Katabasis

A tale about grad students travelling to hell to save their advisor. I found this to be overall a lot of fun. As you might expect, lots of "grad school is hell" themes (but also ironically "hell itself is a school"), as well as getting at the purpose of suffering and questions of asceticism.

Overall, this novel is a linear trip through classic circles of hell. However, it feels more about the slow backstory reveal about Alice, Peter, and the many-flavored abusive nature of Professor Grimes.

If I had complaints, I would like to never see the prisoner's dilemma ever again. I do think also the ending is just a little too pat for my tastes, but it's a satisfying final confrontation all the same. It felt like there needed to be a little bit more depth or a little bit less length to the book, but I wonder if the structure made it hard to edit out particular parts of the journey.

This was the key to flourishing in graduate school. You could do anything if you were delusional.

I especially love the idea that magic requires self-delusion and therefore magicians are quite good at it. And because of this, Alice also believes in many things that are not true, such as meritocracy and professors caring about you.

Katabasis was a fun ride - "what if Virgil were a Cambridge magic scholar"

It's mostly a story about the characters' abusive relationships with their advisor and with life in general. I thought it fell apart a little in the middle where it turned out that the characters had done meticulous, exhaustive research up to a point, and then were like "meh, it'll work out somehow" after that. The ending felt very hollywood, but that's maybe forgivable for a "to hell and back" story 🤷