Serena’s Review: “Katabasis”

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Book: “Katabasis” by R. F. Kuang

Publishing Info: Harper Voyager, August 2025

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.

Review: Kuang is such an interesting case as a writer. She’s both beloved, with her books immediately resulting in high sales and tons of special editions produced, but also fairly divisive, with readers either really loving or really disliking her books. While I’ve never really hated anything of hers, it’s also easy enough to understand where the disconnect lies. And this book will likely prove to follow the same pattern.

Let’s start with the unequivocally good parts! There’s no denying Kuang’s sheer talent at putting together a beautiful sentence, painting an evocative scene, and peopling her worlds with complicated, thoroughly realized characters. Even when I struggled at various points, I still felt a driving urge to continue reading, eager to know what would happen next. I very quickly became invested not only in the characters but in this version of Hell and the afterlife. The very nature of the story makes it so readers are always looking forward, on to the next ring of Hell and what new terrors and insights it will bring.

I also really enjoyed the two main characters, which is surprising since they weren’t necessarily likable much of the time, especially Alice. Indeed, I routinely was incredibly frustrated with her ability to keep her head firmly placed in the sand, even when confronted with the most obvious conclusions about the people in her life, both for good and ill. Peter was a more straight-forward character, easier to sympathize with and whose own history is slowly revealed over the course of the story. Their romance, while definitely a subplot, was very sweet with the moments we had.

I also liked learning more about this version of Hell and all of the logic puzzles that were at the heart of this world’s magic system. I will say, much of this was thoroughly unapproachable to the typical reader, myself included. If you asked me right now to explain exactly how any of these paradoxes or logic puzzles worked, I definitely couldn’t. That said, I still found them really interesting to read through and try to puzzle out. However, this is definitely an area that may be a turn off to readers. Kuang doesn’t go easy on her readers, and you’ll likely end up feeling a bit like a dummy reading this book.

I’ll also say that the book does get a bit too in the weeds with its focus on academia and the trials and joys therein. There were definite times where it felt like the author was including sections, passages, and theories simply to flex more than due to any necessities from the plot itself. Some of these moments felt a bit pretentious and naval-gazing, to be honest. I was invested enough in the rest of the story to just handwave these bits away, but I do think the story would have been improved with some editing that could have tightened these things up a bit. I get that the author has strong feelings on the nature of academia, but some of these discussions didn’t actually contribute to the narrative that was being built here.

Overall, I still very much enjoyed this book. That said, I think this will be received in a manner very similar to “Babel.” Some readers will very much connect with it while others may be turned off my some of the highhanded nature of the storytelling. If you’ve enjoyed her books (especially “Babel”) in the past, than I definitely think you’ll want to check this one out!

Rating 8: Perhaps prone to getting caught up in unnecessary waxing theoretical at times, the characters and story were still strong enough to have me whipping through this one fairly quickly!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Katabasis” can be found on these Goodreads lists: 2025 Dark Academia Releases and 2025 Adult Fantasy/Sci-fi/Speculative Releases by BIPOC Authors.