fictionfungiflora 's review for:

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

4.75

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

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R.F. Kuang has always been a writer unafraid to rip open the quiet, unspoken parts of life, and Katabasis is no exception. On the surface, it’s a dark academic descent into Hell, steeped in philosophy, magick, and impossible bargains. But what struck me most wasn’t the elaborate world-building or the storm-wracked courts of the underworld—it was how intimately Kuang captured the relentless, hollowing drive of women moving through male-dominated spaces.

As someone who spent much of my youth measuring my worth in grades, test scores, and achievements, Alice’s voice cut deep. Kuang doesn’t romanticize the grind; she shows how perfectionism is its own quiet violence. Alice’s reflections on self-harm felt devastatingly familiar—not always in the sense of wanting to die, but in that bone-deep craving for the world to just stop, for life to loosen its grip for a single moment. The bluntness of that honesty was both terrifying and validating, laying bare a slope so many of us walk in silence.

“You’d like to know when it goes from feeling pretty blue, to thinking you wouldn’t mind if a bus ran you over, to actively stringing a rope together and kicking off a chair. Is that right?”

What also lingers is Kuang’s portrayal of the compromises women make when navigating traditionally male environments. The number of times Alice’s internal monologue made me pause and think, god, I did that for a man too—whether to gain approval, protection, or just to keep a seat at the table—was gross in its familiarity. It’s the kind of truth that makes you flinch, but also makes you feel seen. Kuang puts words to the contradictions: the simultaneous need to succeed on your own terms and the desire to still feel wanted, desirable, human.

“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved?”

Of course, Katabasis isn’t flawless. The latter portion lingers in Hell longer than necessary, weighted down by dense description and a tendency to luxuriate in its own philosophical tangents. At times, Peter’s backstory threatens to overshadow Alice. Still, the writing itself never felt pretentious—despite the heavy themes and academic framing, the prose was accessible, fluid, and easy to fall into.

“For a moment she found this prospect terrifying—that memory was not a well-kept library, but rather a moth-eaten basement with dim, flickering lights—but remembered then that this was just how everyone lived all the time; how she herself had lived most of her life. You groped around in the dark. You settled for stories, not recordings. You made do with the bits you had and tried your best to fill in the rest”

And then there’s Alice and Peter’s relationship: peak academic in the best (and worst) sense. Two people circling each other in dim lecture halls and hellish landscapes alike, utterly incapable of saying what they actually need to, yet bound together by intellectual tension and unspoken want. Their dynamic is less about sweeping gestures and more about sharp edges, awkward silences, and the agony of never quite bridging the gap. That strain made their connection feel real, and ultimately, unforgettable.

In the end, Katabasis is not an easy read, nor is it a perfect one. But it’s the kind of book that crawls under your skin and stays there—ambitious, messy, devastatingly sharp. Kuang takes the intellectual weight of dark academia and cracks it open to reveal something more human: the cost of ambition, the compromises of desire, and the unbearable weight of being a woman who is both exhausted and unrelenting.