“On the first day of class, when she ought to have been lecturing undergraduates about the dangers of using the Cartesian severance spell to revise without pee breaks, Alice Law set out to rescue her advisor’s soul from the Eight Courts of Hell.“

Bestselling author and Oxbridge darling R. F. Kuang is back with Katabasis, which follows Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, two Cambridge PhD students in the field of analytic magick, who become sojourners to Hell. Readers are more likely to connect with Katabasis if they or someone they know has been a graduate student, but anyone can appreciate this in-depth and high-stakes descent.

Kuang creates a rich urban fantasy world, home to another fictional academic field based in magic, and incorporates many philosophical tangents within the basic structure of her narrative. Katabasis demonstrates a genuine love for academic culture, while revealing the rotten things there, and deliberating on the tensions between a life of the mind and a life well lived.

Katabasis Is Babel’s Twisted Twin, Tackling Modern Academia

Katabasis and Babel are two sides of the same coin, each immersed in Oxbridge. While Babel uses its Victorian Oxford setting to emphasize prestigious universities’ historical ties to colonialism, Katabasis starts at Cambridge and delves into the toxicity of modern academia.

There aren’t enough jobs in the university system, so hiring decisions are made on a whim, and scholars who have achieved tenure have too much power that they can abuse. Alice is so desperate for the recommendation letter from the preeminent scholar in her field that she goes to Hell to get him back, even when he is an objectively awful person.

Kuang, now a Yale PhD candidate, paints a scholarly tragedy, expressing Alice’s true pᴀssion for investigating magical paradoxes, lovingly writing about multiple student characters who are always falling down a rabbit hole of intellectual debate. Everything from the petty sins of Pride to Alice’s opinions about campus life and fulfilling research reflects a textured and accurate experience.

I also wondered how much of Alice’s fondly referring to the undergraduates as “precious things” is reflective of Kuang’s atтιтude towards her own students.

Alice seems to like the teaching, which stands in stark contrast to the abusive mentor of Professor Grimes, an especially memorable and tangible figure for how hypocritical and unfortunately real he is. Katabais is also a harsh exposition on mental health among graduate students, who have no time for healthy hobbies or social lives, which, in extreme cases, can result in suicidal ideation.

Alice and Peter are compelling enough vehicles through which to absorb it all as Katabasis harrowingly recalls many more relevant subjects — academic rivalries and idolization, the humanities not lending itself to capitalism, and the contradictions for women in academia — with so much ultimately packed into the ever-changing landscape of Hell.

R. F. Kuang Expertly Picks Up A New Style Of Prose For Katabasis

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Different mythological and literary sources are fascinatingly woven together to create the landscape of Hell, while I personally noticed some similarities to the ways The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Alice in Wonderland are written (Tolkien, Lewis, and Carroll were also all famously based in Oxbridge at one point or another).

There’s a matter-of-factness to certain third-person statements about this magical reality, which makes the story all the more fantastical. It’s relatively easy to read and has a nice scholarly feeling. While the concept draws upon Dante’s Inferno and Orpheus and Eurydice, I couldn’t help but continuously come back to the Alice in Wonderland influence.

The number of times the rabbit hole metaphor is used in this book is vexing, as Alice and Peter venture into a realm of madness, facing different philosophical, moral, and personal dilemmas. The story is inherently structured to be a little meandering, serving to offer up these many quandaries along the way, but for the most part keeps up its pacing.

In addition to lofty concepts, there are people in Hell. A few of the supporting characters, also magicians who have found their way to the underworld, are especially strong additions to the narrative. Death has either given them a new (surprisingly bright) outlook on life or only further contributed to a spiral of pride and violence.

Katabasis Entirely Commits To Its Resolution

Katabasis’ ending is a moral we’ve seen before (reminding me of Pixar’s Soul), but all that these characters go through to get there makes the fact of Alice’s takeaway profound. Knowing the academic setting that Kuang is coming from, the resolution is also a pretty bold move in a professional context.

The most satisfying moments are Alice daring to play by her own rules; the most pretentious theses from the residents of Hell are completely subverted, allowing Alice and Peter to interact with the philosophical tangents and mythologies and become better versions of themselves.

Katabasis does have some annoying flaws. Alice and Peter are unfortunately engaged in about half of a romantic subplot that is unnecessary, and Babel definitely wins for the better magic system. But it’s an unparalleled dark academia story about reconnecting with oneself after trauma and reconciling the different facets of a satisfying life.

Katabasis is out now.