R. F. Kuang

Katabasis

Cici Pearson

How soft those paws are, thought Alice; how delicately they press, leaving not even footprints on the silt. What I would give, to step with such grace.

nico

Now, Alice did not understand much about moral philosophy, and she was inclined to be skeptical that some thought experiments about tele-transportation could disprove the idea of an immortal soul, but she did find the perspective liberating. It helped her understand that she had never really known Peter, and he had never really known her. She knew only a version of him, at a brief moment in time. But without those hazy recollections, without the historical fact that she had once giggled helplessly with her head lolling on Peter's shoulder, she had no significant relationship to the Alice Law who was falling in love with Peter Murdoch at all. And if you could constantly reinvent yourself, cut away the parts of you that ashamed or hurt you, then how could you ever come to really know someone else? Were people all just living paradoxes, keeping up an illusion just long enough to survive contact with others? Were people then all a series of lies in the end?

 was true — then what difference did it make, what history you had, what love you'd shared? That staircase was gone; the planks had reassembled, and the soul you had come to know was a newly crafted fiction. And so perhaps it was entirely possible — common, even — for you to come into the eyes of someone you'd been falling in love with, someone you had spent every waking moment with, whose breathing sounded as familiar as your own — and fail to recognize them at all.

[...] how wonderful, truly, to have a friend whose silence you adored. 

Often they descended into incoherent laughter. Oh, how she loved his laugh. At a certain point past midnight when their minds were addled they would start to giggle at everything, but every now and then Alice said something so absurd it made Peter erupt into helpless, full-body laughter. It lurched through him, syncopated his breath, made his arms flail, elbows up before his chest like if he didn't try to hold himself together that laughter would break him into a million pieces. When Peter laughed it felt like the entire warmth of the sun was turned on her, because 

 had done it, she had uttered the words that so surprised and delighted him that he couldn't even breathe.

There was a time when she felt all she ever wanted to do was to make Peter Murdoch laugh.

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.

This was an entirely different type of feeling, and Alice could not consign what they had to the trash head of romance. This was love, a love she had never known; 

 — this gradual unfolding of another soul, charting one's course into privileged inner territory, making discoveries of which you felt you were the first. Alice loved her work for just this reason, so why wouldn't she fall in love with people, too?

It was in the midnight hours, when the mind fractured and things stopped making sense and the boundaries of the possible became fluid, that they did their best work. And in these hours, Alice experienced for the first time what she thought it might be like to fall in love.

Difficulty had a way of forging fast friendships; there was no time for interpersonal awkwardness when there was so much to do.

I think being in love might be the hardest thing to imagine.

Everyone thinks their love is eternal. I like to let them keep believing.

Of course she wanted to be wrong. For months and months she held on to the hope that she was wrong, that it was all in her head, and she was making it all up. Surely no one else lived like this — burdened by the tiniest details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.

This marked the difference between them. Alice fretted, and Peter danced on air.

If ever she brought it up, he truly would not remember. And if she tried ever to explain how he had hurt her, then he would think her mad. "You sabotaged my career," she would tell him. And to this he would say, quite innocently, "What?"

All this had happened. She had not invented it. She had been there, she knew how it felt to make him laugh.

So she might be forgiven if, once upon a time, she had even once deluded herself into thinking she 

 risen to deserve space in Peter's inner world. That she could reach through his shell at last and crack open whatever it was he kept hidden from the rest of them.

This was always the temptation with Peter. He could make you feel so important. His proximity drenched you in the sparkle. The full force of his attention was like a drug. He laughed a joke you'd make, or he followed you around with questions on your work, and you thought, 

. But he always pulled away, and left you wondering what you had done. Had you offended him? Said the wrong thing? Or had you simply not been enough; not been smart enough, or clever enough? Had he just gotten bored, gotten up, and wandered away?

Alice used to torture herself with the wonder, scrutinizing her still-imperfect memory for how she had driven him away and what it might take to summon him back. But there were no answers. She was not at fault. Peter was a wild thing; he would not be approached by anyone. An abyss yawned between him and everyone else. The rest of them were so plotting, mundane, earth-bound; and Peter was always flying off to worlds where they could not follow.

So she had simply stopped wondering. It hurt too much. There were no answers; there was only the gulf. All she knew was this: She could coexist with Peter Murdoch. She could even, when she let her guard down, when she was either sleep-deprived or desperate enough, be very fond of and unfortunately attracted to Peter Murdoch. But she would be a fool to think that she knew him.

The problem of Peter's looks was a great puzzle to her. Nothing was symmetrical or classically handsome, so why was his face so 

The Eight Courts of Hell reflected the world of the living. Nearly all the ancient mythologies converged on this principle. So many ancient rituals were conducted as if in Hell, all the patterns of life continued on. Mourners put coins under the tongues of the dead so as to pay their passage; they buried them with favorite pets and treasures. The recently deceased soul was disoriented by his tearing from life. Hell had to resemble the familiar, otherwise he could never move on.

This theory, though not universally accepted, did explain why Dante's Hell involved all the poets and artists and politicians he was personally familiar with over his lifetime. And why paintings of the Buddhist hells displayed all the ritual trappings of Chinese palaces: gardens and pools and harems of concubines. And why both Greek and Mesopotamian visions of the afterlife involved neat, orderly systems of justice, gatekeepers, and accountants armed with records and scales, processing lines of the dead the same way passport offices process citizens. At the end of the day, human beings preferred the predictable order of their known bureaucracies. One's sin took on meaning in the context of their moral universe, comprised of their loved ones, their idols, their rivals, their victims. Dante saw philosophers and politicians. Aeneas saw ghosts of warriors past. One was hurt most by what one knew.

Loss of identity was a terrifying prospect. Who were you without your memories, your background, your relationships, your station? What if your lot in the next life was far worse than the life you'd just lived? It didn't matter that in theory souls enjoyed infinite lives, and infinite chances to experience things good and bad. From the subjective perspective of the soul, reincarnation was no different from death.

All the ghost stories were wrong; hauntings were so rarely malicious. The dead only wanted to feel included.

Entering Hell meant crashing through borders between worlds, and this demanded a kind of organic energy that mere chalk could not contain. "Thirty years or so, gone. I know."

But she had hardly struggled with the choice. Would she rather graduate, produce brilliant research, and go out in a blaze of glory? Or would she rather live out her natural lifespan, gray haired and drooling, fading into irrelevance, consumed by regret? Had not Achilles chosen to die in battle? She had met professors emeriti at department receptions, those poor aphasic props, and she did not think old age an attractive prospect. She knew this choice would horrify anyone outside the academy. But no one outside the academy could possibly understand. She would sacrifice her firstborn for a professorial post. She would sever a limb. She would give anything, so long as she still had her mind, so long as she could still think.

He was simply born brilliant, all that knowledge poured by gods without spillage into his brain.

Sophia 

"But don't you care about anything?" "I suppose I should." How could she explain to him this numbness? It wasn't that Alice didn't care, it was that she had cared so much, and a thread had snapped. Some fundamental capacity was broken. She felt hurled out of the world of meaning, feeling, attachment. She couldn't bleed anymore. She was drained already. Scripts were all she had now, and they were enough to keep her walking, but not enough for her heart to start beating. "But you're alive,” said Gradus, as if this were the answer to everything. "Against all my desires. Yes."

She stopped eating; everything she put in her mouth made her stomach roil. Her hair started falling out. Her skin turned gray. People called out to her, people tried to help. She barely heard them; she did not answer. She heard a strange buzzing in her ears all the time. The world felt muted and distorted, as if she were moving underwater. Still she kept going. She didn't know what else to do. Her plan, if she could call it that, was simply to be an automaton until the center could no longer hold; until she fell to pieces against her will.

It would be rational to set limits on yourself before you begin, for example. Or it might be rational to have a friend cut you off. But Cambridge gives you none of these. It just keeps you turning up the dial. Up and up and up. You start getting tunnel vision about it all. All that exists is the payoff and the dial. Until one day my dial broke." She shrugged. “That's really all there was to it. One day I stopped being able to feel anything at all. There was no difference between pain and pleasure. It was all just the same wash. Nothing mattered. And it was only once I got here, once I was fucking dead, that things took on importance again." 

Surely no one else lived like this-burdened by the tiniest details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.

This was the key to flourishing in graduate school. You could do anything if you were delusional. 

Comparing climbing to SI in burnt out academics. What a way to describe this. That’s real

She was pleased by the tenuousness of it all. How quick the ground would rise if for one moment you stopped paying attention. If you loosed a breath, made your peace, and just. Let. Go. It felt good, knowing how to fall. Feeling out the worst. Knowing that was an option.

- arguably kuang's most... controversial book? in the sense that i only ever see remarkably high or hideously low ratings

- an important note: kuang is an academic. she has always been an academic. this is not new information. this book indulges itself in research, in philosophy, in ramblings of classics and mythologies and basically any historical insight on the concept of the afterlife. it's going to, at times, sound like a university lecture. that's what kuang has ALWAYS been like. if you don't like that, you're not going to like what you find in here. everybody's saying "kuang needs to hire a new editor" and "kuang should've taken out these lecutre-y passages" when she literally was talking in interviews that her editor wanted to take them out and she fought to keep them in because they were her favorite parts

- with that out of the way: this is easily my favorite kuang novel. loved everything about it and i found the pairing of alice and peter very charming... the early exposition about how alice researched hell and how peter and alice's studies led to different discoveries, and all the different philosophical discussions... it was all such a blast. plus there are some wonderful passages on love and connection through the academic world in the last third of the book

- the plot however is a bit... messy. you can tell that kuang's motives for the story changed drastically as she continued working on the book. what starts as something very experimental and academic and witty quickly turns into this typical young adult romance fantasy... that aspect i think is questionable, and a fair critique to make of the book. it didn't harm my personal enjoyment of the story too much though

- arguably kuang's most... controversial book? in the sense that i only ever see remarkably high or hideously low ratings

- an important note: kuang is an academic. she has always been an academic. this is not new information. this book indulges itself in research, in philosophy, in ramblings of classics and mythologies and basically any historical insight on the concept of the afterlife. it's going to, at times, sound like a university lecture. that's what kuang has ALWAYS been like. if you don't like that, you're not going to like what you find in here. everybody's saying "kuang needs to hire a new editor" and "kuang should've taken out these lecutre-y passages" when she literally was talking in interviews that her editor wanted to take them out and she fought to keep them in because they were her favorite parts

- with that out of the way: this is easily my favorite kuang novel. loved everything about it and i found the pairing of alice and peter very charming... the early exposition about how alice researched hell and how peter and alice's studies led to different discoveries, and all the different philosophical discussions... it was all such a blast. plus there are some wonderful passages on love and connection through the academic world in the last third of the book

- the plot however is a bit... messy. you can tell that kuang's motives for the story changed drastically as she continued working on the book. what starts as something very experimental and academic and witty quickly turns into this typical young adult romance fantasy... that aspect i think is questionable, and a fair critique to make of the book. it didn't harm my personal enjoyment of the story too much though

Reading this with a downpour and a chill in the air felt apt, but I do agree that sometimes RFK spoonfeeds a little 

Annabella

One thing about me - academic recollections of Hell is gonna do it for me every time. 

The most beautiful writing I’ve ever read! 

Christina Rose Sullivan

One thing about me - academic recollections of Hell is gonna do it for me every time. 

The most beautiful writing I’ve ever read! 

the moment i found out katabasis was essentially self-insert fanfiction of r.f. kuang and her husband, i lost all respect for it.

i get it rebecca, you went to oxford! you went to cambridge! you are infinitely smarter than me and i will never be able to achieve in a lifetime what you've done in a year. do you have to remind me of all this every 5 pages? 😅 

so shamelessly pretentious and condescending. what an absolute waste, as i really enjoyed babel and yellowface and i was looking forward to this. for the love of god, please get a better editor for the next novel. 

˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶

the moment i found out katabasis was essentially self-insert fanfiction of r.f. kuang and her husband, i lost all respect for it.

i get it rebecca, you went to oxford! you went to cambridge! you are infinitely smarter than me and i will never be able to achieve in a lifetime what you've done in a year. do you have to remind me of all this every 5 pages? 😅 

so shamelessly pretentious and condescending. what an absolute waste, as i really enjoyed babel and yellowface and i was looking forward to this. for the love of god, please get a better editor for the next novel. 

you will not believe how badly i wanted the big bad evil atrocity committed by grimes to NOT be rape i was dreading it so badly if i stopped reading right after the plagiarism reveal this review would be a whole star higher alas. a reductive and repetitive academia and its dangers parable except its not even a parable thats the whole fucking story. half the book felt like a lesson in paradoxes and philosophy that just Wasn't needed. kuang does a phenomenal job inventing systems and worlds of magic, just the actual story execution part has been falling flat. 

Starts really slowly but picks up a little bit. I did enjoy the ending, but the story feels as though it’s being told to you rather than you “experiencing it”. I was disappointed overall.

Anna

To me, this was the story of Alice’s mental health crisis in school. All the rest, was supporting detail. It created the substance needed to explore the dark waters of suicidal ideation and intent. Was the book perfect? No. But I found it impactful to see myself so eloquently described in Alice’s character. I can vouch for the crushing nature of higher education, and her inner monologue was an accurate representation of the roaring one can feel in their head. For me, her character was validating and affirming of my own experience in school. 

Plus, I thoroughly enjoyed learning so much about subjects in other disciplines. I am in a STEM field, so this type of thinking is fascinating. I appreciate the amount of effort Kuang put into the novel. 

I would recommend To Sleep In A Sea of Stars, if you want a similarly heavy book with background info dumping, but the science version. 

To me, this was the story of Alice’s mental health crisis in school. All the rest, was supporting detail. It created the substance needed to explore the dark waters of suicidal ideation and intent. Was the book perfect? No. But I found it impactful to see myself so eloquently described in Alice’s character. I can vouch for the crushing nature of higher education, and her inner monologue was an accurate representation of the roaring one can feel in their head. For me, her character was validating and affirming of my own experience in school. 

Plus, I thoroughly enjoyed learning so much about subjects in other disciplines. I am in a STEM field, so this type of thinking is fascinating. I appreciate the amount of effort Kuang put into the novel. 

I would recommend To Sleep In A Sea of Stars, if you want a similarly heavy book with background info dumping, but the science version. 

RF Kuang strikes again with a journey into the layers of hell where we explore the human condition instead.

Important to note that this is not a dark academia and deep world similar to Babel, but more a character driven exploration of two morally grey people. 

Using each layer of hell, and the arrogance of “knowledge” to peel apart why anyone would ever traverse hell to ‘save’ their abusive professor.

I loved the subtle deeper layers of how the two characters connected both before and during the journey.

No need to have an in-depth knowledge of Dante’s Inferno or Greek Mythology, although it helps with unlocking some of the easter eggs in the lore. The book takes it time to explain important aspects of the story.

Rabia Sitabi

RF Kuang strikes again with a journey into the layers of hell where we explore the human condition instead.

Important to note that this is not a dark academia and deep world similar to Babel, but more a character driven exploration of two morally grey people. 

Using each layer of hell, and the arrogance of “knowledge” to peel apart why anyone would ever traverse hell to ‘save’ their abusive professor.

I loved the subtle deeper layers of how the two characters connected both before and during the journey.

No need to have an in-depth knowledge of Dante’s Inferno or Greek Mythology, although it helps with unlocking some of the easter eggs in the lore. The book takes it time to explain important aspects of the story.



I love R. F. Kuang so obvs I devoured this! I raced through this book so quickly I was annoyed when I had to stop reading and go to work. My only complaint, which is the same as in Babel, is that the author is so clearly American. I don't mean that cruelly, but more that, as a British person, it feels like a pastiche of Britishness, especially in relation to Oxbridge. That aside, I loved it this book and will continue to read every book she writes!

Soph

Molly Sanderson 

Another spectacular book from R. F. Kuang

Emily Richards

my main problem with this is that it is just boring as hell, with no real stakes in the entire book. 

there are attempts at good plot lines that i can appreciate, but at this point (multiple books after debut) i should not have to dig for good things to say about a book. 

Stas

my main problem with this is that it is just boring as hell, with no real stakes in the entire book. 
there are attempts at good plot lines that i can appreciate, but at this point (multiple books after debut) i should not have to dig for good things to say about a book. 

fantasy’s not really my cup of tea but it was nice to laugh through a journey through hell

petrina

Loved every second of this book. I could barely put it down. Dark academia at its finest! I never knew where the story would take me next. 🙌

Nina Bertrand

'To hell with love', such a great tag line with so many different ways to interpret and read it, much the same can be said for the contents of this book. Katabasis is a dark academia adventure following Alice and Peter, Cambridge post-grad students who are going to hell to bring back their professor. There's some rivals to lovers romance going on, there's a lot of discussions about philosophy and logic, there's a really interested depiction of hell - Kuang has packed this book with so much it was a truly immersive and brilliant reading experience. 

This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year having loved all of Kaung's previous books, especially The Poppy War which is one of my favourite series of all time. As soon as we had the Escher stairs cover teased I knew this was going to be a brain stretching read and that it was. Kuang writes with such intelligence and really analysis her subject matter which means her books aren't light reads, but she also does a really good job of making them not come across as too intense or challenging to understand. In short, I didn't feel like a total idiot reading Katabasis, though the logic discussions had my brain hurting a little bit. 

At the heart of this book is hell as depicted by R. F. Kuang and inspired by literary imaginations of past. Throughout this book's journey our main characters are constantly referencing other writings of hell with some well known authors being referred to as magicians which was a really fun detail I enjoyed. Among these greats, Kaung has now added her own name and version of hell, which in itself is a brilliant meta moment to now be classed amongst those she was researching and studying. I loved the take Kaung had on hell and how she visualised it in her writing, it was immediately so clear in my head and such an interesting setting to learn more about. 

The real highlight of this book for me was Alice and Peter and their relationship with each other. Initially the reader isn't sure how close they are or how they feel about each other, but as the narrative goes on, we get more backstory to their friendship and its origins. I loved being fed this information as the book progressed, it was spaced out and slowly gave more context to each character as we learnt more about them. Peter is an absolutely sweetheart and I love him dearly, he was so likeable and genuine and it felt refreshing to see that he wasn't this bad boy arsehole. Alice was our main narrator and is wrecked with guilt for a lot of this book which makes her unreliable to follow and therefore an interesting perspective. I also loved her name, Alice Law, to me Alice always brings to mind Alice in Wonderland, chaos, nonsense, madness and then Law, logic, structure, rules - whether or not that's where Kuang was going with the contrast of her name, I loved it none the less. 

Without going into spoilers, I'll touch on the end of this book. This whole journey is about retrieving their professor and the moral obligations to do. We touch on multiple important conversations throughout as well, some brief, some a lot longer. Of course, being set in hell and around lost souls, there's an overriding question of purpose and how we spend our lives. But what I found really fascinating toward the end of Katabasis was Kuang's examination of what it means to be human and how we preserve our humanity. Through the dedication of several other characters in hell we see the definition of humanity being stretched very thin and how this changes and affects Alice and Peter. As the narrative progressed in a linear way, this question of being human in hell follows these two and ebbs away at them slowly. 

Katabasis fascinated me from start to finish, I was constantly googling new things and learning about philosophy and logic in ways I hadn't thought about before. You can't help but critically read a book by R. F. Kuang and I was happy to have my brain stretched by this novel. 

Beth Bartholomew

'To hell with love', such a great tag line with so many different ways to interpret and read it, much the same can be said for the contents of this book. Katabasis is a dark academia adventure following Alice and Peter, Cambridge post-grad students who are going to hell to bring back their professor. There's some rivals to lovers romance going on, there's a lot of discussions about philosophy and logic, there's a really interested depiction of hell - Kuang has packed this book with so much it was a truly immersive and brilliant reading experience. 

This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year having loved all of Kaung's previous books, especially The Poppy War which is one of my favourite series of all time. As soon as we had the Escher stairs cover teased I knew this was going to be a brain stretching read and that it was. Kuang writes with such intelligence and really analysis her subject matter which means her books aren't light reads, but she also does a really good job of making them not come across as too intense or challenging to understand. In short, I didn't feel like a total idiot reading Katabasis, though the logic discussions had my brain hurting a little bit. 

At the heart of this book is hell as depicted by R. F. Kuang and inspired by literary imaginations of past. Throughout this book's journey our main characters are constantly referencing other writings of hell with some well known authors being referred to as magicians which was a really fun detail I enjoyed. Among these greats, Kaung has now added her own name and version of hell, which in itself is a brilliant meta moment to now be classed amongst those she was researching and studying. I loved the take Kaung had on hell and how she visualised it in her writing, it was immediately so clear in my head and such an interesting setting to learn more about. 

The real highlight of this book for me was Alice and Peter and their relationship with each other. Initially the reader isn't sure how close they are or how they feel about each other, but as the narrative goes on, we get more backstory to their friendship and its origins. I loved being fed this information as the book progressed, it was spaced out and slowly gave more context to each character as we learnt more about them. Peter is an absolutely sweetheart and I love him dearly, he was so likeable and genuine and it felt refreshing to see that he wasn't this bad boy arsehole. Alice was our main narrator and is wrecked with guilt for a lot of this book which makes her unreliable to follow and therefore an interesting perspective. I also loved her name, Alice Law, to me Alice always brings to mind Alice in Wonderland, chaos, nonsense, madness and then Law, logic, structure, rules - whether or not that's where Kuang was going with the contrast of her name, I loved it none the less. 

Without going into spoilers, I'll touch on the end of this book. This whole journey is about retrieving their professor and the moral obligations to do. We touch on multiple important conversations throughout as well, some brief, some a lot longer. Of course, being set in hell and around lost souls, there's an overriding question of purpose and how we spend our lives. But what I found really fascinating toward the end of Katabasis was Kuang's examination of what it means to be human and how we preserve our humanity. Through the dedication of several other characters in hell we see the definition of humanity being stretched very thin and how this changes and affects Alice and Peter. As the narrative progressed in a linear way, this question of being human in hell follows these two and ebbs away at them slowly. 

Katabasis fascinated me from start to finish, I was constantly googling new things and learning about philosophy and logic in ways I hadn't thought about before. You can't help but critically read a book by R. F. Kuang and I was happy to have my brain stretched by this novel. 



I think this was an incredible, gripping book! I most enjoyed that it didn’t talk down to the reader, and mostly assumed you, like Alice and Peter, knew what the book was referencing. I thought it was a smart and sophisticated take on a katabasis, and I just loved the characters I thought they were nuanced in a way that felt real, like they weren’t perfect but they were complete characters. I am of the firm belief that a character doesn’t have to be good or moral or do all the things I would do to be a good character; in fact, I love reading about characters who make decisions I would never make. I feel like a lot of the negative reviews surrounding this book are that it reads like a textbook, which I personally disagree with, and that the characters are unlikable. in my opinion, I think the characters were likable, but I see why they may be not for everyone. I liked them though; I think that coldness and distance that they put on at first os interesting and then makes it better when you get drawn into the book and get to know them more. the plot was sooo well paced, I was so impressed. the reveals were hinted at throughout the narrative, and so I did kind of call where some parts were going, but it felt intentional rather than sloppy. I’ve always enjoyed RF Kuang’s writing, and this feels like a combination of the dry satire of yellowface and the academia and intensity of babel. one of my favorite reads of the year, I would recommend!

fris🐝

I do feel like I’ve actually been through hell in the worst way possible.

Outside of the very unnecessary conversations about penises, I would’ve thought this was YA. I’m aware this is still an arc, and in between writing this and her final draft, she’s likely improved some things. But quite frankly, I was miserable from start to finish.

From a storytelling perspective, there was not a single likable character to latch onto and root for. RFK told us a lot of things — a LOT — but rarely ever showed them. The emotional beats didn’t have any impact because I never cared about these people. The “humorous” parts didn’t elicit a single chuckle. The supposed romance was the most contrived mess of predictable plot points I’ve seen in a long time. The info dumps sprinkled in ruined any momentum the book had and read like journal scribblings from when she first came up with the concept of the story. The academic moments felt like I was in an 8am lecture after Thirsty Thursday. It just did not work.

Much like how I wanted to see more of the secret society in Babel, I wanted to see more of Hell in this novel. Honestly, this could’ve been set in Baltimore for all I know. We spent so much time in flashbacks, it really didn’t matter. This entire project felt directionless, and wasted a day of my life. I have a lot more to say about RFKs tendency to self-insert and my inability to determine if her main characters are proud tokens with elitist mindsets by design or if that’s some of the author bleeding into the writing. However, I’m sick of thinking about this book and will pick that fight another day.

Nik ✨

I do feel like I’ve actually been through hell in the worst way possible.

Outside of the very unnecessary conversations about penises, I would’ve thought this was YA. I’m aware this is still an arc, and in between writing this and her final draft, she’s likely improved some things. But quite frankly, I was miserable from start to finish.

From a storytelling perspective, there was not a single likable character to latch onto and root for. RFK told us a lot of things — a LOT — but rarely ever showed them. The emotional beats didn’t have any impact because I never cared about these people. The “humorous” parts didn’t elicit a single chuckle. The supposed romance was the most contrived mess of predictable plot points I’ve seen in a long time. The info dumps sprinkled in ruined any momentum the book had and read like journal scribblings from when she first came up with the concept of the story. The academic moments felt like I was in an 8am lecture after Thirsty Thursday. It just did not work.

Much like how I wanted to see more of the secret society in Babel, I wanted to see more of Hell in this novel. Honestly, this could’ve been set in Baltimore for all I know. We spent so much time in flashbacks, it really didn’t matter. This entire project felt directionless, and wasted a day of my life. I have a lot more to say about RFKs tendency to self-insert and my inability to determine if her main characters are proud tokens with elitist mindsets by design or if that’s some of the author bleeding into the writing. However, I’m sick of thinking about this book and will pick that fight another day.

rory

ARC review, Deluxe Limited Edition EPUB copy (Release Date : August 2025)

Thank you to Harper Voyager and NetGalley for the advanced copy !

Two magicians go to hell to resurrect their dead thesis advisor so they can get their papers approved and graduate. While I picked this book up because of that premise, it is also the main factor that made it so boring and kind of pointless for me. R.F. Kuang is smart, yes, but she's not a good storyteller.

Magic (or Magick let's say) in this book are not paradoxes, the way the book tells you, but is actually a bunch of If-Else statements I've learned from coding subjects during my Grade 10-12 years. For a bunch of smart people they claim (or the author makes them out) to be, they say a lot of dumb shit sometimes. "You need to explain that to me like I'm five" ??? Kuang, I need to remind you this is not twitter. I thought it's because maybe she doesn't know where to draw the line on what's being said by Gen Z on social media apps versus the real world, but i looked up her age and she's not even old ? Personally, the people I'm around with and my friend group/s are the most brainrotted people I know but I have NEVER heard them say this in real life.

A love story ? Where ? Enemies-to-Lovers subplot ? Where ? Enemies ? Where ? Lovers ? Where ? The only thing coming close to a love story in this book is the main characters' love for hating academia and being a postgraduate.

Relationships and character arcs are reliant on backstories. To make a character round, Kuang conveniently brings up a specific memory, to show that this character is actually like this or that. For me, that doesn't make a character complex, it just makes them confusing. Everyone is flat. Everyone talks the same. If you remove the "Alice said" or "Peter said"s, I would argue that you can't tell where Alice ends or Peter starts. Side characters and Villain/s don't have a point either. Their main schtick is being that one fly roaming around your house. You get annoyed, you swat it, they go away for an hour or two then come back, and repeat. This book introduced 3 (or 4) side characters to progress the plot (not really) but when the scene is all done and the main characters go "ok", they just walk away like nothing happened and disappear from the book entirely or reappear when it's convenient for the plot to progress again. I'm not kidding when I say in the last chapters, one of the characters literally went 

insert that peace sign guy going invisible meme

 when he wasn't needed anymore. And as Alice always gets her way in the end, she continues to be flat. A lot of the chapters (specified below) just reads like lazy writing to me :/ . Characters are not likeable or unlikeable, I simply feel nothing towards them.

To the Kuang fanatics who would defend this book with their entire being, would make very unnecessary reading lists, and would tell you if you don't like this book; "You just didn't get it" and "You're not smart enough", let me tell you this. If the amount of literary references in a book would decide how smart an author is or how good the book is, then I would argue that ao3 authors would subjectively make a better writer than R.F. Kuang. Hell (haha get it ?), if we want to get into The Iliad references, then I would say that the Hannibal fandom / Hannigram writers have been doing it the best for more than a decade now. This is nothing new nor groundbreaking.

Chapters 3-6 : Okayy, interesting interesting

Chapters 7-10 : ..Kind of feeling sleepy the last few chapters

Chapters 11-33 : ZZZZZ Can this book just end ?

Chapters 34-35 : Welcome back R.F Kuang from Chapters 1-2, I'm interested again.

Hell is boring, magick is boring, characters are boring, and the story is boring. At least it ended the way I wanted it to end. I guess that made picking it up worth it ?? IDK :/

Just sucks that I only gave a shit again about the characters after 400 pages. As I said, I picked this up for the interesting premise, not for a badly written Substack post that I can't determine if it's another academia rant or a Greek myth info-dump. Disappointing, for a book that is probably the most anticipated release of the year.

Nica

2.3

ARC review, Deluxe Limited Edition EPUB copy (Release Date : August 2025)

Thank you to Harper Voyager and NetGalley for the advanced copy !

Two magicians go to hell to resurrect their dead thesis advisor so they can get their papers approved and graduate. While I picked this book up because of that premise, it is also the main factor that made it so boring and kind of pointless for me. R.F. Kuang is smart, yes, but she's not a good storyteller.

Magic (or Magick let's say) in this book are not paradoxes, the way the book tells you, but is actually a bunch of If-Else statements I've learned from coding subjects during my Grade 10-12 years. For a bunch of smart people they claim (or the author makes them out) to be, they say a lot of dumb shit sometimes. "You need to explain that to me like I'm five" ??? Kuang, I need to remind you this is not twitter. I thought it's because maybe she doesn't know where to draw the line on what's being said by Gen Z on social media apps versus the real world, but i looked up her age and she's not even old ? Personally, the people I'm around with and my friend group/s are the most brainrotted people I know but I have NEVER heard them say this in real life.

A love story ? Where ? Enemies-to-Lovers subplot ? Where ? Enemies ? Where ? Lovers ? Where ? The only thing coming close to a love story in this book is the main characters' love for hating academia and being a postgraduate.

Relationships and character arcs are reliant on backstories. To make a character round, Kuang conveniently brings up a specific memory, to show that this character is actually like this or that. For me, that doesn't make a character complex, it just makes them confusing. Everyone is flat. Everyone talks the same. If you remove the "Alice said" or "Peter said"s, I would argue that you can't tell where Alice ends or Peter starts. Side characters and Villain/s don't have a point either. Their main schtick is being that one fly roaming around your house. You get annoyed, you swat it, they go away for an hour or two then come back, and repeat. This book introduced 3 (or 4) side characters to progress the plot (not really) but when the scene is all done and the main characters go "ok", they just walk away like nothing happened and disappear from the book entirely or reappear when it's convenient for the plot to progress again. I'm not kidding when I say in the last chapters, one of the characters literally went insert that peace sign guy going invisible meme when he wasn't needed anymore. And as Alice always gets her way in the end, she continues to be flat. A lot of the chapters (specified below) just reads like lazy writing to me :/ . Characters are not likeable or unlikeable, I simply feel nothing towards them.

To the Kuang fanatics who would defend this book with their entire being, would make very unnecessary reading lists, and would tell you if you don't like this book; "You just didn't get it" and "You're not smart enough", let me tell you this. If the amount of literary references in a book would decide how smart an author is or how good the book is, then I would argue that ao3 authors would subjectively make a better writer than R.F. Kuang. Hell (haha get it ?), if we want to get into The Iliad references, then I would say that the Hannibal fandom / Hannigram writers have been doing it the best for more than a decade now. This is nothing new nor groundbreaking.

My reading experience summarized :

Chapters 1-2 : LOVED it, I am hooked !

Chapters 3-6 : Okayy, interesting interesting

Chapters 7-10 : ..Kind of feeling sleepy the last few chapters

Chapters 11-33 : ZZZZZ Can this book just end ?

Chapters 34-35 : Welcome back R.F Kuang from Chapters 1-2, I'm interested again.

Hell is boring, magick is boring, characters are boring, and the story is boring. At least it ended the way I wanted it to end. I guess that made picking it up worth it ?? IDK :/

Just sucks that I only gave a shit again about the characters after 400 pages. As I said, I picked this up for the interesting premise, not for a badly written Substack post that I can't determine if it's another academia rant or a Greek myth info-dump. Disappointing, for a book that is probably the most anticipated release of the year.

Katabasis

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