I could not get more than halfway through R. F. Kuang’s Babel. The world and magic system were amazing; I could not stay interested in all the character personal drama. Thus I was hesitant to try Katabasis. I finally did though, as I have some experience in the world of higher education as well as the Classical background to appreciate that title reference. On the other hand, that didn’t help The Secret History; hated that, mostly because of the stupid unlikeable character drama. Tragedy in the classical sense depends on pity and fear for the MC, which isn’t possible if all of the options are dumb.
Katabasis was thankfully not dumb. There is plenty of drama, but it’s largely contained to one or two characters, who know it’s drama and are trying to work through their own stuff before the ‘them’ stuff. The premise is potentially comedic (in the sense of the Divine Comedy): two graduate students attempt the journey through the underworld to locate their recently deceased advisor in order to secure letters of recommendation. The Ivory Tower bubble and blinders are very clear when we first encounter Alice; maybe less so with Peter, but mostly because we don’t get his story until later on. She’s the stereotypical underdog overachiever with some serious personal baggage. As far as Alice can tell, Peter is almost a tag-along but they probably will need each other so she puts up with him. They’re rivals with some sort of to be revealed history (obviously).
Hell as it turns out is, at least for the first few regions, structured much like a campus, with the quad acting as the holding area for the undecided souls, Pride is the library, Desire is the Student Center, and (eventually) Dis seems to be the dorms mixed up wit ha few other bits. The general representation makes for an interesting story, but really works as satire if you’ve spent time in that kind of academic setting in Alice and Peter’s context. Along the way, Alice and Peter bicker and theorize (based sometimes on real concepts, including clever use of syllogism, and the ‘pizza anus’ (not a real term, but the spatial theory it represents)), and kind of start dealing with their own and each other’s issues. About halfway through, Hell gets less definable regionally and geographically, there’s a new outside threat besides just trying to survive and find Professor Grimes, Alice and Peter get separated, and the whole story just stalls for a while (actually that basically starts during the episode in which Alice and Peter have to split up).
Alice might need to be by herself to work through some (more) personal trauma that’s on the one hand very real, but also pretty stereotypical. The saving grace for that aspect is when Alice finally gets to see Professor Grimes What happens with King Yama and the Professor and eventually Peter as well is sort of rushed and almost wish fulfilling, but it’s also cathartic (which is correct for tragedy, which technically this isn’t, and even though comedy can do that too, but the pity and fear are actually pretty much key, and that’s tragedy). Classically, the comic ending is the one in which everyone gets what they deserve, and that generally seems to be the case, so I guess it works out in the end.
