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mariaoverbooked 's review for:
Katabasis
by R.F. Kuang
I'm here to challenge the early reviewers who claimed this read like a textbook. What textbook, because I want to read it if it’s written like this.
You know how I know the wrong readers got ARCs? Before release, the average rating hovered around 3.7–3.8. Now that it’s officially out, it’s climbing steadily above four stars. I should’ve known RF Kuang would never, never, let me down.
Katabasis follows Alice and Peter, who journey into Hell to save the soul of their dead advisor so they can secure letters of recommendation, jobs, etc. That’s all you really need to know going in.
I loved this book. I could’ve binged it in a day, but I wanted to savor it as much as I wanted to devour it. What I mainly want to do here is address the common critiques I’ve seen. Minor spoilers ahead:
Critique 1: It’s too dense, it reads like a textbook.
Why are people shocked that a dark academia novel includes, brace yourself, academia? Someone said Kuang spent the whole book proving Alice is smart. Yes, because that’s her character. Yes, because the book is about academics. They’re smart. That’s the point. And frankly, I had fun with it. I laughed out loud, found the hellscapes fascinating, and thought the characters’ journeys shone brightest. The info-dumping and worldbuilding felt natural for two academics preparing to descend into Hell. I loved the research itself.
Critique 2: There’s no/little romance.
Kuang never promised a romance. She said it’s the most love story centered book she’s written, and she was right. If you didn’t catch the romance, you missed one of the book’s main threads. A love story doesn’t have to follow traditional “romance genre rules.” And yet, Alice and Peter's relationship clearly follows many of the traditional romance tropes: miscommunication, rivals to friends to rivals to lovers, only one sleeping bag, yearning. It’s a love story, but that's not the point of the book, although it is a major part of it.
Critique 3: The characters are insufferable.
Yes and that’s the point. Alice is insufferable, too smart for her own good, desperate for everyone to know it. But she’s also a victim: of academia’s relentless pressure, of Professor Grimes’s abuse, of constant belittling and harassment. Even her internalized misogyny is a reflection of the toxic system she’s clawing to belong to. The heart of the book isn’t their literal journey through Hell, but their fight to escape academia’s grip and Grimes’s shadow, and to find themselves (and each other).
Critique 4: Kuang’s prose is formulaic.
I couldn’t disagree more. Kuang’s prose is clean, digestible, and deceptively simple, she makes big ideas accessible while still infusing them with emotion. I laughed, I had fun, and I never once felt bogged down. Sure, prose preferences are subjective, but formulaic? Not in my experience.
Critique 5: The plot is stale and conflicts resolve too easily.
Yes, some problems wrapped up quickly. But I didn’t care, because the real tension lies in the characters’ internal journeys. The external challenges in Hell served as stepping stones for Alice and Peter’s personal reckoning. And not everything was easy, Alice in particular suffered mentally and physically through both her personal Hell and the literal one. As for the flashbacks? I thought they deepened the character work and were well paced, revealing key pieces of information about the characters at the right moments.
At its core, this book is about figuring out what it means to live. Not just exist, not just tick the boxes you’ve been told to, not just scrape by for scraps of praise or fleeting recognition. Alice learns the value of being alive in the simplest, most human ways: a cup of tea, stars on a dark night, the shift of a fall breeze.
Yes, it’s a brutal, scathing look at the rot of academia and the way it consumes people. But it’s also about survival, about clawing your way through that darkness and realizing there’s something worth living for on the other side. That there’s more to life than prestige or being the smartest in the room. That sometimes the real victory is just breathing, choosing to live, and finding meaning in the small, ordinary joys that make being alive worth it.
You can disagree with me, and maybe Kuang just isn’t for you. That’s fine. But don’t be afraid of this book, it’s accessible, engaging, meaningful, and I’ll be raving about it for years. Easily my most anticipated release of the year, and so far, the best book I’ve read this year.
You know how I know the wrong readers got ARCs? Before release, the average rating hovered around 3.7–3.8. Now that it’s officially out, it’s climbing steadily above four stars. I should’ve known RF Kuang would never, never, let me down.
Katabasis follows Alice and Peter, who journey into Hell to save the soul of their dead advisor so they can secure letters of recommendation, jobs, etc. That’s all you really need to know going in.
I loved this book. I could’ve binged it in a day, but I wanted to savor it as much as I wanted to devour it. What I mainly want to do here is address the common critiques I’ve seen. Minor spoilers ahead:
Critique 1: It’s too dense, it reads like a textbook.
Why are people shocked that a dark academia novel includes, brace yourself, academia? Someone said Kuang spent the whole book proving Alice is smart. Yes, because that’s her character. Yes, because the book is about academics. They’re smart. That’s the point. And frankly, I had fun with it. I laughed out loud, found the hellscapes fascinating, and thought the characters’ journeys shone brightest. The info-dumping and worldbuilding felt natural for two academics preparing to descend into Hell. I loved the research itself.
Critique 2: There’s no/little romance.
Kuang never promised a romance. She said it’s the most love story centered book she’s written, and she was right. If you didn’t catch the romance, you missed one of the book’s main threads. A love story doesn’t have to follow traditional “romance genre rules.” And yet, Alice and Peter's relationship clearly follows many of the traditional romance tropes: miscommunication, rivals to friends to rivals to lovers, only one sleeping bag, yearning. It’s a love story, but that's not the point of the book, although it is a major part of it.
Critique 3: The characters are insufferable.
Yes and that’s the point. Alice is insufferable, too smart for her own good, desperate for everyone to know it. But she’s also a victim: of academia’s relentless pressure, of Professor Grimes’s abuse, of constant belittling and harassment. Even her internalized misogyny is a reflection of the toxic system she’s clawing to belong to. The heart of the book isn’t their literal journey through Hell, but their fight to escape academia’s grip and Grimes’s shadow, and to find themselves (and each other).
Critique 4: Kuang’s prose is formulaic.
I couldn’t disagree more. Kuang’s prose is clean, digestible, and deceptively simple, she makes big ideas accessible while still infusing them with emotion. I laughed, I had fun, and I never once felt bogged down. Sure, prose preferences are subjective, but formulaic? Not in my experience.
Critique 5: The plot is stale and conflicts resolve too easily.
Yes, some problems wrapped up quickly. But I didn’t care, because the real tension lies in the characters’ internal journeys. The external challenges in Hell served as stepping stones for Alice and Peter’s personal reckoning. And not everything was easy, Alice in particular suffered mentally and physically through both her personal Hell and the literal one. As for the flashbacks? I thought they deepened the character work and were well paced, revealing key pieces of information about the characters at the right moments.
At its core, this book is about figuring out what it means to live. Not just exist, not just tick the boxes you’ve been told to, not just scrape by for scraps of praise or fleeting recognition. Alice learns the value of being alive in the simplest, most human ways: a cup of tea, stars on a dark night, the shift of a fall breeze.
Yes, it’s a brutal, scathing look at the rot of academia and the way it consumes people. But it’s also about survival, about clawing your way through that darkness and realizing there’s something worth living for on the other side. That there’s more to life than prestige or being the smartest in the room. That sometimes the real victory is just breathing, choosing to live, and finding meaning in the small, ordinary joys that make being alive worth it.
You can disagree with me, and maybe Kuang just isn’t for you. That’s fine. But don’t be afraid of this book, it’s accessible, engaging, meaningful, and I’ll be raving about it for years. Easily my most anticipated release of the year, and so far, the best book I’ve read this year.