#obviously alex held darlington's soul without consuming it but she was trying NOT to do it

[kazz-brekker]

it’s interesting to me that for a series that promises an unflinching look at the reality of a world where the wealthy have access to magic and don’t care about the negative impact that it has on other people (and i think does largely do a good job of showing that!), the ninth house series seems to sort of … pull its punches when it comes to the suffering the characters endure at the climax of each story? recently reread ninth house for the first time in years followed by hell bent, and the scene where the souls that marguerite belbalm consumed then consuming her felt sort of. ikd. optimistic? after all the emphasis on “consumption of souls” heavily implying the idea that those people had totally ceased to exist and had only become fuel for belbalm to draw upon it was a bit confusing to learn they were actually all still around and could take vengeance on belbalm. and then in hell bent tripp turns into a demon instead of completely dying which is probably not, like, a super fun experience, but he seems to almost completely maintain his personality from before so it almost feels like nothing major really happened to him, as opposed to linus reiter, who seemingly was utterly eradicated by the demon who took his place. idk. both of those things kind of made me go “this feels like it is breaking the established rules of the universe in order to make things not be as bad as they would actually be.” i don’t know if there’s a bigger conclusion from this, i’m just thinking about it since i recently finished hell bent.