Katabasis

Something about this book didn’t quite hit for me, despite being nearly perfectly tailored to me as a person. This is a book about one woman’s inner journey coping with the abuses of academia through the lens of a journey through hell to resurrect her thesis advisor, who died very suddenly. Alice Law is an Analytical Magician, meaning she studies Magick through a linguistics perspective and her partner in the journey to hell is Peter, a Logician-Magician who shares the same late thesis advisor.

I think this book spoke to some very true feelings about being a woman in academia (in this case, Cambridge) and the world-building was well done. This is more of a character-heavy book than I initially thought I was getting into, so maybe that’s the reason for the disconnect I feel.