Alice Law is a focused, hard-working, and super intelligent student of Analytic Magic at Cambridge University. She has worked hard to reach her current position, working with advisor Jacob Grimes. Professor Grimes is brilliant, respected, and insanely difficult. Alice will do anything to please him, to make sure that she earns her place and the career she’s always dreamed of. So when Grimes dies during an experiment (a death that may be Alice’s fault), she feels she has no choice but to follow him into Hell and bring him back.
Alice’s plans are almost immediately derailed when Grimes’ other advisee student, Peter Murdoch, insists on joining her. And Peter has his own motivations for seeking out Grimes. Together they must make their way through the courts of Hell, relying on their academic knowledge and magic abilities
Katabasis is a book packed with references, history, and world-building. Kuang draws on history, mythology, and literature. Alice and Peter reference Milton, Hades, and Chinese mythology equally, existing in a world where those are not fiction but guides to real journeys through the underworld. There is also quite a bit of time spent on the page explaining and defining the rules of magic in this world. Honestly, this was more than I personally needed but some readers may appreciate this more. (It’s enough for me to accept that magic exists as long as it is used consistently throughout a story.)
I’ve read several varying reviews of Katabasis and it seemed to be a love-it-or-hate-it situation but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I read and enjoyed Yellowface but haven’t yet read Babel, Kuang’s most famous book.I decided to dive in and find out for myself and in the end, I did enjoy the book and I’m looking forward now to going on to read Babel. I liked the world (and underworld) that Kuang creates here. I liked the way she combined the fantastical elements of Hell with the more realistic hellish aspects of an extremely demanding graduate program. Alice is both infuriating and extremely sympathetic. She’s determined and hard-working and always a social step behind, both as an outsider from academic circles, and as a woman in a male-dominated field. There’s a powerful scene where Alice goes to a female professor, hoping for support or advice or something and is given a harsh lesson on modern feminism.
Peter is a great foil for Alice – the sort of male student who seems to coast through life, an academic background, liked by all. But, of course, he has his own struggles and he and Alice must learn to both be honest with one another and to trust one another’s honesty. There are a few side characters that they meet (or have to defeat) in Hell but it is primarily a story of the journey of these two people.
In my opinion, whether or not you enjoy Katabasis will depend on your expectations when you pick the book up. If you are a reader looking for a fun, romantic romp through Hell, you will quite likely be bogged down in the descriptions, perhaps bored by the heavy literary references, and definitely disappointed by the romantic content. I think this book got a lot of publicity amongst “romantasy” readers who had it marketed to them as another Sarah J. Maas and it really doesn’t fit in that category. But if you are a reader who enjoys dark academia and magic (and maybe C.S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy) I think you will find something enjoyable here to sink your teeth into.
Karissa Reads Books 
I’m with you in that I want the magic to be consistent, but I don’t need some crazy explanations for the magic. Maybe what someone is doing, sure, but not anything about classifications of magic, etc. (although, wasn’t that a big draw in the Harry Potter books? What kind of magic you did? Or was that just groups based on personality? I only read the first book back in 2003).
I’ve only heard about this book from a fellow book clubber when we had a meeting at which everyone shared what they were currently reading. The individual said the title with confidence then admitted she didn’t really know how to say it. She followed up with an interview with the author that she read or watched in which the author didn’t know how to say Katabasis. The funny thing is my understanding of Yellowface is that it is all about appropriation, so why is this author using a Greek title when she isn’t Greek? It gets even funnier. We had a woman with parents from Greece at that book club, and she not only pronounced the title, she explained how the meaning changes depending on context. She sounded a little miffed, to me.
I saw an interview with the author (maybe the same one?) where she said you could pronounce the title any way you wanted which is just not how words and language work. Looking up the meaning of the word, it makes sense but it also doesn’t ever get mentioned in the context of the story so it feels tacked on and a bit attention-seeking. Kuang’s other book set in this universe is called Babel which to me seems like a more widely-known term so more okay to use?
Yeah, Greek lady seemed less than pleased. You can’t snatch a word from another language and be like “Do whatever!” You’d think a person of Chinese descent would get that, unless she’s so used to Americans tattooing nonsense on themselves in Chinese and not knowing what it means that she’s like just do whatever.
Maybe. Some people just aren’t bothered by stuff like that but I think you still need to be aware that it might bother other people! I still think it’s not a title that draws readers in and therefore wasn’t the best choice.
It’s funny, I knew this book was popular, but I took one look at the cover and thought ‘not for me’, based on the romantasy vibes I was getting from it. It sounds to fantasty-ish for me anyway, but the idea of a journey through the underworld sort of appeals to me too….I do want to read Yellowface though!
It’s really not a romance but it is heavy on the fantasy and so requires a lot of buy-in for that. I do think you might enjoy Yellowface.