In a world next to ours, where history is the same but magic is a real (if decaying and somewhat eclipsed) field of story, Alice is a graduate student at Cambridge. Her graduate advisor is dead thanks to a magical working and has passed on to Hell. Alice feels that she can’t continue on with another advisor. She HAS to have Professor Jacob Grimes as her advisor. And so she is willing to risk the near-impossible: Harrow Hell and make a bargain with the lord of the underworld to get Grimes back. She has equipment, supplies and at least the concept of a plan. But when her academic rival Peter shows up as she is preparing to go, Peter insists on going as well.
And so we have a story.
The main engine of Katabasis is Peter and Alice’s journey through Hell. After all, the very title of the book, Katabasis, means exactly that in Greek. There is a lot of theory and talking as the pair traverse the various circles of Hell. There is plenty of speculation, at extended length, about the shape and geometry of Hell, how Hell is laid out, and how previous trips and journeys may reflect the sojourner even more than the reality of Hell itself. So, when Alice and Peter get into Hell, they are confronted with their reality of hell. For Alice and Peter, it is the thing that has defined their lives for years: Higher Education. Thus, Hell is a Cambridge-style college campus, and every level of Hell relates to that paradigm. And of course, many if not all of the people they meet are academics or magicians, often from the Cambridge area itself.¹
There is also a question of genre here. Conceptually this is a “Dark Academia” novel, even if nearly every moment of it takes place in Hell, since the format of Hell is a college campus. Also, with our protagonists’ focus on their academic careers (especially with their advisor now in hell), this is a book that runs on those lines. There is a lot of debate on magic, academics, philosophy and much more. A fair amount of the worldbuilding runs on those academic lines.
Now, I do want to take a moment for you and I to look at the cover. The cover shows a building that is clearly a place of academia. We see a figure writing figures on a blackboard. We see papers flying off from the building. But if you look closer and more carefully, you can see that the building is impossible, the stairs go ever downward (or upward) on the top level, but the top level is a loop. You can’t ever get anywhere and it makes no physical sense. These are known as Penrose Steps, after the scientist who first described the concept. M.C. Escher is the creator of the most famous depiction of the concept, in his lithograph “Ascending and Descending.”
So the image captures a lot of what the novel is attempting to do. Two figures, trapped in a Penrose Steps, trying to make their way in a dark academic setting, the ultimate dark academic setting, in fact: Hell. The cover, at the very least, shows the promise and premise of the novel, and its ambitions. The cover made me excited to read the book. And at a surface level, it worked, but it doesn’t hang together quite as well as I might have liked.
And, I think, that is what I come down to in this book. There are some rather lovely ideas and bits here, especially in the extensive worldbuilding. The arguments over the geometry and topography of hell are fascinating. But the ultimate ending as well as what the novel builds up to feels underwhelming. It builds to a conclusion that really didn’t match up with what the novel seemed to be trying to do. I enjoyed parts of the journey far more than the destination itself. That destination and the resolution do not feel completely supported by the rest of the narrative adequately.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that with few exceptions, journeys to hell are, in effect, attempts at redemption arcs, whether failed (sorry, Orpheus) or successful (like say, Dante, or the team of The Good Place). Even Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s novel Inferno is a redemption arc, but not for the journeyer, really, but rather, his guide. Alice is a character with major flaws who, through the book, has to try and figure out how to be better. Although Alice goes to Hell to save her Professor, this is HER redemption arc. It’s the redemption arc of the Alice and Peter relationship. I can see the shape of what the author is trying to do here, but I don’t see it quite sticking that landing in the end. It tries to reframe the story, especially in the climax, into that redemption and romance. This is the kind of novel where the leads clearly are into each other, but cannot see it themselves, although others see it. I don’t think that the author communicates this well, but they communicate it well enough. And when the author does, it feels like a skeleton that doesn’t support the entire novel as a whole. That skeleton could have used more work. The worldbuilding and the milieu are fantastic and rich³, but the logline of the plot and the structure of the arc are lesser to everything that comes around it.
So in the end, Katabasis is not, in my view, the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are quite good.² It makes for a frustrating read, and one that maybe you don’t want to tackle unless you are invested in the overall idea. Your mileage might indeed well vary on this book. I can see why it was named as a finalist for the Nebula Award. For those people who love the strongly developed parts of this book, the skeleton may be beside the point. Or they might decide the skeleton is enough to get to the nutty nuggets of worldbuilding here. Dark Academia has definitely been pushing into mainstream fantasy and strong critical reception (like, for example, Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent). Katabasis continues to explore and expand that subgenre and bring it to more readers.
¹ This is something a lot of harrowings of Hell seem to note explicitly, too: When you go to Hell, you invariably run into people that you know, are related to, or have a connection to. That’s just how Hell usually works. Silverlock’s visit to Hell in his titular novel by John Myers Myers might be an exception to this rule, but the whole point of that novel is getting Silverlock acquainted and comfortable and knowledgeable about the places and people of the Commonwealth of Letters.
² Some of the Hells are rather clever; the use of real life names and ideas from our world having magical connections is good. The City of Dis is amazingly described and detailed, a real centerpiece of worldbuilding and design.
³ I keep coming back to Worldbuilding, but it’s true. This novel runs on its worldbuilding, but the rest of it doesn’t hold up as well. If I ever run an RPG session that involves a Hell, this novel really can be a guide as to how to design an interesting Hell/Underworld/Afterlife.
Kuang, R.F. Katabasis, Harper Voyager, 2025
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin
