Katabasis

Sometimes the premise of a book is just so good that there's no way not to read it – like the story of a downtrodden Cambridge student who's about to finish her PhD in analytical magic when her supervisor dies in a lab accident. Obviously her only sensible option is to travel to Hell to bring him back – after all, how else is she going to graduate?

R.F. Kuang's novel sets this premise up brilliantly, and delivers on it well. The text is filled with delightful references to everything from high Academia to every mathematical and logical paradox, to a broad swathe through all manner of cultures' views on what the afterlife may or may not look like. As someone with a taste bordering on the eclectic, I found this a tour-de-force of intertextual references that was a real treat.

On the down side, the prose itself is perhaps a little bland and the narrative gets a bit lost in the middle – so while I thoroughly enjoyed Katabasis, it's not a book that everyone is likely to appreciate as much as I did. That said, it remains a thoroughly original work and one that really resonated with me.