• 09 Dec, 2025 *

Rating: ⭐⭐

Date completed: November 20, 2025

R.F. Kuang is an interesting author to me - for one, I identify as a fan of her writing, starting with her Poppy War series and essentially following her career from there, through Babel, Yellowface, and now Katabasis.

When I first read The Poppy War series back in 2020, I was still exploring my taste in adult fantasy (I read Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Seth Dickinson, Becky Chambers, Tamsyn Muir, Samantha Shannon, and many other standalone stuff that year) whilst also coping with lockdown with random BookTube and Goodreads recommended selections. The general consensus on those two platforms for that series was generally positive, and it wasn’t until perhaps a few years later (and many Reddit posts on the r/Fantasy subreddit) that I started to learn that Kuang is… sort of disliked?

There have been some convincing arguments that suggest Kuang writes in a straightforward way (she doesn’t toy with prose much, with the exception of Babel) and makes it clear what her core ideologies are. I’ve been honestly sort of taking these comments with a grain of salt, as I had a perfectly decent time reading all her past books and found them to be entertaining enough and thematically interesting as well to sustain my interest.

In a more biased way, I did enjoy seeing a Chinese Asian woman make waves in the reading community. Just take a look at the number of ratings on Goodreads for her books, her presence on social media, all the conversations (good and bad) on the net, and you can see that she is an anomaly in the fantasy genre. And I mostly thought (and still do think) that that’s a good thing.

Now, for Katabasis specifically, we have such a stunning premise. We get Alice, the main character of the story - a graduate Magician student under the wings of Professor Grimes, who in this universe is some top-shot professor who had to climb the ranks to get to his position. The book starts off with an introduction of Alice and how she was going to “Magick” her way into Hell. And not just any hell, it was specifically Dante’s nine levels of hell.

That in itself hooked me in well. But… we also get Peter, who is introduced as Alice’s academic rival, one who Grimes has pitted them both with one another. He is the charming, popular, and mysterious love interest, and he ends up inviting himself to this trip to Hell with Alice.

So far, so good? Now I would say the book had a pretty promising start, perhaps the first 15% was building up the plot, and though I found the MC slightly less likable than all the other characters (with the exception of Yellowface, probably, but that was probably intentional from Kuang’s end), I had thought that there would be growth in that department.

Boy, I was wrong. This was one of the messiest books plot-wise (and also characters) I’ve read this year. From the wishy-washy relationship scenes, to the repetitiveness of Alice’s actions, and a very weak plot-thread.

More MAJOR spoilers:

From the beginning of the book, we are told that Alice was visiting Hell to get Grimes back. Okay, we aren’t super sure why, but that’s fine, it’ll probably be revealed. Alice eventually reveals that she not only wants to bring him back, but she also wants to bring him back mutilated. Then, the book ends with Alice finding Grimes and deciding that he should just be permanently banished without much resolution on what happened between her and Grimes (with the exception of a short back-and-forth conversation) and getting Peter back from the dead. Not much conversation aside from a confession of love between them both happens, and the book ends there.

If it were only the lackluster conclusion to the main plot line, I would be okay as long as the other aspects, such as characterizations and the world itself, were good. Unfortunately, I did not like Alice much, and Peter was just fine. I do understand that sometimes characters are just meant to be unlikable, but it did feel at times that there were inconsistencies in Alice’s characterization, repetition in similar thought patterns with no conclusion, and that she does things that are just random (thinking of the scenes where she ate the cat/leopard) and have no good reasoning. The Hell concept, though interesting, ended up falling flat. Descriptions of the environment were sparse, and aside from knowing which section of Hell they were at, and scenes where some architecture was described, you don’t really know why it’s Hell at all, aside from the author telling you it’s supposed to be Hell.

I would say that the side characters in this book were good. This is where I find myself wishing that Kuang had focused more on them! Elspeth had great humor, and I just know that Kuang has it in her to write amazing dialogue, and that perhaps this has been more of a passion project where she’s self-inserting herself and her partner rather than focusing on what could make the story better.

And for that, I can’t blame her too much. I understand that sometimes books are just meant to be for the author and their loved ones. I can see her passion for the many philosophical texts references that flew over my head and her questioning these, and her love (and hate) for academia.

Although I can’t say I enjoyed this one as much as her other works, I can see her love for the knowledge, the academic world, her partner, and maybe that just doesn’t work for me this time around, but perhaps it can with another person. Until the next R.F. Kuang book comes out and I try that out, I’ll have to still recommend Yellowface as an entrypoint to her work. A lot more of a popcorn-ish type of story to read, but so so readable. That one’s about how a Caucasian author steals the work of her Chinese best friend and tries to sell it as her own, and all the effects that come with that.

Until then, unfortunately, this one is a 2-star read that I probably won’t revisit anytime soon :/

If you’re interested in trying out the book, you can check it out here. If you’re interested in Yellowface, you can see here. I earn a small commission if you purchase through these links, at no extra cost to you.

#books #fiction