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alexawkelly 's review for:
Katabasis
by R.F. Kuang
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVoyager for providing an ARC of this title. All opinions are my own.
This was one of my most hotly anticipated books of 2025, and in many ways, it did not disappoint. Kuang manages to both send us on a dizzy and horrifying journey through the Underworld (which draws from other famous Underworld journeys, including Dante’s Inferno, but has a creative, unique twist to it that is wholly Kuang’s) and deliver a scathing critique of, to put it as eloquently as I can, the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of academia. This isn’t a world I’m personally familiar with, but Kuang makes it accessible and even interesting to an outsider like me: our protagonist, Alice, is so single-minded in her pursuit of academic greatness that it devastatingly eclipses all else, from hobbies to just basic taking care of herself. It’s heartbreaking to watch, and at times, Alice is a deeply unlikable character because of the things she’s said and done while chasing that nebulous dream; however, her behavior is understandable, and the parallels between her journey through Hell and the places that academia has taken her are obvious. I also deeply appreciated the narrative about Alice and her advisor, Jacob Grimes, a deeply odious man in almost every way imaginable—much like a narrative of abuse (and you could certainly call his behavior abusive), the text thoughtfully explores how someone like Alice could end up ensnared by someone like him, making excuses for his terrible behavior because of his brilliance and his promises to nurture her brilliance, too.
The pacing in this book wasn’t perfect—at times I found myself ripping and tearing through the pages, excited at where the narrative was going and the stakes that were being set up, while other times it dragged and meandered in a way that was significantly less interesting. I found the bleakness of the setting, and of Kuang’s imagined afterlife as a whole, discomfitting at times to read about, as well. But the whole made up for the not-always-perfect sum of its parts, as did the incredibly sweet love story that develops.
This was one of my most hotly anticipated books of 2025, and in many ways, it did not disappoint. Kuang manages to both send us on a dizzy and horrifying journey through the Underworld (which draws from other famous Underworld journeys, including Dante’s Inferno, but has a creative, unique twist to it that is wholly Kuang’s) and deliver a scathing critique of, to put it as eloquently as I can, the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of academia. This isn’t a world I’m personally familiar with, but Kuang makes it accessible and even interesting to an outsider like me: our protagonist, Alice, is so single-minded in her pursuit of academic greatness that it devastatingly eclipses all else, from hobbies to just basic taking care of herself. It’s heartbreaking to watch, and at times, Alice is a deeply unlikable character because of the things she’s said and done while chasing that nebulous dream; however, her behavior is understandable, and the parallels between her journey through Hell and the places that academia has taken her are obvious. I also deeply appreciated the narrative about Alice and her advisor, Jacob Grimes, a deeply odious man in almost every way imaginable—much like a narrative of abuse (and you could certainly call his behavior abusive), the text thoughtfully explores how someone like Alice could end up ensnared by someone like him, making excuses for his terrible behavior because of his brilliance and his promises to nurture her brilliance, too.
The pacing in this book wasn’t perfect—at times I found myself ripping and tearing through the pages, excited at where the narrative was going and the stakes that were being set up, while other times it dragged and meandered in a way that was significantly less interesting. I found the bleakness of the setting, and of Kuang’s imagined afterlife as a whole, discomfitting at times to read about, as well. But the whole made up for the not-always-perfect sum of its parts, as did the incredibly sweet love story that develops.