Katabasis

Review

2025.09.15 So a postgraduate girl named Alice accidentally kills her professor and as a result of that decides to go to hell to retrieve his soul so that he can write her a letter of recommendation for a job because that’s all she wants and to the extent that she even sacrificed half of her lifetime so 50 years for this because she would rather be Smart and academically successful than live to be an old person with a failing memory, which is crazy unhinged, but I respect it and coincidentally enough this other post Peter joins her in their pursuit to hell so they’re on their way to hell and this is basically the story of Rachel Barry and Finn Hudson because at but it was as if they were enemies first because she’s always fine for him, but she thought that he was the one who wouldn’t give her the time of day and now she’s cold and icy because of it, especially to him, but in this hell landscape there now Gaining admiration for each other again and they go through all these different trials, but not in the way of Dante‘s inferno just in the way of because they still have some humanity and in this whole universe, magic exists and pentagrams but because of that because it’s like basic magic, they’re able to use like a math and physics theories to create things or stop things from happening like they use this math proof that you can essentially say any thing is true by saying if S equals P then S has to be true because of that statement so basically use it to heal his wound because they say he just doesn’t have a wound anymore and that becomes true so that’s Crazy and our long as a genius coming up with stuff like this because in reality it’s a lot closer than fantasy elements that most people write about so it’s going really well so far with how they’re progressing, but she accidentally somehow has a split personality where she can’t distinguish if dreams are reality or reality or dreams because she remembers everything with exquisite detail because her professor put a pentagram on her because she wanted to be the best and be a teacher suck up like this is definitely slightly Lolita territory, but not quite And because of this, she thinks she picks the option to save Peter, but in reality she picks the option to sacrifice him, but she doesn’t really mean it but now he hates her because of it and they have to keep going through hell and now there hating each other doing so.

2025.09.17 Finally finished. Peter sacrifices himself to save Alice and so for a while Alice is on her way out and Peter dies for real. She passes by scholars who she eventually wanted to become, but she realizes all they are are just theorems and quandaries, and it isn’t worth it after all and as she’s passing more things in hell, it gives her clarity about all she wants to do is go home and if she can save Peter Eventually Alice makes her wake back to professor grimes and she realizes whatever she was gonna get from him wasn’t worth it and how pathetic he truly was so she sacrifices him for Peter and they are now finally reunited and get to be together back in the real world.

Overall, I really liked this book and it kept me hooked to keep reading it until the end.

Rating : ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5

Notable Quotes:

• “This was the key to flourishing in graduate school. You could do anything if you were delusional.”
• “Now all that was gone. This was the unbelievable fact of death. This was a paradox her mind could not accept, that someone could be in the world one moment and simply be gone the next.”
• “I feel sometimes it is so difficult to be conscious.”
• “How wonderful, truly, to have a friend whose silence you adored.”
• “Those who had nothing substantial to brag about bragged the loudest.”
• “But of course it was worth it. It was the only thing that was worth it. She had been fortunate to find a vocation that made irrelevant everything else, and anything that made you forget to eat, drink, sleep, or maintain basic relationships—anything that made you so inhumanly excited—had to be pursued with single-minded devotion.”
• “Believe the lie - trust the lie - it is the only thing you have. Stay in the cage and paint the walls. If you do not, then you must quit; but if you can delude yourself long enough, then your delusions might very well come true.”
• “She took one glance and instantly her thinking mind shut down, as it always did when confronted with a lot of numbers. “You need to explain that to me like I’m five.”