India, Nov. 9 -- Smart and ruthless, Alice Law is on the verge of defending her PhD dissertation on analytic magic and making it to the top of the proverbial ivory tower of academia. Only condition: she has to go through hell to get her advisor's letter of recommendation!

This is the all-seeing narrative of RF Kuang's Katabasis that informs us without a hint of irony, means an actual trip through the many courts of the underworld. Why? Professor Jacob Grimes is dead after a miscast spell goes horribly wrong, and Alice has taken it upon herself to retrieve his soul; and her chances of landing a tenured job. That is, until Grimes' other advisee - and Alice's academic rival - Peter Murdoch wrangles himself into her plans for the dangerous d...