Katabasis by RF Kuang💙📚
Jodi Taylor #BookRecommendation
Alice, an ambitious post–grad student in the field of analytic magick, desperately needs the support of her tutor, Professor Grimes, to achieve the academic excellence she so desperately craves.
Unfortunately, he’s dead.
Even more unfortunately – it’s Alice’s fault.
Now she has no choice but to journey to Hell and bring him back.
I loved this book. It really touched a chord with me. At one point in the story, one of the characters, in an attempt to explain her academic imperative, rationalises her emotions by saying – Never mind the day-to-day distractions of everyday life. All she ever wanted was the unhampered time and resources to be able to think.
I’ve had many jobs and enjoyed all of them but one, but no matter how interesting or engrossing the task in hand, there was always a slight resentment that the paying job got in the way of what I considered to be proper thinking. Paying jobs stood between me and the ability to think the thoughts I wanted. They also stood between me and homelessness and starvation, of course, but to have the time to imagine, to dream, to create whole new worlds full of strange new people and places seemed, to me, a never-to-be-achieved luxury. I could only imagine having the time, one day, to take any number of these random elements and weave them into a story of my devising.
As you can see, I did get there in the end, and now I’m not only allowed to do all that but I’m actually encouraged to do it. And then they pay me for it. Time is many different things to many different people, but to me, it’s the luxury of finally being able to do the very thing I most enjoy.
Sorry – rambling again. Back to Katabasis. This is a fabulous story combining philosophy, logic, history, mythology, mathematics, magick, academia, and with a guided tour of Hell thrown in for free. Highly recommended.
Have you enjoyed this book too?