Katabasis
Beautiful edge printing on the Waterstones special edition hardback made me buy this book!
A realist fantasy in which magick is just another academic discipline. Our heroes, Alice and Peter reluctantly combine forces to visit Hell in an attempt to recover the soul of their post-graduate supervisor Professor Grimes who died in confusing circumstances.
Hell, it turns out, looks in many places like a campus and lots of the punishments resemble academic tasks and debates (“define good”). It is quite an amusing conceit and we do get a genuine insight into what motivates academics and researchers, Rebecca is clearly writing from experience here!
There are unexpected revelations from both Peter and Alice (told in flashback, as the books starts as we enter Hell) and a satisfying ending. It is a long book and perhaps the weakest is where Alice is travelling the upper levels of hell on her own and we move away from the campus setting to a more generic place of unpleasantness, but it still held my attention and I was keen to see how it ended.
A clever book, mostly well written and a very worthwhile read.