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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
This was exceedingly dull and I had no interest in continuing it.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I do feel like I’ve actually been through hell in the worst way possible.
Outside of the very unnecessary conversations about penises, I would’ve thought this was YA. I’m aware this is still an arc, and in between writing this and her final draft, she’s likely improved some things. But quite frankly, I was miserable from start to finish.
From a storytelling perspective, there was not a single likable character to latch onto and root for. RFK told us a lot of things — a LOT — but rarely ever showed them. The emotional beats didn’t have any impact because I never cared about these people. The “humorous” parts didn’t elicit a single chuckle. The supposed romance was the most contrived mess of predictable plot points I’ve seen in a long time. The info dumps sprinkled in ruined any momentum the book had and read like journal scribblings from when she first came up with the concept of the story. The academic moments felt like I was in an 8am lecture after Thirsty Thursday. It just did not work.
Much like how I wanted to see more of the secret society in Babel, I wanted to see more of Hell in this novel. Honestly, this could’ve been set in Baltimore for all I know. We spent so much time in flashbacks, it really didn’t matter. This entire project felt directionless, and wasted a day of my life. I have a lot more to say about RFKs tendency to self-insert and my inability to determine if her main characters are proud tokens with elitist mindsets by design or if that’s some of the author bleeding into the writing. However, I’m sick of thinking about this book and will pick that fight another day.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
soooooo heavy handed. i’m hoping the finished copy will be better.
Very gripping, slightly mind trippy depiction of two students wandering through Hell; one thing about R.F Kuang is that she'll come up with a unique and complicated magic system, and I loved her interpretation of magic and Hell!
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Firstly, I'd like to say thank you to my friends in publishing who gave me an ARC! You're the best!
And now... the review:
Katabasis is rooted in academia and boy does R.F. Kuang know how to write a book that is both academia and fantasy flawlessly bound together. While I know some people have been reading a lot of works (like Dante's Inferno and some more science based research), I don't think it's compulsory to do so to understand the book - all that you need to know is explained in the book fairly simply. For me personally, the only thing that stood out was that I'm in no way a logician and so sometimes I had to spend some time reading and rereading a paragraph to understand the concept that was being explained - it brought me great enjoyment and made me pace myself while reading instead of brainlesly binging it.
The book has so many amazing and complex themes (existentialism and a critique of academia being the two prominent ones )and really makes you stop and think about them too - whether you agree with what's being said or if you'd argue that it's not quite like that.
The only thing slightly lacking for me was the evolution of the romance between Alice and Peter. The whole subplot of it was lacking and I found the ending of it quite lackluster. After everything they got through together, after journeying through hell that could not be all there is... And I get that maybe the ending of their romance subplot in the book is left like that on purpose, but I don't ever find endings like that satisfactory .I do think that a few extra lines or pages would've made it a perfect ending for me though
Okay, I'll stop rambling without trying to give anything away for now... But I really think people will love this and I'm so excited that this was my very first R. F. Kuang book I ever read!!!!!!
And now... the review:
Katabasis is rooted in academia and boy does R.F. Kuang know how to write a book that is both academia and fantasy flawlessly bound together. While I know some people have been reading a lot of works (like Dante's Inferno and some more science based research), I don't think it's compulsory to do so to understand the book - all that you need to know is explained in the book fairly simply. For me personally, the only thing that stood out was that I'm in no way a logician and so sometimes I had to spend some time reading and rereading a paragraph to understand the concept that was being explained - it brought me great enjoyment and made me pace myself while reading instead of brainlesly binging it.
The book has so many amazing and complex themes (
The only thing slightly lacking for me was the evolution of the romance between Alice and Peter. The whole subplot of it was lacking and I found the ending of it quite lackluster. After everything they got through together, after journeying through hell that could not be all there is... And I get that maybe the ending of their romance subplot in the book is left like that on purpose, but I don't ever find endings like that satisfactory .
Okay, I'll stop rambling without trying to give anything away for now... But I really think people will love this and I'm so excited that this was my very first R. F. Kuang book I ever read!!!!!!
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for this ARC!
“Katabasis” tells the story of Alice Law, a graduate student of analytic magick at Cambridge University. When her professor, Jacob Grimes, dies in a brutal accident, possibly caused by Alice herself, she makes the decision to go to hell to retrieve his soul. She is unexpectedly joined by her academic rival, Peter Murdoch. We follow the both of them as they journey through hell, but things aren’t the way they expected – will they succeed nonetheless?
This book is on everyone’s list of most anticipated reads of 2025, and it more than deserves its spot there. Kuang has, once again, crafted a masterpiece. Yes, this book is smart and shares a lot of information, but it is also so much more fun and entertaining than I was expecting after Babel, which felt a lot heavier.
Knowing book spaces this book will probably end up on “dark academia” lists, and I think it deserves its spot there more than some others commonly given that label. Because this book actually cares about academia and what academic spaces are actually like for many people. It discusses issues such as racism and misogyny as well as ableism, and how these affect academics. This is a very important conversation to have, and Kuang approaches it with compassion and realism in equal measures. Her characters don’t have to be perfect people and have their own biases, which we see them work through over the course of their journey.
But the heavy stuff aside, this book is just really fun. I’m not someone to laugh particularly much while reading, but this one got a lot more chuckles out of me than I had expected. I’ve also seen it referred to as slow paced and I wouldn’t agree with that assessment. To me the plot flowed quite well and at a more than reasonable pace, though I may have just felt that time was passing quickly since I had such a good time reading this one.
The most pressing question you probably have if you are active in book spaces on social media is, do I really need to read all of these books people have been mentioning in relation to this book? Here’s the answer from someone who hasn’t read any of them: No, you do not, but it also couldn’t hurt! It is definitely true that a lot of different texts, writers and concepts are mentioned in this book that the average Joe likely won’t be super familiar with, but don’t let that stop you from reading this one. Everything is explained in a way that is not disruptive, and allows those of us who are less well-read to understand the book without any issues. But this novel also does another great thing – it makes you want to read all of the works mentioned! I definitely plan on rereading this book some time next year, after I’ve read some more of the “recommended reading” for this one.
TLDR; this book is accessible whether you’ve read the works mentioned within (e.g. Dante’s inferno) or not, but reading them probably makes the experience even better, which is a great motivation to actually give works you might not have checked out otherwise a chance.
I highly recommend reading this one, especially if you are working in or plan on working in academia. Katabasis is equal measures fun and informative, and in my opinion it’s an improvement to the already phenomenal Babel.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
katabasis was not what i expected and unfortunately i do not mean this in a particularly good way. was it a bad book? absolutely not. but am i disappointed? very much so. a lot of arc readers said katabasis has a similar tone as babel and sadly i have to disagree. babel is one of my all time favourite books, but my feelings towards katabasis are more complicated. it’s hard to rate it because there are some aspects i loved, but it was just so… bland. i kept waiting for more but it did not deliver.
so here’s what i really loved: the character work. both alice and peter are incredibly interesting and i loved that we get to learn more about them and their backstories as the story progresses. you don’t understand their personalities from the start, instead you discover something new with every chapter. it was a very refreshing experience. i also loved how their relationship progressed. they are both very flawed characters but i was still rooting for them.
surprisingly, where the characters felt very real, the setting was the opposite: it was so flat. how you can write a book set in hell but make it so incredibly uninteresting is beyond me. the plot itself was slow-paced, which i didn’t particularly mind since the book is clearly character driven… but i was soooo bored! there were at times page after page of philosophy and mathematics that i did not care about and was skimming to get through. granted, it is impressive how much work and research was put into this book. r.f. kuang made a good job at making it digestible in a way that, yes you can easily skim those passages and still understand what is going on from the context. that doesn’t mean i want this to be my reading experience though. if you don’t mind researching mathematical concepts on google every chapter then that’s fine, but my problem is that it was taking me out of the story every time. ultimately, as the story progresses, it started becoming predictable and almost absurd? i really thought the ending would make it all worth it but i’m just not sure it did.
overall, it was a challenging read and i understand people who liked it and people who didn’t. i’m somewhere in the middle, which saddens me because r.f. kuang is one of my all time favourite authors.