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Katabasis
Not yet published
Expected 26 Aug 25Win a free print copy of this book!
4 days and 03:50:21
100 copies available
U.S. only
Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:
The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:
The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication August 26, 2025
144 people are currently reading
159k people want to read
About the author
R.F. Kuang
21 books69.7k followersRebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History, among others. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 413 reviews
Shelved as 'future-releases'
December 19, 2023I can barely find anything on this book, but there's a tiktok that shows the author talking about the book, and she says, "It's called Katabasis, which is the Greek term for the descent into the underworld narrative. It's about two Ph. D. students who are magicians who travel to hell to rescue the soul of their dead adviser, who died in a freak magic accident, so that he can come back to life and write their recommendation letters and become not just magicians, but tenure track magicians. And it's also a love story. They start off as rivals and end up realizing that they're in love with each other."
Sounds amazing, and I need it!!!
Tiktok and Instagram
Sounds amazing, and I need it!!!
Tiktok and Instagram
Want to read
December 30, 2024mother writes = I read
but august 2025??!!???
but august 2025??!!???
Want to read
February 12, 2025Is it August yet?
Want to read
February 27, 2025Just finished my sobbing session bc they approved my ARC!!!
——
Can this please be 1000 pages long???
——
Can this please be 1000 pages long???
Want to read
March 2, 2025Can we just stop what we're doing to admire this beautiful cover 🙏🏻 it's gonna look so good on my shelf!!
__
"Alice Law, you naughty girl. You're trying to go to hell."
Just give it to me please 😭 🙏🏻
__
"Alice Law, you naughty girl. You're trying to go to hell."
Just give it to me please 😭 🙏🏻
Want to read
January 25, 2025rebecca saying this is a love story is insane 😍 i love romance 😍😍 can’t wait for the best rivals to lovers yayayay 😍😍😍🥰
this is a joke i know it’s not a romance that’s what i mean
——
ms kuang i am seated and ready for all the intellectuality you will throw at me
——
ms kuang i am seated and ready for all the intellectuality you will throw at me
Read
December 12, 2024Hell is The Academy. I had an inkling of this truth from my stint in grad school... and my quick departure post MA. After experiencing the politics, infighting, and the whole "competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small" thing for myself, I knew it wasn't for me. But Kuang has lived the majority of her life in academia, and she has something to say about that. Starting with Babel (and arguable rearing its nascent head in Poppy War), she has staked her ground in dark academia. And similar in tone to those other works, this isn't soft prep school kids listening to yacht rock and committing privilege on drunken hijinks weekends, this is gritty, brutal, cutthroat semi-feral grad students at elite universities doing what must be done to survive. Frat boys named Topher could never.
The plot is straightforward: Two competing academics (or are they lovers? Enemies? Both? Neither?) travel to Hell to retrieve their advisor who dies in a botched magic ritual. Not that their advisor doesn't belong in Hell, as we quickly learn, but then, they're not retrieving him out of any beneficence, but for their own dark reasons. And in a nod to Dante and Eliot and probably lots of other artists and thinkers who have taken us on a journey through the netherworld (and whose references I just don't recognize), our anti-heroes use their learning and wits and eventually their hearts to discover that maybe there is more to life than post-grad.
There are moments of high action, but many more moments of philosophy and theoretical math
(which are not my fave, but see: quit grad school after my MA). Overall, though, it works. This book is a balance of more literary deep thinking, pop commercial fun, and outrageous audacity - which I entirely applaud - because Kuang uniquely and authentically writes the Academy with the right mix of love and rage. This won't be the book for everyone, but for those to whom it does speak, it will be a catharsis.
I received an ARC which in no way impacted my review.
The plot is straightforward: Two competing academics (or are they lovers? Enemies? Both? Neither?) travel to Hell to retrieve their advisor who dies in a botched magic ritual. Not that their advisor doesn't belong in Hell, as we quickly learn, but then, they're not retrieving him out of any beneficence, but for their own dark reasons. And in a nod to Dante and Eliot and probably lots of other artists and thinkers who have taken us on a journey through the netherworld (and whose references I just don't recognize), our anti-heroes use their learning and wits and eventually their hearts to discover that maybe there is more to life than post-grad.
There are moments of high action, but many more moments of philosophy and theoretical math
(which are not my fave, but see: quit grad school after my MA). Overall, though, it works. This book is a balance of more literary deep thinking, pop commercial fun, and outrageous audacity - which I entirely applaud - because Kuang uniquely and authentically writes the Academy with the right mix of love and rage. This won't be the book for everyone, but for those to whom it does speak, it will be a catharsis.
I received an ARC which in no way impacted my review.
Want to read
March 25, 2024academic rivals to lovers set in hell?!?! oh she is going to serve so hard.
February 15, 2025
Welcome to my review for Katabasis. This is officially my favorite R.F. Kuang book, an undoubtable 5 star (6 ??), and a shoe in for making my top books of the year list.
It’s not really my style to hold back in a review, seems like people tend to put a pin in sharing their full thoughts until closer to publication date (August) but I shan’t do that (unless it’s literally illegal lmk I’ll take this down).
Katabasis follows two Cambridge graduate students as they journey through hell to rescue their recently departed advisor. Professor Grimes is the shining key to opening the doors of Alice and Peter’s academic dreams, but can they put aside their rivalry and complicated feelings towards each other to bring him back from the dead and survive the underworld themselves?
Such a fun premise and with a delectable and harrowing !! execution. I loved every single detail, let’s get into it.
Characters
The character work in this is genuinely fabulous. At the most surface level you’ve got a black cat golden retriever dynamic at play but my god is it so much more. Alice mf Law. Gurlllllll.
She is an academic weapon, an underdog, a genius. She’s scrappy though and is not afraid of sacrificing her morals to get ahead. The internalized misogyny that pervades her internal monologue my goddd. Alice is the type who rolls her eyes at the cliche of the disadvantaged / mistreated woman in academia. “Feminism” is embarrassing to Alice, the notion of fighting for her own space in the world so exhausting, so impossible, that she belittles and ignores the concept instead.
“That the academy was sexist was such a boring truism that Alice was no longer disturbed by the fact.”
Rebecca also just knows how to write a protagonist who is totally losing it. Have you ever been able to feel a character’s hunger? Their obsession? Their rising instability? Have you ever felt so deeply intertwined with a character’s psyche that you can recognize their toxic thinking but you can’t help but spiral with them, gaslight yourself, and gloriously hit rock bottom. For me the answer became a decided Y.E.S. with Alice’s portrayal. Her character development and arc was as a result, incredibly satisfying.
I won’t say as much about Peter, half the charm of this story is viewing and learning him through the eyes of Alice. Trust that you will adore (& also want to violently shake) this pathetic brilliant lil bean pole of a man. The romance between Peter and Alice is a SUBPLOT guys. But goodness was every detail scrumptious. Chapter TWENTY TWOOOOO. What an insane pair they make. Obsessed.
“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved? For it tickled Alice to hear Peter make observations about her; to announce facts she’d never noticed about herself.”
World Building / Magic system
Dante would be sat if he read this. Listennn you do not need to read Dante’s Inferno before diving into Katabasis. But it is a delight to smile knowingly at all the references if you do!! I was enraptured by Kuang’s take on each circle of hell. Such an amazing display of research infused creativity and it felt like she truly had a blast coming up with things. The chalk based magic system rooted in logic? Plsssss. The “intellectual humor” is so good in this too and the pretentious person in me ate up every reference as if I too could make passing jokes like a Cambridge scholar:
“I'm not sure the Furies have read Foucault," said the chairman. "You must consider your audience."
Pacing
In classic R.F. Kuang fashion, Rebecca isn’t afraid to show you she’s an extremely well educated genius of a writer. Katabasis has that same research packed density that Babel did except I found myself eating up every single detail (Babel occasionally felt bogged down / dragged for me… as smart as it was). There are many references to complex logic puzzles, academic theories, mythological texts, authors etc. Despite the weight of all the information Rebecca crammed into this story, I found the pacing excellent. It could be that I was just naturally interested in the subjects touched on… but I truly found this compulsively readable. In short I was eating out of the palm of Rebecca’s hand!!
Themes - some might consider theme sharing spoilery? Proceed accordingly <3
The term “dark academia” has kinda lost the plot but if this isn’t dark academia I don’t know what is. Katabasis is bursting with cynical wit but uses that wit to deliver a blistering critique of academia. I did genuinely felt sick to my stomach at certain parts.
Now it’s time to get cheesy. Aren’t the simplest truths always a bit cheesy though? Like the mind rejects the fact that a universal insight could possibly hold deep value just because it’s widespread.
To me this is a story about what really matters in life when you get down to it. And when you’re scraping the fiery pits of hell what “matters” becomes abundantly clear. What matters is not the prestige, the accolades, or the impossible achievement of “success”. It’s not beating out all your competition. It’s not being the smartest. It’s not climbing the ladder or playing the game or securing the job by whatever means. What matters is human connection. What matters is the big-small things. A shared cup of tea, a conversation between two likeminded people, a cinnamon bun, with raisins.
“Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living.”
But what is a life worth living? Katabasis pokes and stabs at this question in a way I quite enjoyed.
Now for a singular, tiny, honestly pathetic, critique if I may….
This is where we get into what some might consider SPOILER TERRITORY HELLO SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER HELLO BYEE READ THIS LATER WHEN YOUVE FINISHED THE BOOK. I do admittedly read a lot of romance… so there’s a few romance genre conventions that are engrained into my expectations. Because of this, the climax of the romantic subplot I found just a pinch wanting. Like I get Rebecca is not a spice writer and in no way was I expecting that kind of content from her, but I would have loved a drop more of physicality between Alice and Peter? Like they’re literally “forced proximity” stuck together in Hell and working through so much anger and frustration and so what do you mean you’re not going to have an explosive heated intellectual argument that devolves into a juvenile personal attacks that inevitably ends with them making out? The potential for that was so ripe but maybe that would have been too formulaic for miss Kuang. I’ll have to content myself with that adorable hug.
Regardless, 10/10 book, the people are going to love this.
It’s not really my style to hold back in a review, seems like people tend to put a pin in sharing their full thoughts until closer to publication date (August) but I shan’t do that (unless it’s literally illegal lmk I’ll take this down).
Katabasis follows two Cambridge graduate students as they journey through hell to rescue their recently departed advisor. Professor Grimes is the shining key to opening the doors of Alice and Peter’s academic dreams, but can they put aside their rivalry and complicated feelings towards each other to bring him back from the dead and survive the underworld themselves?
Such a fun premise and with a delectable and harrowing !! execution. I loved every single detail, let’s get into it.
Characters
The character work in this is genuinely fabulous. At the most surface level you’ve got a black cat golden retriever dynamic at play but my god is it so much more. Alice mf Law. Gurlllllll.
She is an academic weapon, an underdog, a genius. She’s scrappy though and is not afraid of sacrificing her morals to get ahead. The internalized misogyny that pervades her internal monologue my goddd. Alice is the type who rolls her eyes at the cliche of the disadvantaged / mistreated woman in academia. “Feminism” is embarrassing to Alice, the notion of fighting for her own space in the world so exhausting, so impossible, that she belittles and ignores the concept instead.
“That the academy was sexist was such a boring truism that Alice was no longer disturbed by the fact.”
Rebecca also just knows how to write a protagonist who is totally losing it. Have you ever been able to feel a character’s hunger? Their obsession? Their rising instability? Have you ever felt so deeply intertwined with a character’s psyche that you can recognize their toxic thinking but you can’t help but spiral with them, gaslight yourself, and gloriously hit rock bottom. For me the answer became a decided Y.E.S. with Alice’s portrayal. Her character development and arc was as a result, incredibly satisfying.
I won’t say as much about Peter, half the charm of this story is viewing and learning him through the eyes of Alice. Trust that you will adore (& also want to violently shake) this pathetic brilliant lil bean pole of a man. The romance between Peter and Alice is a SUBPLOT guys. But goodness was every detail scrumptious. Chapter TWENTY TWOOOOO. What an insane pair they make. Obsessed.
“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved? For it tickled Alice to hear Peter make observations about her; to announce facts she’d never noticed about herself.”
World Building / Magic system
Dante would be sat if he read this. Listennn you do not need to read Dante’s Inferno before diving into Katabasis. But it is a delight to smile knowingly at all the references if you do!! I was enraptured by Kuang’s take on each circle of hell. Such an amazing display of research infused creativity and it felt like she truly had a blast coming up with things. The chalk based magic system rooted in logic? Plsssss. The “intellectual humor” is so good in this too and the pretentious person in me ate up every reference as if I too could make passing jokes like a Cambridge scholar:
“I'm not sure the Furies have read Foucault," said the chairman. "You must consider your audience."
Pacing
In classic R.F. Kuang fashion, Rebecca isn’t afraid to show you she’s an extremely well educated genius of a writer. Katabasis has that same research packed density that Babel did except I found myself eating up every single detail (Babel occasionally felt bogged down / dragged for me… as smart as it was). There are many references to complex logic puzzles, academic theories, mythological texts, authors etc. Despite the weight of all the information Rebecca crammed into this story, I found the pacing excellent. It could be that I was just naturally interested in the subjects touched on… but I truly found this compulsively readable. In short I was eating out of the palm of Rebecca’s hand!!
Themes - some might consider theme sharing spoilery? Proceed accordingly <3
The term “dark academia” has kinda lost the plot but if this isn’t dark academia I don’t know what is. Katabasis is bursting with cynical wit but uses that wit to deliver a blistering critique of academia. I did genuinely felt sick to my stomach at certain parts.
Now it’s time to get cheesy. Aren’t the simplest truths always a bit cheesy though? Like the mind rejects the fact that a universal insight could possibly hold deep value just because it’s widespread.
To me this is a story about what really matters in life when you get down to it. And when you’re scraping the fiery pits of hell what “matters” becomes abundantly clear. What matters is not the prestige, the accolades, or the impossible achievement of “success”. It’s not beating out all your competition. It’s not being the smartest. It’s not climbing the ladder or playing the game or securing the job by whatever means. What matters is human connection. What matters is the big-small things. A shared cup of tea, a conversation between two likeminded people, a cinnamon bun, with raisins.
“Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living.”
But what is a life worth living? Katabasis pokes and stabs at this question in a way I quite enjoyed.
Now for a singular, tiny, honestly pathetic, critique if I may….
This is where we get into what some might consider SPOILER TERRITORY HELLO SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER HELLO BYEE READ THIS LATER WHEN YOUVE FINISHED THE BOOK. I do admittedly read a lot of romance… so there’s a few romance genre conventions that are engrained into my expectations. Because of this, the climax of the romantic subplot I found just a pinch wanting. Like I get Rebecca is not a spice writer and in no way was I expecting that kind of content from her, but I would have loved a drop more of physicality between Alice and Peter? Like they’re literally “forced proximity” stuck together in Hell and working through so much anger and frustration and so what do you mean you’re not going to have an explosive heated intellectual argument that devolves into a juvenile personal attacks that inevitably ends with them making out? The potential for that was so ripe but maybe that would have been too formulaic for miss Kuang. I’ll have to content myself with that adorable hug.
Regardless, 10/10 book, the people are going to love this.
Want to read
January 9, 2025WE HAVE A COVER! Again. It comes and goes so like...enjoy it again in case it goes. Kuang is once again blessed with a good cover and I kind of love that it looks like the art on a 90s computer game box (the one that has no relation to the actual gameplay art).
The release of this book is going to cause so much mass joy on here you'll be able to see it from space or something.
The release of this book is going to cause so much mass joy on here you'll be able to see it from space or something.
Want to read
July 27, 2024if i had a nickel for every time one of my most anticipated releases was about dark academia enemies to lovers college students entering hell, i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's kind of weird it happened twice
Shelved as 'unreleased'
February 12, 2025leaving a star everytime i think about this book
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
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Want to read
February 18, 2025THE COVER!!!!
i’ll sell everything for this NOW
i’ll sell everything for this NOW
Want to read
April 29, 2024him: is it big?
me: no it’s Katabasis by RF Kuang HarperVoyager Kindle Edition (August 2025)
me: no it’s Katabasis by RF Kuang HarperVoyager Kindle Edition (August 2025)
Want to read
January 11, 2025SHE'S WRITING A NEW BOOK. and the publication date is almost a year from now but technically it's in january but it's january first so that's basically december and december goes by so quick because it's christmastime, so in reality it's in november. however, november is fall and fall is always the season that goes by the fastest, so it's in august. can't wait for this book to release in the summertime!
Want to read
December 31, 2024miss kuang just said, and i quote, that "this is the most emotionally difficult book i've ever written." WHAT?
Want to read
March 20, 2024RIVALS TO LOVERS IN HELL
Want to read
August 5, 2024Going to hell to get a promised recommendation letter is So Real.
Want to read
January 3, 2025this will be the BEST thing of 2025.
Want to read
May 1, 2024how am i supposed to live in the moment when this book comes out in 2025
(i read the poppy war and i'm now convinced everything r.f. kuang is a masterpiece)
(i read the poppy war and i'm now convinced everything r.f. kuang is a masterpiece)
Want to read
December 31, 2024In my 2022 review of Babel, I wrote: "R. F. Kuang has me stuck in a never-ending cycle of delusion and disappointment. I keep convincing myself that I’m going to love her next book, and she makes fun of me by delivering something that doesn’t remotely match my expectations. Then she publishes a new book, and the cycle repeats."
Two years later, it looks like I'm going to get played all over again, because the premise of Katabasis is just too good to resist. At this point, I really only have myself to blame.
See you in August!
Two years later, it looks like I'm going to get played all over again, because the premise of Katabasis is just too good to resist. At this point, I really only have myself to blame.
See you in August!
Want to read
February 5, 2025big day for r.f. kuang stans (me) that love anything academia-related.
COVER REVEALED!!!
COVER REVEALED!!!
Want to read
April 15, 2024is it too soon to say this is my favorite book ever 😔 the synopsis alone is enough it’s not i’m foaming at the mouth
Want to read
March 24, 2024academic rivalry is the only thing keeping me alive (and the prospect of reading this book perhaps)
Want to read
February 19, 2025academic rivals to lovers traveling to heck and back together for my birthday wow :]
➛ Babel: An Arcane History ★★★★★
➛ Yellowface ★★★★★
1.) The Poppy War ★★★★
2.) The Dragon Republic ★★★★★
2.5) The Drowning Faith ★★★★★
3.) The Burning God ★★★★★
➛ Babel: An Arcane History ★★★★★
➛ Yellowface ★★★★★
1.) The Poppy War ★★★★
2.) The Dragon Republic ★★★★★
2.5) The Drowning Faith ★★★★★
3.) The Burning God ★★★★★
Want to read
December 30, 2024⊹ pre-release.
⤿ releases ( 8┊28┊25 )
very, very happy about receiving the honor of getting heartbroken with none other than my anchor bond !!
⊹ cover.
⤿ ( 12┊30┊24 )
cover so tea i think my heart skipped a beat
the premise drop... alicepeter i am SO excited to meet you. also a 560-page romance?? miss kuang wrote this with the slowburn fans in mind.
⤿ releases ( 8┊28┊25 )
very, very happy about receiving the honor of getting heartbroken with none other than my anchor bond !!
⊹ cover.
⤿ ( 12┊30┊24 )
cover so tea i think my heart skipped a beat
the premise drop... alicepeter i am SO excited to meet you. also a 560-page romance?? miss kuang wrote this with the slowburn fans in mind.
⊹ "but hell is not like the storybooks say, aagick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in alice and peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom."
Want to read
December 27, 2023i’m so ready for this to become my whole personality
Want to read
February 7, 2025THIS COVER ATE AND FREAKING DEVOURED‼️
— ( ♟️ ) release date: august 28th, 2025 ⊹
MOTHER WRITES, I READ!!
— ( ♟️ ) release date: august 28th, 2025 ⊹
MOTHER WRITES, I READ!!
March 2, 2025
If nothing else, Kuang is always capable of surprising me. I did not expect to love Babel’s hefty prose, nor did I expect to find Yellowface as unfunny as it was. Katabasis is unique in that it is bereft of anything particularly good or bad. It is nothing.
Here, Kuang asks the question, what if every account of Hell was based on real experiences? What if Dante really traveled to the nine circles? What if Aeneas actually crossed the river styx? What if you read an entire book solely dedicated to the author showing off how much they read?
A full half of this book (more, to be honest) is nothing more than Kuang desperately trying to remind the reader that she is smart. She knows T.S. Elliot and Michael Huemer. She understands Blaise Pascal and August Ferdinand Möbius’ theories. Nietzsche and John Bancroft? Child’s play. When characters aren’t busy info dumping about a dead philosopher (or mathematician, or logician, or theorist, or just some random guy), the narrator does it for them. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is not a case like Babel, where she included quite a bit of context and explanations for languages, histories, and general events. Here, the entire narrative comes to a screeching halt every five seconds so she can explain Schrödinger‘s cat to us. It quite literally reads like a textbook where the actual storyline is only added in to stop you from putting it down. It is so boring.
This is exactly the type of book that will have people online claiming they were “too dumb” to understand it (this is, somehow, used as a compliment!). I am here to tell you that you are not in any way lacking in intelligence if you cannot understand the insane amount of slop in here. It is not a positive attribute that the author threw together a bunch of random academia bullshit in the same way that millennials insert Harry Potter references into their books. Frankly, once you look past all of the philosophy, the writing is unbelievably juvenile.
It actually shocked me quite a bit. My main praise for Babel was the writing. I thought, even if Kuang isn’t the most elaborate with her prose, it was still a beautiful love letter to languages. Katabasis reads like a Tumblr post.
Consider: “You know very well what a heap is. You know it when you see it. It is like porn.” (What???)
“You couldn’t just decide you didn’t like being punished and nope back out into Limbo.” (Nope as a verb???)
Not a quote, but worth noting that the Hell described in this book is not only unimaginative but actively irrelevant to the course of events.
The characters, whom I haven’t brought up at all until now, are insufferable. This certainly tracks with Kuang’s record, as she is really quite good at writing frustrating protagonists (this is a compliment). I liked Alice! Peter, not so much.
Feels a bit ironic that I said there wasn’t anything either good or bad when I’ve gone on for so long about the writing, but I do want to make it clear that I do not actually feel any way about this book. It is strangely written with an alright story that is interesting at times and, more often than not, uninspired. It is merely fine. Not great, like The Poppy War. Not awful, like The Burning God. I will forget I read it in a week.
Review in exchange for an advanced reader’s copy.
Here, Kuang asks the question, what if every account of Hell was based on real experiences? What if Dante really traveled to the nine circles? What if Aeneas actually crossed the river styx? What if you read an entire book solely dedicated to the author showing off how much they read?
A full half of this book (more, to be honest) is nothing more than Kuang desperately trying to remind the reader that she is smart. She knows T.S. Elliot and Michael Huemer. She understands Blaise Pascal and August Ferdinand Möbius’ theories. Nietzsche and John Bancroft? Child’s play. When characters aren’t busy info dumping about a dead philosopher (or mathematician, or logician, or theorist, or just some random guy), the narrator does it for them. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is not a case like Babel, where she included quite a bit of context and explanations for languages, histories, and general events. Here, the entire narrative comes to a screeching halt every five seconds so she can explain Schrödinger‘s cat to us. It quite literally reads like a textbook where the actual storyline is only added in to stop you from putting it down. It is so boring.
This is exactly the type of book that will have people online claiming they were “too dumb” to understand it (this is, somehow, used as a compliment!). I am here to tell you that you are not in any way lacking in intelligence if you cannot understand the insane amount of slop in here. It is not a positive attribute that the author threw together a bunch of random academia bullshit in the same way that millennials insert Harry Potter references into their books. Frankly, once you look past all of the philosophy, the writing is unbelievably juvenile.
It actually shocked me quite a bit. My main praise for Babel was the writing. I thought, even if Kuang isn’t the most elaborate with her prose, it was still a beautiful love letter to languages. Katabasis reads like a Tumblr post.
Consider: “You know very well what a heap is. You know it when you see it. It is like porn.” (What???)
“You couldn’t just decide you didn’t like being punished and nope back out into Limbo.” (Nope as a verb???)
Not a quote, but worth noting that the Hell described in this book is not only unimaginative but actively irrelevant to the course of events.
The characters, whom I haven’t brought up at all until now, are insufferable. This certainly tracks with Kuang’s record, as she is really quite good at writing frustrating protagonists (this is a compliment). I liked Alice! Peter, not so much.
Feels a bit ironic that I said there wasn’t anything either good or bad when I’ve gone on for so long about the writing, but I do want to make it clear that I do not actually feel any way about this book. It is strangely written with an alright story that is interesting at times and, more often than not, uninspired. It is merely fine. Not great, like The Poppy War. Not awful, like The Burning God. I will forget I read it in a week.
Review in exchange for an advanced reader’s copy.
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February 27, 2025did anybody see this and totally freak out?! i haven't even read any RF Kuang books yet 😅😅
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