Title: Katabasis
Author: RF Kuang
Genre: Fantasy, dark academia
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: August 2025
Format: Hardcover
Length: 559 pages

Read if you like: dark academia, the cost of knowledge, an exploration of internalized misogyny, unlikeable characters and unreliable narrators, ambition without bounds, rivals to lovers

Rating: 

I’ve read every one of Kuang’s novels and I find each time it’s a fully engaging experience. Her books tend to be exceptionally heavy, intellectual, and they’re always making a statement, and Katabasis was no exception to this theme. 

When I think back on the experience of reading this book, it was a heavily introspective process. Between being able to geek out over the well-researched literary references to the structure and expectations of Hell itself, and the social commentary on the misogyny of academia, I was almost constantly taking time between chapters to just think about what Kuang was expressing. It was wholly consuming for the full duration of my time reading this book.

Katabasis was clever, heavy, and thoughtful. I really enjoyed this one and am still thinking about it months later. 

The Book Synopsis: Katabasis by RK Kuang

 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.

The Review

I haven’t yet decided, but this might be my favourite Kuang novel yet. It was so robust and interesting and complex, such a wonderful exploration of so many concepts and such a layered analysis of so many things. It was a critical review of the realities of academia, a look at the prevalence of sexism in the field, an unflinching look at how crushing it is to be known by someone, and somehow also a biting and clever delivery that had me laughing at times, even when other parts left me thoroughly devastated. 

Initially, it feels like Katabasis is going to be a fun reimagining of what it would mean to see truth in the literary accounts of Hell that cross through history. I found myself laughing and having so much fun with the story in a very geeky, academic way. But it quickly becomes a powerful look at what it means to be a person, struggling through experiences wherein the suffering becomes increasingly hard to justify. Part of that suffering is the pain required of advanced academia, but another piece that I found really moving was Alice’s experience in love. The way that she rationalizes her relationship with Peter, and her struggle to move on when she’s left sort of high and dry with no reason or closure, is in a lot of ways a very universal feeling. I think anyone who has moved through a moment in time where you felt a deep connection with a person that evaporates when that moment is over is left with a similar sense of reeling, of trying to understand what the experience meant. Alice’s experience is surrounded by fantastical magic elements and very high brow academia, but at its core, what she goes through is very human and familiar and had me reflecting on being young and in love and how it felt when the crushing weight of it was not enough to sustain a long-term connection. Equally moving was then the account from Peter’s perspective and a surprising foray through chronic illness and the various ways it can impact you and your relationships. The way both Alice and Peter relate to their advisor Grimes is interesting and repulsive, but it’s their relationship with each other that felt really moving to me. 

Katabasis is also, at its core, a story of sexism and misogyny in the workplace and the eternal female struggle to manage an impossible set of expectations. Alice is entering an exceptionally misogynistic field on the heels of a feminist movement that was largely controversial to both women and men alike. Without noticing at first (but becoming acutely aware by the end), Alice enters the impossible requirement of working women of the time. It’s an unwinnable situation where no action she takes will lead where she needs it to because being a working woman simply holds too many contradictions; one cannot be eternally likeable, attractive, smart, and clever, while also being submissive and sexy and appealing, and never acting on those things, but also never rejecting anyone either. It’s an impossible balance for her, an unfair standard that’s impossible to rise to, and she’s put in increasingly difficult situations that just serve to further the power imbalance she’s experiencing until it all blows up spectacularly.

I felt myself constantly being pulled to feel in different directions with this book. It was such a wonderfully layered story, and despite the heavy themes, it manages to thread humor, wit, and even a surprisingly warm finish. Reading this felt like a real journey, one that will still with me for a long time.  

I absolutely loved this one. It was definitely a new favourite.