After Alice Law accidentally causes the death of Professor Grimes, her academic advisor at Cambridge, she figures that the only way she'll get the recommendations and accolades she was hoping for (he's a REALLY BIG NAME in the field) is to retrieve him from Hell. Which is something that isn't beyond the realm of possibility when you're a student of magic like Alice is. Except right as she plans to step through the pentagram into Hell, Peter Murdoch, her biggest competition for Grimes' recommendations, hops in to join in the quest. Soon, the unlikely pair is struggling through the Fields of Asphodel and the eight courts of hell in search for their advisor.
Kuang has an incredible ability to write fantastical academia that really rings true, and Katabasis is no exception — the ever-increasing stress, the nonstop work on hard-to-explain theses, the poor diet that does nothing but keep the stomach from grumbling too much, the self-important and misogynistic behavior of tenured professors — it's all there, only this time with magic. While the travels through Hell are intriguing (especially because it appears to Alice and Peter as a college campus), the story sometimes gets bogged down with discussions of theory, logic, and paradoxes, which made my brain hurt. Still, for fans of Kuang's previous works, it's definitely worth a read.
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