Katabasis (Hardback)

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang is a dark, brainy fantasy about ambition, rivalry, and the very literal lengths people will go to for academic success.

Alice Law has one goal: become a great mind in Magick. She’s bled for it, sacrificed for it, and clung to it hard enough to let the rest of her life fall away. Working with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the most celebrated magician in the world, is meant to be the reward.

Then Grimes dies in a magical accident that might be Alice’s fault.

Now he’s in Hell, and Alice is going after him, because his recommendation could decide her future and she refuses to let death get in the way of everything she’s worked for. The only problem is her rival Peter Murdoch has the exact same plan, and neither of them is willing to lose.

Armed with chalk, pentagrams, and a lot of unresolved academic trauma, they descend into the underworld guided by old stories that may not help them at all. Hell isn’t what they expect, Magick doesn’t solve everything, and something buried in their shared past could make them allies, or finish them.