Reviews - Katabasis | The StoryGraph

567 reviews for:

Katabasis

R.F. Kuang

4.01 AVERAGE

reaganmcg's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

hweezbooks's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Katabasis is a descent to the Underworld, to “collect” something or someone to bring back to the surface.

By mirroring Dante’s Inferno, TS Eliot’s Wasteland and other classics about a sojourn to hell, RF Kuang also creates her own contemporary piece of finding selfhood.

Alice Law’s advisor at Cambridge has died. Exploded into pieces really. And she thinks it’s her fault because she was shoddy with prepping the Magick circles for him.

She researches ways to bring Jacob Grimes back, the least with which to recommend her forward to a sterling position after graduation.

Annoyingly, Peter Murdoch, the darling of the department, is on this same mission. And the two of them end up in Hell.

The two face fantastical scapes reimagined by Kuang from literature, discover each other’s stories, and meet ambiguous friends and horrifying adversaries.

At some point of despair, they debate the sunk cost fallacy, encounter Escher’s design and meet an ex-Cambridge senior who asks:

“Did they really kill John Lennon?”

As Alice moves towards clarity, she faces her finest test, challenges her legendary intelligence, and plans a final swindle. Also, there’s this cat 🐈‍⬛

📚: @times.reads

curshellove's review against another edition

3.75

Even though I love all of RFK previous books, this one falls short. It wasn’t a bad book, but it just wasn’t as enjoyable as her previous works. First, Alice was not a very interesting character. She was just flat, everything about her was dull and boring. She had no substance, or no outstanding characteristics and that actually made her annoying. She understands misogyny and the hardships women face in male dominated academic spaces. She also knew her professor preyed on students, so she took it upon herself to not only “see what the hype was all about” but also take a life threatening trip to hell? Thats another thing, the entire plot was predictable and repetitive. This actually shocked me, because the world building in Babel was amazing. The romance between Alice and Peter was also surface-level. The miscommunication, the banter, the one-sided distrust, all of it was boring. I actually rolled my eyes when she found the equivalent exchange notes because I already knew where it was going. There is also a lot of unnecessary infodumping which was difficult to keep up with. I do not think this was a bad book by any means, but I did expect much more. I think it’s because she doesn’t typically write “romance” books, and I think that’s understandable. I refuse to say that this is a bad book, because it really isn’t. I think it would be good for someone that hasn’t read her previous books, because they won’t have anything to compare it with. I just feel as if it could have been better than it was. Overall 3.75/5.

metamorphobooks's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

secretskeeper's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Katabasis is 500+ pages of Hell, demons, academia, spells, creatures from the underworld, finding oneself and making friends with enemies all the while searching for something that seemed to be lost.
The story had me in a chokehold from day one and the ending both elated and shocked me.
The worldbuilding and storyline were wonderful. It kept me entertained and enthralled. The characters I either loved or loved to hate and that makes for the perfect combination in my opinion. The writing style was pure Kuang. This book was wonderful. I cannot wait to get myself a copy of the limited edition to showcase on my shelves.

bifurcateduvula's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional funny 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

booksbeforebs's review against another edition

3.0

dark funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

‘Katabasis’ was easily one of my most anticipated books of 2025, thanks to the huge amount of hype surrounding it. Unfortunately, for me, it didn’t live up to the hype, though it was still a fairly enjoyable read.

It starts out reasonably strong, being dark and funny—just how I like my books—and smart without being pretentious. However, it is remarkably similar to the TV adaptation of ‘The Magicians’, both in terms of tone and content, and it reads just like fanfiction, so much so that it feels like when someone takes an actual fanfic and changes a few details in order to pass it off as an original work. That isn’t to say it isn’t well-written or enjoyable, and I love ‘The Magicians’ and will happily spend my time in that universe, but it lacks originality, and while I’m okay with the derivativity in fanfiction, I expect more from a published novel, especially one written by someone with Kuang’s clout.

As the story goes on, inconsistencies start to creep in, especially in the characterisation. For example, all along Alice has informed us that Peter is perfect and doesn’t have a malicious or misogynistic bone in his body, but then, when it becomes necessary for the plot, Alice is suddenly telling us that actually Peter can be malicious and misogynistic and indeed was badly so in a specific incident. This discrepancy is never explained. Similarly, there are many early details that don’t make sense after the reveal re Alice’s memory. In all cases, it feels like the author needed to change things in order to move the plot forward, but failed to go back and apply those changes to the story before that point.

By the 70% mark, the story really starts to drag, and frankly, it gets weird. It no longer feels like the same book, and it certainly was no longer a book that I wanted to read. A case of the author losing her way and, after trudging through the mud for a while, throwing anything down on the page? Possibly. The book certainly could have done with being a good 180 pages lighter.

Kuang pulls it back at the end—at least in terms of weirdness. However, the ending is very predictable, to the point of feeling pat. I was left with the sense that it was an okay enough read, but nowhere near as good as I was expecting and nowhere near as good as it should have been. I think I would have preferred to have spent my time reading ‘The Magicians’ fanfiction—(undisguised ‘The Magicians’ fanfiction).

Many thanks to NetGalley, R.F. Kuang and HarperCollins UK for the ARC.

Content Warnings