There are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it ... We’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered ... A more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier work ... Hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes.
The novel dives deep into painful and all-too-real experiences ... The revelation of what Peter’s breezy genius actually costs him is one of the most compelling and gratifying elements of the story, and the gradual peeling away of Alice’s prickly exterior is equally rewarding ... The way Kuang captures Alice’s desire for oblivion is one of the more impressive threads of the book ... I’ve never seen that state of being captured quite so well ... There’s some minor repetition ... Katabasis shines with devastatingly real characters and absorbing world building. Kuang’s sentences are delicious, her insights well-earned and deeply affecting. She’s also funny ... Katabasis isn’t always easy, but it is always enjoyable, and that’s a near impossible feat. Only a writer as thoughtful and skilled as Kuang could make a literal journey through hell so fun and so poignant.
Hell hath no fury in this bloated epic, which dawdles like a graduation ceremony, long and soporific ... Stunted by Kuang’s fussy and verbose magic system ... Instead of immersive environments and scenes, Kuang offers tedious problem sets that lack narrative tension. ... Kuang’s dialogue veers on the parodic. The characters explain, cite and ruminate more than they experience and act ... The constant allusions demonstrate Kuang’s scholarship but obstruct the storytelling ... [Kuang] struggles this time to maintain any narrative rhythm ... Never gripping ... The failure to think about the real materiality of life and death is the biggest disappointment of Katabasis.
A rich combination of dream vision, acerbic satire, intellectual playfulness, and human drama, Katabasis should more than satisfy readers who enjoyed Kuang’s earlier novels.
That this is a fun, engaging novel is clear from the start ... There is plenty of tension, fear, anxiety, grief, trauma and chaos in these pages, but also a very healthy dose of biting humor—as Kuang takes constant jabs at academia that land with the accuracy of sniper ... The pacing is superb. Lots of dynamic dialogue and relatively short chapters make this a quick read ... What makes this novel shine is the way it is happy being goofy, playful, and campy but then doesn't shy away from being deep, smart, well-researched, innovative and surefooted as it pulls readers into a new magic system ... The most impressive thing about Katabasis is how it finds a perfect balance between all its elements ... Kuang is in control at all times, and the ease with which she navigates between the silly and the sublime is just one of the reasons she is one of the biggest names in contemporary fiction.
This book is not meant for me ... It is for those in thrall to 'dark academia' on TikTok, and those...who enjoy extreme simplicity wrapped up in convoluted explication ... I have no doubt that this will be a huge hit. But if you’re hoping for an interesting follow-up to Yellowface, seek elsewhere.
An infernal twist on the campus farce ... Kuang isn’t subtle. She doesn’t allude; she indicts ... This is a novel that believes in ideas – just not the cages we build for them ... Far from perfect ... But none of that really matters – especially if you have a score to settle.
Plunges into the weirdness of underworld mythologies. Babel brings sarcastic footnotes, but Katabasis offers page-long treatises interspersed within chapters offering summaries of hell, the existing scholarship from past underworld sojourners, or sources that imply our protagonists have missed something critical. It’s a more whimsical style of worldbuilding...but I welcome it nonetheless ... The fun of Katabasis’ underworld mythos lies in deciding everything is true, cobbling together details in a way that is sketchy and imprecise ...
A funny premise ... As amusing as Katabasis can be, this apparent bid to earn the novel an #enemiestolovers hashtag on TikTok points to a nagging problem with Kuang’s fiction, which is that it seldom feels as if it were written for grown-ups ... To her credit, Kuang seems to be trying to remedy these flaws. In Katabasis, she has dialed down the didacticism and given Alice a bit more of a backstory ... Alice is incoherent in other ways, as Kuang struggles to reconcile her main character’s motivations with the demands of plot ... The flashbacks Kuang uses to juice the novel’s suspense are just as confusing ... The first third of Katabasis works splendidly because its punches land and because it doesn’t reach for depths it can’t sound. Kuang isn’t afraid to make Alice as unlikable—and, to be honest, as relatable—as one of Martin Amis’ most scabrous creation.
Explores the hells we create for ourselves, as Peter and Alice consider the delusions they wrap themselves in and the sacrifices they’ve made to get this far. Witty, propulsive, feral, and clever.
