Name: Katabasis
Rating: 3.918831168831169 (77 reviews)

R. F. Kuang

Katabasis

This was my first RF Kuang book and it did not disappoint- at times I was a bit lost with some of the magical rules but the overall message just means so much to me 🥹🫶🏻

Adele Etheridge Woodson

Great book, worldbuilding was really creative, whole book was really unpredictable

Mikhail Sumygin

i was so confused about where this was going until the last 10% lol

Krystal

This book started as a very exciting read. At surface level, the first few chapters were exciting, making me reminisce my own college memories. The smell of coffee, torn-up books, and late-night manic studying sessions with food from a joint just around the corner. Hell being Cambridge was also a very fun comparison for how anything can be your own living torture - it's just in how you view it.

The characters were frustratingly written, but it served the purpose of the plot. When Alice was first introduced I immediately thought about how she is lost in some fantasy land. She talks about putting all her effort into making delusion real with magick, and she continually justifies Grimes's actions and her own despite the pain it causes her and how it alienates her from living life. My hope after the first chapter was that she would go on a journey to finally break free of her own delusion, which transformed into the narrative. Peter is a young and naive boy who thinks he can do what he wants since he has the intelligence and societal capital. But his decisions have real ramifications. He's lost boy who needs to grow up and take responsibility for the impact his choices have on himself and others. They needed to dig themselves out of their own stories/ fantasies to realize hell is real/ life isn't just a game they can conquer by studying and jumping into with some bread and a backpack on their own.

Alice being a "pick me" girl made sense for the narrative since she's so blinded, she sees everything as a competition. However, it was frustrating that every depiction of a woman/woman relationship in that light - but at least in the end it was saved once Alice hits her own katabasis and chooses to live.

However, I think the story started to drag for me after the weaver girl incident. I knew Alice was going to betray Peter, but it still felt so BAD and gross, which speaks to Kuang's writing skill. I was disappointed that the campus vision of hell was dropped and became a desert thereafter because it wasn't as fun. However, at this point the journey did become more real for our characters so narratively I guess I see why it was dropped. Hell is brutal and not made for the living. It would have been more fun though to keep the college/hell comparison throughout all the levels and see how people's actions were framed in them.

I enjoyed the journey, even if I didn't like each point or the resolution. The Kripkes was interesting, and I'm not fully sure I even really liked their end. The act of them owning their narrative resonated in the end and felt like a symbol that at any moment you can choose to be a different person (or reflect and change).

Do I think this is a perfect story? No. Did I have fun reading it for at least 60% of it? Yes. Do I think overall it's a good book? Yes.

I'm surprised that this story is so divisive. I think the critique that Kuang is just trying to show off how well-read she is isn't valid. Were there a LOT of academic references? Yes. But it made sense for post-docs who lived and breathed their research to talk in this way. But again, I loved how it brought me back to school. Also let a woman show off her knowledge if she wants. She's smart lol.

Ashley Denktas

This book started as a very exciting read. At surface level, the first few chapters were exciting, making me reminisce my own college memories. The smell of coffee, torn-up books, and late-night manic studying sessions with food from a joint just around the corner. Hell being Cambridge was also a very fun comparison for how anything can be your own living torture - it's just in how you view it.

The characters were frustratingly written, but it served the purpose of the plot. When Alice was first introduced I immediately thought about how she is lost in some fantasy land. She talks about putting all her effort into making delusion real with magick, and she continually justifies Grimes's actions and her own despite the pain it causes her and how it alienates her from living life. My hope after the first chapter was that she would go on a journey to finally break free of her own delusion, which transformed into the narrative. Peter is a young and naive boy who thinks he can do what he wants since he has the intelligence and societal capital. But his decisions have real ramifications. He's lost boy who needs to grow up and take responsibility for the impact his choices have on himself and others. They needed to dig themselves out of their own stories/ fantasies to realize hell is real/ life isn't just a game they can conquer by studying and jumping into with some bread and a backpack on their own.

Alice being a "pick me" girl made sense for the narrative since she's so blinded, she sees everything as a competition. However, it was frustrating that every depiction of a woman/woman relationship in that light - but at least in the end it was saved once Alice hits her own katabasis and chooses to live.

However, I think the story started to drag for me after the weaver girl incident. I knew Alice was going to betray Peter, but it still felt so BAD and gross, which speaks to Kuang's writing skill. I was disappointed that the campus vision of hell was dropped and became a desert thereafter because it wasn't as fun. However, at this point the journey did become more real for our characters so narratively I guess I see why it was dropped. Hell is brutal and not made for the living. It would have been more fun though to keep the college/hell comparison throughout all the levels and see how people's actions were framed in them.

I enjoyed the journey, even if I didn't like each point or the resolution. The Kripkes was interesting, and I'm not fully sure I even really liked their end. The act of them owning their narrative resonated in the end and felt like a symbol that at any moment you can choose to be a different person (or reflect and change).

Do I think this is a perfect story? No. Did I have fun reading it for at least 60% of it? Yes. Do I think overall it's a good book? Yes.

I'm surprised that this story is so divisive. I think the critique that Kuang is just trying to show off how well-read she is isn't valid. Were there a LOT of academic references? Yes. But it made sense for post-docs who lived and breathed their research to talk in this way. But again, I loved how it brought me back to school. Also let a woman show off her knowledge if she wants. She's smart lol.

- 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

smile??

- 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. 

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. 

Sophia 

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. 

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

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

petrina

'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. 



Katabasis

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