Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
HarperCollins Publishers set for release August 2025
By Robin Munson

What would you do if your Cambridge PHD advisor in Magic died and his soul, like all souls, is wandering the depths of Hell hoping to make proper amends before being reincarnated? Most students would change advisors, finish out their degree, and enjoy their future careers in magic. But, that is not what PHD students Alice Law and Peter Murdoch do. Instead, they travel to Hell and trade half their remaining life span to bring back Professor Grimes's soul while putting their lives, and their own souls, in danger. All this to save a man that only a few admired and many despised.

I enjoyed trudging through Hell with Alice and Peter. Alice, a driven, flawed, and closed person is the narrator. A perfect combination for Professor Grimes to exploit and conjure an unhealthy classroom competition between Alice and Peter. It took a trip through Hell to challenge Alice physically, mentally, and emotionally to bring about the growth needed in her life. Peter, on the other hand, is a really good guy (which also upsets Alice). Both learned to work together with a combination of mathematics, science, and philosophy to help maneuver them through each of the courts of Hell based on the 7 deadly sins and the final eighth court.

The pacing throughout this book was great. I found myself reading late into the night eager to see how Alice and Peter were trekking through Hell. They met former Cambridge students or "victims" of Professor Grimes and the unraveling of the story and the characters was fascinating. Kuang was able to take my emotions from an "okay, here we are, in Hell" to an "Oh no she didn't!" about midway through.

I recommend this book to any fans of R.F. Kuang, anyone interested in philosophy, or anyone who enjoys a really good plot driven by relatable characters. It is well written and definitely worth the read. Katabasis comes out in August 2025 for all to enjoy.

Thank you HarperCollins Publishers for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

R. F. Kuang’s “Katabasis” is an absolute page-turner! Alice and Peter’s mission to rescue their professor keeps you on the edge of your seat. The well-developed characters and intricate plot make it a truly captivating read. Kuang’s magical writing weaves a story of truth, heartache, and redemption that’s both heartwarming and thought-provoking. I highly recommend this book!

The only thing I hate about this book is that I will never be able to be dipped in the Lethe to forget it and read it again.
This is my first time reading R.F. Kuang (I will be starting Babel today), and I am ever so grateful I was given the opportunity to read this book before its publication as a Greek mythology fanatic.
While Alice frustrated me completely in the beginning and through the middle of the book, I loved seeing her character growth and how we see her and Peter's relationship evolve. Grimes is the perfect name for the kind of man he is.
A selfish part of me wishes there was an epilogue that showed people reacting to everything, but the ending that was given was still beautiful.
Thank you for letting me read this early!

Hands-down this is my favorite book I've read al year. Katabasis was my most highly anticipated book for the year and it did not disappoint! Alice and Peter's journey into the Hell is so emotionally driven yet very cerebral at the same time. R.F. Kuang manages to pull from so many disciplines, incorporate mythology, logic, philosophy, and literature seamlessly in a way that makes you delighted when you understand a reference and eager to learn more when you don't. If Babel was a love letter and exploration of linguistics, Katabasis is her ode and critique to logic. As always, she incorporates scathing examinations of academia, institutions, abuse, and authority and packages them in and equally compelling and horrifying story. Alice and Peter's relationship grounds a potentially too theoretical book to one that feels real, visceral, and deeply human,

This was an interesting read. Following two graduate students who try to save their graduate professors from Hell. The plot was fun and the characters were diverse. I highly enjoyed this book.

This is Kuang’s sojourn into the underworld; a meditation on power imbalance and abuse in academia, with a romantic cherry on top. Kuang writes with such expertise and care, I often felt I was reading a love letter to the academy–then she flips it with stark reminders of the good-ole-boy system of the ivory tower and how few of us are welcome. Buckle up for another outstanding skewering of the systems we romanticize that want to consume us. Hell is a campus.

Alice Law is going to hell. She’s sacrificed everything else in her life to her career in magical academia, so trekking into the underworld to find her academic advisor– the advisor her future career depends on, the advisor she may have killed through her own negligence– makes perfect sense. But her rival Peter has planned the same…

I was initially concerned the concept sounded too much like Leigh Bardugo’s Alex Stern books, but I was delighted to discover an entirely different story. Katabasis is not wholly original– it borrows extensively from other sources, including mythology, about the descent into Hell– and then it weaves all of its inspirations into a unique story paired with a savage critique of academia.

Katabasis is not exactly a light read (there’s plenty of philosophy and theoretical math here), but I think this is Kuang’s most polished and commercial work yet because it balances the cheekiness of Yellowface and the melodrama of Babel to deliver a powerful commentary that’s also a great story. Don’t get me wrong– I enjoyed both Yellowface and Babel immensely, and I think Babel is easily one of the most important fantasy books of the last decade– but I’m much more likely to reread Katabasis because it was fun and because, to paraphrase Rebecca Roanhorse’s review, Kuang’s dual emotions of rage and love leap off the page.

A breathtaking, utterly unique novel that showcases Kuang’s versatility and lyricism as a writer.

The set up alone, an overworked grad student descending to hell to rescue her advisor so she can finally graduate already, is astounding. From this promising start the novel only gets better. Kuang’s vision of hell is as sprawling as it is minutely, intimately, detailed. It’s refreshingly original while also alluding to all the classic sources, Orpheus, Aeneas, Dante, etc. This underworld takes an “everything AND the kitchen sink” approach to the afterlife that I found endlessly delightful. It has the river Lethe, the city of Dis, and the infernal geography of the whole realm divided based on increasingly dire sins.

Kuang’s magic system is also refreshing and interesting to delve into. Magicians conjure using chalk (the life essence of long dead organisms being essential to magic) and intellectual paradoxes to temporarily suspend the natural order.
Added to this heady mix of fantasy and dark academia are a cast of compelling characters, the occasional demon, and even worse, one truly evil advisor.

I really enjoyed this novel from beginning to end. The stakes were immediate and compelling and I found myself needing to know what happened next in the story. The author judiciously drips information about characters and back Alice makes for an interestingly multi-faceted protagonist, someone who’s ambition and will are almost terrifying in their intensity. Peter and Alice’s relationship was also fleshed out and felt real to life. I appreciated their different approaches to their academic discipline, analytic magic, and what a formidable, if largely out of sync, team they made together.

This one of a kind book is sure to delight and dazzle readers of all backgrounds, and devotees of fantasy and dark academia particularly.

Reminiscent of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Piranesi, Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House and Hell Bent, and her own novel Babel, Katabasis follows Cambridge grad students Alice Law and Peter Murdoch as they journey through Hell to rescue their advisor. The novel is chalk-full (get it?) with mythological references, and I loved the paradox-based magic system. I would recommend this novel to anyone who isn’t afraid to Google to math references they don’t understand--for me there were many.

I previously read and enjoyed "Yellowface," and DNF'd "Babel," so I was very curious going into this how I would like it. Ultimately, it is a really strong and fun read! Like "Babel," it comes off very dense at times, requiring you to slow down. It took me out of the story a bit, but the overall plot was interesting enough to keep me engaged. Like with "Babel," I feel this title might be stronger as an audiobook.
Thank you to the publisher for this ARC!

I think I just have to accept that Kuang isn’t an author I can get into. I think one of my issues is that she often tells and doesn’t allow her work to show.

Dante's Inferno meets Alice in Wonderland. There were parts of this book I loved- two graduate students of magick traveling through Hell to rescue their late professor... so captivating and fun! But at times Kuang got a little too into the weeds with paradoxes and intellectual fodder that took me out of the story and left me scratching my head more than once. Not my favorite of her books but I'll still continue to read anything she publishes!

Ninth House/Hell Bent meets The Atlas Six.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Do I think the pace meandered far too often? Absolutely. Do I think parts of the philosophical narrative were a bit pretentious? Yes, yes. Did I love the basis of the novel and the dynamic between Alice and Peter? I did!

With Babel, I felt like I was sometimes reading a textbook I bought that my professor (who also happened to write the textbook) assigned as required reading — and I had flashes of that same feeling while reading Katabasis. There was so much poured into theories and math and logic (which is fine because academia, I get it) but it was no way at all balanced with character development or emotion or bringing the world to life. The story feels almost… empty.

I finished this book not even two weeks ago. As of writing this review, I can only remember vague plot points. What I do remember is all very cool, but the story as a whole did not stick with me.

Let me be clear: it’s not a BAD book at all! There’s some fun/heartbreaking moments and glimpses behind the curtain into the world of academia, great bones of characters, and brief flashes of a really interesting magic system (again, similar to my stance on Babel), but I wanted more. I NEEDED more.

What an adventurous, tongue-in-cheek romp through Hell as an allegory for academia! Kuang's latest is full of twists and turns as the truth behind one professor's death and two advisees' relationship unravels, all set against the backdrop of philosophy, magic, and legends about the afterlife. Totally delightful.

‘Katabasis’ by R. F. Kuang delivers a gripping, dark academia fantasy that blends the intellectual rigor of ‘Babel’ with the atmospheric mystique of ‘The Poppy War’’.

We meet Alice Law, a brilliant and obsessive graduate student- who must confront her past and her rival, Peter Murdoch. They journey together to Hell itself to save the soul of their deceased professor, Jacob Grimes.

What begins as a mission driven by ambition and self-preservation soon evolves into a tense, complex exploration of sacrifice, morality, and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Kuang manages to create a masterful world in which it paints a chilling, imaginative vision of the underworld. Along side it, sharp characters and relationship that delves deep into the academic rivalry, trauma, and relationships that bind Alice and Peter together. In some essence you can say this was truly one of her most romantic works if you were to ask me.

‘Katabasis’ is a thrilling, thought-provoking ride that will appeal to fans of dark, atmospheric fantasies and those intrigued by the price of success and the darkness lurking beneath academic brilliance. It was a phenomenal read and I must say the best, and may be my favorite of Kuangs works yet. This still is written like it’s her unique story, however, it also manages to be something completely different which truly gripped me and had me at the edge of my seat.

If Hell were of your own making, based on your life path, what would it be? Would it be an unruly classroom that never settles down? A patient who can't be saved? A library filled with unorganized books?

In Katabasis, R.F. Kuang deconstructs the hell that is tertiary education through an Inferno-style trip to the underworld. Two students–rivals, former friends maybe?–have revolved their lives around not only their education but their advisor, a charismatic man who is now dead. To finish their dissertations, and maybe for other reasons, they want to find him. But the terrain is dangerous, and the waters of Lethe entice oblivion...

This is a stellar work about academia, ego, and health. It's referential but accessible (I've only taken Philo 101, but I was fine). It has twists and turns, surprises and (maybe the biggest surprise) comforts.

Does it make me want to go back to college? No, but also yes?

In a time when knowledge and access are being stripped from our schools and libraries, it's wonderful to see a work that is as smart and ambitious as Katabasis.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

3 stars

Thank you to Harper Voyager for a copy of the e-arc. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own. 

Babel and Yellowface are some of my favorite novels, and I respect The Poppy War trilogy. It is very clear that RF Kuang is a great atmospheric writer who knows how to make nods to so many audiences through the themes and items she weaves in. This book was an ambitious acknowledgment of what drives many scholars, writers, and readers.

A few allusions noticed were Dantes Inferno, Alice in Wonderland, The Odyssey, Hercules, and The Iliad. 

This book had a strong foundation for vocalizing the toxic higher education setting. What people deemed “other” have to trudge through to get their goal compared to someone else and the unfairness of it. For example, the married hires, the twisted tackling of consent: from when the mentor pushed our main character to let him put the magic tattoo on her. As well, as sexual harassment and attempted assault. I wish that instead of overcoming just one manipulating, unremarkable man in power we circled back around and had a call out of the university. 

The book also tackled the emotions and complexities of wanting to have someone in your life but they are unreliable flighty, and disregard their impact on you.

Crohn's disease representation. I cannot state anything on accuracy as I do not have experience with this condition nor do I know anyone struggling with this disease. 

Animal Cruelty/death.

Is it wrong of me to say I was expecting a larger emphasis on the romance?

The pacing was not as strong in this story as in previous works.

This is everything I wanted Babel to be. I liked the vision of Hell as well as the romance. If the dark academic trend keeps up, this will be a hit.

The characters fell flat and it read like a textbook. Also how do you go from "he's not condescending" to "oh he's so condescending".

Honestly felt like the plot went nowhere and the setting didn't make sense to me.

Elspeth was cool though, I liked her and she felt like a whole person.

Admittedly only enjoyed 40% of this book which is disappointing.