R.F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface was fantastic. It was engaging, smart, and tackled big issues like race, intellectual property, honesty, revenge and cultural appropriation all while offering a scathing look at publishing.
It is also a novel I talk about often and recommend all the time: One of the most important things, I believe, a book can achieve is to move into your brain and stay there.
Katabasis, Kuang’s latest, is even better.
In this story, Alice Law studies at Cambridge under the tutelage of Professor Jacob Grimes, who is widely regarded as the greatest magician in the world. He’s also a trailblazing scholar. Grimes is known for his harsh, abusive nature but Alice has happily put up with his antics, volatile personality, and even bullying because she knows that her considerable talents and dedication will only take her so far — and a letter of recommendation from Grimes is the thing that will push her to wherever she wants to go. Unfortunately, Grimes dies in a magical accident at their lab, an accident that could be Alice’s fault.
Motivated more by selfishness than guilt, Alice does her research and prepares to journey to Hell to get Grimes and lock in that recommendation. But Alice wasn’t Grimes’ only understudy. Peter Murdoch, a young man with the kind of talent, wealth and reputation that ensure a comfortable future also worked with Grimes — and also decides to journey to Hell and find him.
Alice and Peter are nice, but not necessarily to each other. Both have egos. Both know what’s on the line. They might be attracted to each other. One might be planning to kill the other. As the duo become “sojourners” and traverse Hell together in search of Grimes, they encounter an endless array of characters, creatures, threats, deities and challenges that stand between them and their goal. Stripped of magic, full of different ideas and theories, and with the tension between them growing, Alice and Peter have to work together and trust each other if they want to find their professor.
That this is a fun, engaging novel is clear from the start. Kuang is a talented storyteller who understands the importance of the hook, and all her novels set it early and forcefully. Here, however, everything changed for me when Alice and Peter get to Hell and the place is a campus. Of course it is! Oh, 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. Academia is a very special kind of hell, and the author clearly understands it.
Coming in at more than 500 pages, this is a lengthy novel and there is a lot of worldbuilding as well as constant discussions about ideas, theories, academia’s inner workings and philosophical concepts. But the pacing is superb. Lots of dynamic dialogue and relatively short chapters make this a quick read but what keeps the pages turning isn’t Kuang’s knack for fast-paced storytelling and flowing prose. No, 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. This is a novel that brilliantly discusses — and often finds the flaws in — thinkers like Aristotle and Derrida but also isn’t afraid to joke about Kant’s virginity.
Alice and Peter are big characters with big minds and big egos — but they are never boring or dull. In fact, some of the novel’s best moments come from them debating what to do next or figuring out how to solve a problem together. Their conflicting views when asked to define love, for example, do a lot for character development: Peter sees love as “pursuing what is best for ourselves as joint unit”; Alice as “two people lying to each other, concealing their violence.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Katabasis is how it finds a perfect balance between all its elements. There are tender moments and vicious creatures made of bones. There is a perfectly academic deconstruction of certain narratives from previous sojourners who claimed knowledge of Hell’s geography and levels — Pride, Desire, Greed, Wrath, Violence, Cruelty, Tyranny — but also humor and wordplay and the kind of jealousy/dislike/attraction mix that makes romance narratives so popular.
In short, 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.
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