway and keep the demon Golgarot in Hell, but there is still a breach that has allowed some demons to escape. In Dead Beat, Alex, Darlington, Dawes and Turner are hunting the demons that have escaped and trapping them in the Voynich Coffin, but they need to find away to permanently seal the breach before Golgarot finds a way to break free from Hell. This leads to them to discovering more about how the gauntlet was created and the four Yale students who originally walked the gauntlet, one of whom is the vampire that Alex can’t seem to defeat, Linus Reiter.

My biggest issue with Hell Bent was the introduction of demons and vampires to the trilogy when the Grays, the societies and the real-world implications of magic were more than enough to make a great story. Thankfully, even though stopping Golgarot is the main plot of Dead Beat, it doesn’t feel like the most important part of the story.

Dead Beat introduces the Lethe board president, Alban Reed, who knows that Alex is a Wheelwalker and threatens Alex and her mom if Alex doesn’t make a new nexus for him. Alban Reed embodies our real-world villains, the brotherhood of white men with too much money and power that they use to manipulate our social, economic and political institutions and control the lives of others. I did not have any concern about Alex defeating Golgarot while I was reading Dead Beat. What I was wondering was how Alex and her friends were going to defeat the Alban Reeds of the world aa well as the Lethe board that is very much aware that the societies are murdering people with unsanctioned rituals.

So I could have done without the demons, but there was so much more to Dead Beat that kept me entertained. I kind of feel like that maybe there was too much going on, though. Alex finally learns who her father is, but there is a huge amount of backstory there that gets brushed aside. There still wasn’t enough Grays, but at least the Bridegroom makes a reappearance. At the end of the day, Bardugo is an imaginative writer who has created this extremely fascinating world that I am kind of sad to leave behind. I appreciate the snarky humour that Bardugo injects into her writing and the antihero she has created with Alex Stern. Alex keeps calling herself trash because she is made to believe that just because she does not come from money, she is not as good as the other Yale students or the people behind Lethe, but while both sides get their hands dirty with murder, Alex is the one that cares about people and balancing the scales. The world could use more Alex Sterns.