Welcome to hell, beckons R.F. Kuang in Katabasis. It’s basically academia! When I thought back to my agitation at being graded on how well I presented my opinions, I started to agree with Kuang’s ideas. Then, the book dragged on further and further into the depths of hell, and I lost touch with my relationship to it. Katabasis is so bloated with ideas that it crumples beneath the weight of its own philosophy, to the detriment of its characters and plot.
Professor Jacob Grimes is dead. He’s one of the world’s most respected magicians and a tenured professor at Cambridge. Or, rather, he was. Now, he’s in hell, and his graduate student Alice Law resolves to rescue him, despite the hefty price (half your remaining lifespan and the risk you’ll never return to live out those years), because she thinks the spell that killed him went wrong due to her own mistakes. Peter Murdoch, Grimes’s other student, sees what Alice is planning and insists on joining her. The magic required to enter hell is complex and taxing, but they succeed, and the pair journeys through hell in search of their deceased mentor.
I have numerous gripes with Katabasis, but I want to offer them within the context of what I enjoyed about the book. The writing was beautiful, and Kuang has a talent for a turn of phrase, especially when ranting about the tumultuous academic world. She crafts her settings with care, and many scenes painted vivid pictures in my mind as Alice and/or Peter experienced them. While I enjoyed these elements of Katabasis, the rest of the book’s mixture left a sour taste in my mouth.
Alice Law is undoubtedly Katabasis’ protagonist, but Peter Murdoch does enough to earn the co-star role. My problem with both of them, however, is that I didn’t get enough depth. I suspect actual academics will feel differently—I took my Bachelor’s degree and promptly vowed never to go back to school. Their woes are tied to their academic success, and this theme resounds throughout the book’s entire run. While it sets the stage for a thematic unpacking of this mindset near the climax, it makes the rest of the book feel like an angry rant. While they’re interacting in hell, Alice and Peter are a magical duo. They have a nebulous relationship with hints at possible romantic interest. They’re equally talented but earn differing levels of respect due to their backgrounds and areas of study. They are a tug-of-war that has reached a middle-ground stalemate. This dynamic is fun at its best. However, Kuang breaks up these delightful segments with chapter-length diatribes about one area of academia or another. These segments bring the speedy journey through hell to a screeching halt and feel like the author is imposing philosophy onto the page as a replacement for connective character moments. During these chapters, I often looked ahead to see how much longer I had before returning to hell. Not a great feeling!
In defense of a select few backstory chapters, some of them in the book’s latter half do provide some valuable character backgrounds that recontextualize Alice and Peter’s relationship. I applauded those sections, but I wished for more of them rather than the lengthy rants about how academics will do anything for their research.
Speaking of research, let’s talk about the magic system. I am somewhat notoriously a fan of hard magic systems. Let me assure you that I also enjoy a softy from time to time. If the magic is dangerous and undefinable and serves the story, I’m a happy guy! If the magic is dangerous and volatile and hard to understand while also presenting itself as pivotal to the story, I’m not so happy. Katabasis leans too far into the latter. The magic here is mostly logic and research condensed into intricate chalk drawings that temporarily rewrite reality to achieve desired effects. The book uses complex philosophical and logical concepts to explain what Peter and Alice are doing when they use magic, and Kuang does a commendable job of explaining such concepts. In fact, it was one of my favorite parts of the book. I would read a whole tome containing Kuang’s layperson explanations of detailed logic and philosophy; she’s got a real knack for it. My problem in Katabasis is that the magic always feels inaccessible. For Alice and Peter, two extremely capable magicians, magic can act as a get out of jail free card. Even when Kuang told me they were in life-or-death situations, I never felt the stakes thrumming in my heart. There’s one particular scene where spoiler-free terrible stuff happens, and even then, I felt nothing because I knew the magic could effectively reverse it.
There is one major exception to my magic woes, and it involves a permanent inscription of a magical concept onto a person. Kuang uses the idea to explore how memories make up a person’s being and how, if we experienced them differently, they could change us for the better or worse. I have to avoid major spoilers here, but the concept was interesting enough to warrant a positive note here.
Finally, let’s talk about Professor Jacob Grimes. He’s a piece of shit. By the time I reached the 30% mark, I texted two of my friends who were also reading the book and asked, “Why would Alice and Peter have any desire to rescue this guy at the expense of half their remaining lifespan?” Every detail we learn about Grimes makes him out to be an asshole. It turns out both Alice and Peter believe themselves to be at least indirectly responsible for the spell-gone-wrong that killed Grimes by virtue of actual mistakes or just being bad students. It’s an admirable motive, but it crumbles with every single thing we learn about Grimes. He’s a dick. He experiments on people without regard for their well-being. He pits people against each other for his own gain. He’s a misogynist without fear of repercussions. He is an abuser. The only good thing we learn about Grimes is that he’s brilliant. He will open doors for his students that few others will ever walk through. As a reader, I knew right away this wouldn’t be enough to go to hell for, especially considering the involved risks. But Alice is blinded by her focus on research, and she takes the leap in the hopes of rescuing Grimes.
I think the premise is flimsy simply because Kuang makes it so obvious that Grimes is an irredeemable asshole. However, it retroactively gains some footing as Alice and Peter reflect on their journey and why they feel the need to rescue him. By the book’s end, Alice begins to shift her definition of what it means to exist as a living, breathing person. It only took travelling to hell and (hopefully) back to spark the introspection, but is it enough to make her reconsider her relationship with Grimes and academia as a whole? That’s the ending of the book, so of course I ain’t telling you!
So, where does this all leave me? Caught somewhere between admiration and exasperation. A sort of purgatory, you could say. I truly admire Kuang’s writing and her ability to bring complex ideas to life on the page. By the end, I could even appreciate the wonky character work solidifying into something sound and thematically resonant. But I also wish the book trusted its characters as much as it trusted its own ideas. Alice and Peter are silhouettes when I want the glorious brushstrokes and vibrant colors of a vivid portrait. Their goal starts off on shaky ground but resolves into a moment of revelation I desperately wanted by the time I reached the last 100 pages. In the end, Katabasis left me torn. It will please the right type of reader to no end, but I am not that reader. Even so, I closed the book thinking about its ideas, and maybe that’s worth the journey to hell.
Rating: Katabasis – 6.5/10
