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In R.F. Kuang’s dark academia novel Katabasis, analytical magick scholars Alice Law and Peter Murdoch descend into Hell from Cambridge to retrieve the soul of their academic advisor after his sudden death. As they make their way through the eight courts of Hell,the onetime friends and now sort-of enemies fight about how to map Hell, debate arcane theories of logic and philosophy, fight terrifying monsters and enemies, and secretly pine for each other.

Alice and Peter quickly discover that Hell is actually a university campus. This very literal set-up paves the way for Alice to reexamine her ambition and its cost as she navigates the underworld and contemplates where a life of academia may ultimately lead. While this framework is a familiar and somewhat overused device, Kuang’s prose is strong enough to keep it from tipping into cliché.

I wasn’t going to review this book at first because it’s so on the nose that there almost isn’t much to say. University academia is hell – sure. Ambition can cause people to lose sight of their values – yes, probably. The negative reviews on GoodReads all complain that it’s too didactic. I actually didn’t mind this, and ended up liking the book much more than the reviews led me to expect. I appreciated that I didn’t have to look up every reference to literature, mythology, or philosophy. I mostly skimmed over the math (who wants to relive college calculus?) as I didn’t think I needed to understand it deeply to appreciate the story. 

I’m not well versed in the literature of the underworld so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I found Katabasis to be a creative and vividly imagined take on the descent narrative, with a strong plot that only slows occasionally for the instructive elements of the book.

“Now she understood Hell in full. She saw its intricate design; could understand that it was no random imitation of living rituals but a cruel mirror; that all its karmic reflection was just to show life’s worthlessness to begin with.”

Katabasis is an intellectually-driven fantasy adventure story with a love story lingering underneath its interrogation of ambition and morality. If that piques your interest, I highly recommend it.