OK, I’ll say it: R.F. Kuang is brilliant. There’s no denying it. According to her website, Kuang has a MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge, a MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford and is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale. She is the definition of an educated woman.
This intelligence seeps out of her novels. I remember my first encounter with Kuang, when I randomly picked up Babel: An Arcane History during one of my various trips to Barnes and Noble. I was captivated by both the cover and the inside sleeve speaking of magic translators wrecking havoc on Oxford University. And three chapters in, I was immediately intimidated by Kuang’s intelligence.
Babel, a story about students and magic, had footnotes, for heaven’s sake! Real footnotes! To this day, Babel remains one of the most challenging fantasy reads of my life. And I suffered through Tolkien’s multi-page tree descriptions in Lord of the Rings.
That being said, Babel isn’t Kuang’s only novel that I’ve read. In fact, I admiringly depicted my completion of her trilogy The Poppy War in a previous article. (I’ll leave you to check that one out.) Even still, none of these books have come close to the masterpiece that is Kuang’s most recent novel Katabasis.
KATABASIS IS A Fast-Paced Philosophical Adventure
Released on August 26, Katabasis felt like taking a step back into Babel, only with more likable characters and wittier lines. Released just a few months ago, the novel follows two Cambridge students as they descend into Hell in a pitiful attempt to retrieve their professor.
The main characters of Kuang’s novels have always irritated me a little. They’re either a little too self-absorbed or a little too self-sacrificial. Katabasis‘ Alice Law is a beautiful combination of both. In a world with magick, Alice and her classmate Peter Murdoch travel to Hell, exploring islands of the seven deadly sins.
For the first time, in my opinion, Kuang creates characters that you can’t help falling in love with. They bicker, threaten to kill one another, cry, and laugh as they bond over their mutual obsession of academia. After all, that’s the whole reason they’re in Hell: to continue their lessons with their dead professor, Grimes. Kuang accomplishes all this whilst critiquing the human condition and our conceptualization of “sin.”
Only as she travels through pride, greed, wrath, and lust does Alice begin to discover that Hell is no longer where she wants to be. In fact, she’s convinced it was a pretty dumb idea in the first place. Her intense ambition and self-delusion becomes clear the moment she discovers there are more deadly things in Hell than the seven sins. And worse, she’s on a clock, as each hour she spends in Hell takes years away from their time on Earth. It’s an intense, fast-paced philosophical adventure where the characters must descend into their own sins in order to make it out alive.
Katabasis is a book for those who love Kuang, for the readers of Donna Tart and Leigh Bardugo, for those who have always wondered what Hell might look like, and for those who are ready for R.F. Kuang to finally provide a character that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out. Thank you Alice Law. Kuang crafts a story unlike any other dark academia book where characters discover that life might be worth more than uncovering the Truth. Instead, life can be about good books, delicious food, and just maybe, each other.
Honestly, if you’ve been scared away from Kuang’s books, intimidated by their sheer extent of knowledge and contemplation, start with Katabasis. I bet you could find yourself in Alice Law and Peter Murdoch. I bet you could see yourself taking their exact steps. Katabasis is remarkable, intelligent, and I’ll admit it, romantic.
Travel down to Hell with Kuang, and you will not be disappointed.