I was mildly apprehensive about reading this because mixed audience reviews came out after I preordered it, but it was great. Kuang does character psychology very well, and that stood out more than anything else. Except for one chapter, the POV character is Alice, graduate student in Analytical Magick at Cambridge. When her piece-of-work advisor Jacob Grimes dies in an accident she blames herself for, she goes to Hell to fetch him—not out of selflessness but because she needs him to finish her degree. Her semi-rival and fellow Grimes advisee Peter accompanies her, to her dismay. Here, Hell seems to be a general underworld that most people (everyone?) goes to for eventual reincarnation.
Despite its premise, the novel is fairly light in the beginning. Alice and Peter bicker over the best way to go about finding Grimes and are intrigued by the way Hell presents itself to them. However, the book gets more intense as it progresses. We learn more about Alice and the baggage she is carrying: depression, internalized misogyny, suicidal ideation, ambition, need for validation, and denial. Any one of these could make her an unreliable narrator, which made her an engaging character as I parsed her interpretations from reality. I didn’t always agree with her, but I often felt for her.
The characters were a big draw but not the only one: the magic system Kuang creates is fascinating. Magick is based on paradoxes that temporarily trick people and even the natural world. This involves math, logic, and philosophy. Much of that went right over my head, which didn’t bother me because ultimately, this is a novel about psychology and how for Alice and Peter that intersected with an intense graduate academic setting. They had the drive and imposter syndrome that most grad students seem to have, and working with Grimes reinforced those attributes. I really enjoyed my time with this book. 4.5 stars.
