Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Published by HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: August 26, 2025
Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Literary
Bookshop
I’ve read and enjoyed both of R.F. Kuang’s adult novels (Babel, Yellowface) so was looking forward to her latest, Katabasis. A Greek word meaning “going down or descending” this chunky novel is about Alice Law, an American student getting her graduate degree in Magick from Cambridge. The title refers to Alice’s descent into Hell to retrieve the soul of her academic advisor, the man who is vital to her future success in the field. She’s unhappily joined in this endeavor by Peter Murdoch, another student whom she views as her greatest competition.
The how and whys of Katabasis are of less interest than the what and where. The what is the intricately detailed field of Magick and its history and reliance on philosophy, analytics, logic, and maths. The where is, of course, Hell. My only experiences of Hell come from the Catholic Church and Dante’s Inferno so what Kuang’s fertile imagination builds is an environment that resembles very little from those two interpretations. Alice and Peter do have to travel through nine circles each based on a different sin, but Kuang generates these hells from an environment mostly mundane—unless you’re stuck in one of them for eternity. I was tickled by her choices, but am going to refrain from sharing her vision because it’s half the fun of the novel.
Like anybody knowledgeable and passionate about a subject there can be a tendency to go in deeper than the average person would. Given the cerebral nature of her writing his is Kuang’s Achilles’ heel. There are swathes of Katabasis dealing with the arcane minutia of logic and philosophy that will likely thrill scholars, but leave other skimming the pages. I enjoyed much of it, but wish some could have been pruned in favor of plot momentum.
Wordiness aside, Katabasis is challenging reading in the best way possible. And what a challenge it is—finding oneself in an utterly foreign world where the rules of Earth and mortals no longer apply. It’s a frightening, fun adventure trekking through the Courts of Hell where even the appearance of the familiar is a cause for concern.
Ultimately, when you put your trust in an author, either for their creativity or their intelligence, you have to do just that and admire how well they use both. Kuang may seem to be showboating with this amalgam of Greek, Chinese, and Norse mythology, but it’s also mesmerizing. Just as Alice and Peter are being drawn through Hell so the reader is being drawn through the levels of Kuang’s imagination. She strews each with conundrums, riddles, and dilemmas forcing Alice to look deeply within herself, wrestle with her truths and lies, and try to emerge unscathed. Katabasis may mean “descent”, but this journey into the depths of Hell is tantalizing storytelling.
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Looking forward to giving this as try.
If you liked either of her other books, you’ll really like this one. It’s the most readable and I loved the ending.