Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams.
There are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it ... We’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered ... A more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier work ... Hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes.
A rich combination of dream vision, acerbic satire, intellectual playfulness, and human drama, Katabasis should more than satisfy readers who enjoyed Kuang’s earlier novels.
An infernal twist on the campus farce ... Kuang isn’t subtle. She doesn’t allude; she indicts ... This is a novel that believes in ideas – just not the cages we build for them ... Far from perfect ... But none of that really matters – especially if you have a score to settle.
