R. F. Kuang is a brilliant writer of Dark Academia, and this is her best book yet. Cambridge graduate student Alice Law has a problem. Her adviser died in a lab accident that may or may not have been her fault. Rather than do something drastic like switch advisors, Alice opts to journey into Hell to bring him back. No one has ever retrieved someone from the afterlife before, but Alice is a Cambridge student studying Magick under the great Professor Jacob Grimes (deceased). She is more than equipped to succeed where Orpheus failed. Unfortunately, her greatest rival, the effortlessly talented Peter Murdoch, catches her in the act and tags along. Alice is determined to beat him to the rescue and secure the best letter of recommendation in history. After all, Hell has no perils compared to the cut-throat world of the academic job market.

Alice and Peter move through a Hellscape of Greek myth, Chinese divinities, and Dante’s imagination, woven together into a cohesive, multicultural whole. Dante’s Inferno and the metaphor of college as hell give shape to Kuang’s world, but Hades’ River Lethe and Orpheus’s journey give her characters direction. This is a smart, compelling book. Alice and Peter are forever citing their sources, trying to one-up each other, and the characters are so well written that their fights are my favorite part of the book. Fans of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi will love this book, but I particularly recommend it for anyone thinking about going to graduate school. It isn’t always this bad, though, I promise. Katabasis is the ancient Greek term for a journey to the underworld and (importantly) back to the land of the living. As Alice and Peter learn, even if your advisor dies, there are alternative paths to graduation, and plenty of things to live for beyond academic success. – Krishni Burns