Katabasis

"Let’s get two things out of the way first: Katabasis is the Greek term for stories recounting journeys to the underworld, and the real hell is grad school. R.F. Kuang’s dense novel follows two rival doctoral students (of magic!) who follow their adviser into literal hell. Following the threads of tales like Dante’s Inferno, Alice Law and Peter Murdoch journey through each circle of the damned, which for them mirrors the college campus from whence they came. Though they face some genuine fire and brimstone demons, their real challenge is confronting their own notions of success and sacrifice and acknowledging the ways they’ve each been damaged by academia."

"Morag Sims and Will Watt provide fittingly erudite performances of this layered audiobook. Cambridge is home to a top-tier academic Magick program. When an esteemed professor is killed, star graduate students Alice and Peter embark on a quest to rescue him from hell. The satire on higher education is rich, yet the larger themes about one’s purpose and ideas are gripping. Sims captures studious yet vulnerable Alice, while Watt provides a foil in Peter, an academic star with secrets. (18.5 hrs)"