Hell Bent
They say you should never meet your heroes. It’s a trope for a reason. (And one which one character mutters about another in the Wednesday series…. no spoilers.) Luckily we haven’t had to live that trope yet.
Every time we’ve gone to meet one of our favorite writers, we have been amazed and more. Leigh Bardugo is no exception. For the launch of Hell Bent, she had a Q & A/meet and greet organized by Skylight Books, which happened to be where Bardugo held her first book signing a decade ago.
I confess that I haven’t read Six of Crows. When there is a lot of hype surrounding a series, I tend to shy away sometimes. Both Mini Me and Little Lion are big fans of Bardugo’s works. LL just discovered Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom this year and to say she was hooked is an understatement.
So of course we trekked to Barnsdall theater (near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Los Angeles) on a dark but moonlit night.
“Writing is not therapy. Therapy is what we need because we are writers. ”
Bardugo was charming, sarcastic, charismatic and more. She led with a short discussion about visiting Yale and the history of New Haven. While I didn’t go to Yale, I did attend a summer session there one summer in college. My twin took an art class at the local community college, and I took an English class just for fun. We rented a small one room studio at the first floor of a broken up Victorian house. There were built-in shelfs and the tiniest kitchen I’d ever seen, basically built into the hallway that led to the bathroom. Because my twin was vegan at the time, we loaded up on groceries (nut loafs and lentils and sandwich things) and bottled waters at the local grocery store. We had no rental car after our first few days so we rollerbladed and took the bus everywhere. If you were in New Haven during the summer of ‘95, you would have seen two filipino/chinese 21 year olds rollerblading in the humidity of New Haven streets.
I have very happy memories of that summer, especially as my twin and I attended different colleges (UC Santa Cruz and UCLA, respectively) so the summer was a sister reunion of sorts. I even vividly remember the 4th of July parade and the men in tiny cars with Fez hats a la the 11th Doctor.
And the library there was a dream. A gothic dream, with beautiful architecture and (at the time) rows and rows of library index cards plus glorious air conditioning and a section in which you were allowed to eat.
We wandered around the town, walking/rollerblading by the medical school where our dad once taught, figuring out what we could order from the tiny Japanese restaurant nearby, discovering the discrepancies between the lower income areas of New Haven and the seemingly stuffy Ivy League campus radius.
And I enjoyed every minute of my English class, taught by a fabulous grad student who I can still picture but can’t recall her name.
The fact that Bardugo set Ninth House and Hell Bent in New Haven alone is reason for me to pick up the duo.
But, Mr. Bookworm says I should start with Six of Crows so I will. We have several copies in our house—now newly personalized. Bardugo patiently met with the over 250 people who attended the book launch. She entertained audiences while answering questions that she must get asked at every single book signing, but never seemed to tire of her fans’ enthusiasm.
The first pages of Hell Bent are shown below. Since I attended the Hell Bent Q & A, I feel like Alex and Darlington are acquaintances of mine already and I can’t wait to get to know them better. First to befriend some crows….
Doctor Bookworm Asks
Have you met any of your favorite authors?
I started the First Lines and First Pages series in November 2017 as a homage to National Novel Writing Month. In the tradition of one of my previous writing groups, I decided to 'share' the first lines of successful middle grade and YA novels in order to figure out what made them successful first pages. I posted as many as I could in November, and now post the series on the first of every month (or close to it). Please let me know in the comment section if you have any First Pages recommendations.
