By I knew I would like this book after the New Yorker described it as centering “around Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, two graduate students who venture to Hell to rescue their adviser Professor Grimes, who has recently died. He was a cruel mentor, yet they fear that they will never succeed on the job market without securing a letter of recommendation from him.”
That sounds like a book for me if anything does.
About the Book
Title: Katabasis
Author: R.F. Kuang
Published: 2025
Genre: fiction, fantasy, dark academia
My Rating: 4/5 stars
The Premise
Synopsis (from Goodreads):
“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.”
My Thoughts
This was such a fun read! Katabasis follows academic rivals Alice Law and Peter Murdoch as they descend into Hell to rescue their unpleasant professor.
I liked that this book deviates from expectations pretty quickly. It starts out pretty whimsically, if dark (and honestly reminded me a lot of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo ) and with the classic enemies-to-lovers setup replete with sexual tension and petty squabbles. The story is told mostly from Alice’s perspective and we get a good sense of her ambition and intensity, and why she chose to study under Professor Grimes, despite his notorious reputation–as well as why she is willing to undertake such an intense quest for the chance to keep him as a mentor after his death.
However as the characters’ odyssey through Hell progresses, more is revealed about their graduate school experience and the issues that they face: misogyny, pressure, stress, mental health, etc.
I don’t read fantasy a lot but I want to read more of it.
This was a really entertaining and fun book with an imaginative take on the afterlife. I also enjoyed the worldbuilding of Magick as a field and its basis on logical contradiction.
Kuang did drop a lot of esoteric and academic references in this book, which was both fun and also slightly annoying, but that might just be my perpetually-sensitive ego that has flared at such things ever since I was rejected from MIT and Princeton like, 4 years ago. (I always get a bit annoyed when reading dark academia because of how much the genre likes to worship prestigious schools, but whatever. I also suspect that I view R.F. Kuang with a similar envy as Alice views Peter at the beginning of the book– because how is this woman so brilliant?)
There were some aspects of the plot that struck me as confusing, convoluted or out of character (for example, Alice’s plan being not very thought-out) but overall, it was an enjoyable read.
Have you read Katabasis by R.F. Kuang? If so, what did you think of it? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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I haven’t finished this book yet, but I noticed the similarities between this book, Babel, the Vita Nostra Trilogy, and Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo. No, I haven’t read Alex Stern, yet. There is a difference between undergraduate and graduate experiences. The later books in Vita Nostra, Summer Sons, and Katabasis are books that delve into the graduate school experience, which is very cutthroat (I have 3 Masters Degrees). The common complaint about this book is that some readers, “couldn’t related to the characters,” and it’s because not everyone attends grad school, which is similar to going into the Circles of Hell.
Excellent review!
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Babel definitely seems similar! I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard it’s good. Also, dang, 3 masters degrees is impressive!
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