Allison E's Reviews > Katabasis

Welcome to my review for Katabasis. This is officially my favorite R.F. Kuang book, an undoubtable 5 star (6 ??), and a shoe in for making my top books of the year list.

It’s not really my style to hold back in a review, seems like people tend to put a pin in sharing their full thoughts until closer to publication date (August) but I shan’t do that (unless it’s literally illegal lmk I’ll take this down).

Katabasis follows two Cambridge graduate students as they journey through hell to rescue their recently departed advisor. Professor Grimes is the shining key to opening the doors of Alice and Peter’s academic dreams, but can they put aside their rivalry and complicated feelings towards each other to bring him back from the dead and survive the underworld themselves?

Such a fun premise and with a delectable and harrowing !! execution. I loved every single detail, let’s get into it.

Characters

The character work in this is genuinely fabulous. At the most surface level you’ve got a black cat golden retriever dynamic at play but my god is it so much more. Alice mf Law. Gurlllllll.

She is an academic weapon, an underdog, a genius. She’s scrappy though and is not afraid of sacrificing her morals to get ahead. The internalized misogyny that pervades her internal monologue my goddd. Alice is the type who rolls her eyes at the cliche of the disadvantaged / mistreated woman in academia. “Feminism” is embarrassing to Alice, the notion of fighting for her own space in the world so exhausting, so impossible, that she belittles and ignores the concept instead.

“That the academy was sexist was such a boring truism that Alice was no longer disturbed by the fact.”

Rebecca also just knows how to write a protagonist who is totally losing it. Have you ever been able to feel a character’s hunger? Their obsession? Their rising instability? Have you ever felt so deeply intertwined with a character’s psyche that you can recognize their toxic thinking but you can’t help but spiral with them, gaslight yourself, and gloriously hit rock bottom. For me the answer became a decided Y.E.S. with Alice’s portrayal. Her character development and arc was as a result, incredibly satisfying.

I won’t say as much about Peter, half the charm of this story is viewing and learning him through the eyes of Alice. Trust that you will adore (& also want to violently shake) this pathetic brilliant lil bean pole of a man. The romance between Peter and Alice is a SUBPLOT guys. But goodness was every detail scrumptious. Chapter TWENTY TWOOOOO. What an insane pair they make. Obsessed.

“And if falling in love was discovery, was letting yourself be discovered the equivalent to being loved? For it tickled Alice to hear Peter make observations about her; to announce facts she’d never noticed about herself.”

World Building / Magic system

Dante would be sat if he read this. Listennn you do not need to read Dante’s Inferno before diving into Katabasis. But it is a delight to smile knowingly at all the references if you do!! I was enraptured by Kuang’s take on each circle of hell. Such an amazing display of research infused creativity and it felt like she truly had a blast coming up with things. The chalk based magic system rooted in logic? Plsssss. The “intellectual humor” is so good in this too and the pretentious person in me ate up every reference as if I too could make passing jokes like a Cambridge scholar:

“I'm not sure the Furies have read Foucault," said the chairman. "You must consider your audience."

Pacing

In classic R.F. Kuang fashion, Rebecca isn’t afraid to show you she’s an extremely well educated genius of a writer. Katabasis has that same research packed density that Babel did except I found myself eating up every single detail (Babel occasionally felt bogged down / dragged for me… as smart as it was). There are many references to complex logic puzzles, academic theories, mythological texts, authors etc. Despite the weight of all the information Rebecca crammed into this story, I found the pacing excellent. It could be that I was just naturally interested in the subjects touched on… but I truly found this compulsively readable. In short I was eating out of the palm of Rebecca’s hand!!

Themes - some might consider theme sharing spoilery? Proceed accordingly <3

The term “dark academia” has kinda lost the plot but if this isn’t dark academia I don’t know what is. Katabasis is bursting with cynical wit but uses that wit to deliver a blistering critique of academia. I did genuinely felt sick to my stomach at certain parts.

Now it’s time to get cheesy. Aren’t the simplest truths always a bit cheesy though? Like the mind rejects the fact that a universal insight could possibly hold deep value just because it’s widespread.

To me this is a story about what really matters in life when you get down to it. And when you’re scraping the fiery pits of hell what “matters” becomes abundantly clear. What matters is not the prestige, the accolades, or the impossible achievement of “success”. It’s not beating out all your competition. It’s not being the smartest. It’s not climbing the ladder or playing the game or securing the job by whatever means. What matters is human connection. What matters is the big-small things. A shared cup of tea, a conversation between two likeminded people, a cinnamon bun, with raisins.

“Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living.”

But what is a life worth living? Katabasis pokes and stabs at this question in a way I quite enjoyed.

Now for a singular, tiny, honestly pathetic, critique if I may….

This is where we get into what some might consider SPOILER TERRITORY HELLO SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER HELLO BYEE READ THIS LATER WHEN YOUVE FINISHED THE BOOK. I do admittedly read a lot of romance… so there’s a few romance genre conventions that are engrained into my expectations. Because of this, the climax of the romantic subplot I found just a pinch wanting. Like I get Rebecca is not a spice writer and in no way was I expecting that kind of content from her, but I would have loved a drop more of physicality between Alice and Peter? Like they’re literally “forced proximity” stuck together in Hell and working through so much anger and frustration and so what do you mean you’re not going to have an explosive heated intellectual argument that devolves into a juvenile personal attacks that inevitably ends with them making out? The potential for that was so ripe but maybe that would have been too formulaic for miss Kuang. I’ll have to content myself with that adorable hug.

Regardless, 10/10 book, the people are going to love this and thank you to HarperVoyager for the free arc!