Katabasis (Deluxe Limited Edition): A Fantastical Descent into Hell, Rivalry, and Redemption in the Pursuit of Academic Glory from Author of Yellowface―R. F. Kuang

**4.5 stars** beautiful sprayed edge I was going back and forth between a 4 and a 4.5 star for this book but I enjoyed so much of Alice’s journey within herself and I liked the combination of academia, fantasy, horror even, and romance. I wasn’t expecting the humor but I loved that. Did I have to read it little by little because there was a lot to process? Was some of the info-dumping a little clinical? Yes, but I felt like my brain got a workout – but in a good way. Because once upon a time when I was in college I did love learning about Dante, philosophy, and logic…but come on, it’s been so long I’ve been in school! 😅 I’ve been reading a lot to escape and not think so that this book forced me to think – I actually totally appreciate it! I was highly entertained by this book! I still need to read Babel, but I look forward to reading more books from R.F. Kuang.

The title, Katabasis, means a hero’s journey through hell, and that’s exactly what Cambridge graduate students Alice and Peter must do to retrieve their graduate advisor, who has died in an untimely accident which they each believe they are responsible for. Each of the main characters must also contend with their own painful past and face up to their complex feelings for each other along the way. This is a thoughtful fantasy journey heavily influenced by Dante’s Inferno, exploring philosophical paradoxes and the importance of questioning what we think we know, about ourselves and others. R.F. Kuang, author of Yellowface, shows her versatility here, but readers of both books will note a similarity between the take-down of the publishing industry in Yellowface with the strong criticism of the grueling experience of graduate students in high-pressure academic settings in this book. A bit slow-moving at times, it’s still a fun bit of dark academia for grown-ups.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, R.F. Kuang’s writing is on another level. Her prose is sharp and deliberate, elegant yet merciless. You can feel the precision in every sentence. Katabasis follows two Cambridge students, Alice and Peter, who descend into hell to rescue the soul of their late professor, a man so respected that his approval could secure their futures. It’s a premise that feels bizarre, brilliant, and disturbingly believable. What makes this story so haunting isn’t just the descent into the underworld, but the descent into obsession. Kuang explores intelligence as a form of currency, something to flaunt, to measure worth, to climb a hierarchy. Alice and Peter’s entire identity revolves around being the smartest person in the room. Reading this, I couldn’t help but think about how often we turn books and intellect into performance. About how some people read to seem “interesting” instead of reading to be changed. In Katabasis, that’s exactly what intelligence becomes, a mask, a competition, a form of worship. Hell, in Kuang’s hands, isn’t fire and brimstone its academic prestige. In this world hell is a university that shifts and reshapes itself, mirroring the ambition and vanity of its inhabitants. It’s deliciously ironic, terrifyingly real, and one of the most striking depictions of intellectual corruption I’ve ever read. Professor Grimes, their mentor, is everything wrong with that world: brilliant, cruel, manipulative, and worshipped because of it. Kuang captures the toxicity of academic reverence so well it’s almost uncomfortable to read. For someone who loves Dante and Botticelli, I was obsessed with how Kuang reimagines classical descent. Katabasis feels like a modern Inferno, only this time the flames are made of ambition, envy, and ego.

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis is a descent — not just into Hell, but into the perilous territory where brilliance collapses under its own weight. After Babel, a masterpiece of intellectual storytelling and emotional resonance, many readers (myself included) entered Katabasis with high expectations. What we found was a novel so drenched in self-aware cleverness that it forgot to be engaging. The premise is undeniably fascinating: what if every account of Hell — Dante’s, Virgil’s, even the mythic descent of Aeneas — was based on real journeys? In Katabasis, postgraduate magician Alice Law and her colleague Peter Murdoch descend through the eight courts of Hell to retrieve their lost professor, Jacob Grims. The setup promises mystery, danger, and a deep metaphysical exploration of sin and intellect. Yet, somewhere between the chalk pentagrams and philosophical monologues, the story loses its pulse. Where Babel wove historical and linguistic detail into the fabric of its story, Katabasis drowns in exposition. Nearly every page pauses for a lecture — on Nietzsche, Möbius, Schrödinger, or some obscure philosopher — as if the reader were auditing an overlong seminar. The result feels less like a novel and more like an academic performance. Kuang is undeniably intelligent, but the need to prove that intelligence becomes exhausting. The writing itself is uneven. At times, Kuang’s prose is beautifully dark and atmospheric; at others, it reads like a Tumblr post. Lines such as “You know very well what a heap is. You know it when you see it. It is like porn.” may be clever references, but they collapse under their own absurdity in context. Even the use of casual language — “You couldn’t just nope back out into Limbo.” — feels jarringly out of place in what should be a mythic, haunting descent. Characterization fares no better. Alice, our protagonist, is difficult to like — not because she’s morally complex, but because she’s written with so little warmth or humanity. Peter, meanwhile, is the archetype of the detached, tortured academic, but without the charisma to justify his presence. Their dynamic, intended as enemies-to-lovers, rarely convinces. Emotional engagement is sacrificed for intellectual sparring, and by the time Alice begins to show agency in the later chapters, it’s too little, too late. That said, Katabasis is not without merit. Kuang remains a skilled world-builder; her vision of Hell — from its weather and architecture to its oppressive, claustrophobic mood — is vividly drawn. There are moments of striking beauty, particularly in her more introspective passages: “I wish I were the night, so that I might watch your sleep with a thousand eyes.” But these moments are fleeting, buried beneath layers of theory and overexplained logic. Ultimately, Katabasis is a novel of ambition undone by excess. It’s intellectually dense but emotionally hollow — a work that mistakes difficulty for depth. Readers who enjoy cerebral fantasy and philosophical puzzles may find something to appreciate here, but those seeking the narrative magic of Babel will likely come away disappointed. In the end, it’s a book that respects your brain but forgets your heart. → Babel was a love letter to language. Katabasis is a lecture about it.

no lo he leído todavía pero es perfecto, todo lo que hace esta mujer es una obra

I am so super exited to read the book, however the condition of the book isn’t “perfect” it’s readable and it’s actually not a big issue but the corners of the cover were bent, which is you know not the ideal, but than again not a hugeeeee problem- but definetly an issue that should be fixed. The print is fine, there isn’t a misprint

Llegó en tiempo y forma. Y en excelentes condiciones. Muero por leerlo.

Ein hervorragendes Buch.

Tutto perfetto