Katabasis

A Novel

560 pages

English language

Published 2025 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-06-344624-3
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Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.

Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick. But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.

But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.

That’s if they can agree on anything.

Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?

4 editions

delightful, wicked adventure through hell and academia

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In my review of the author's previous work Babel, I surmised she was best at writing young female characters, which I think is reinforced by this book which has obvious similarities (young Asian-American/British studying magic at Cambridge/Oxford), but now I think she is best when writing satire. In tone, this book really feels more like her previous previous book, Yellowface, which skewered writing (authors, publishers, academia...) with a main character who was an emotional trainwreck. Babel was very serious and informative and took me a year to finish. This book is about hell and academia with a main character who's an emotional trainwreck and I cranked through it in a couple of weeks. Also, there's a cat.