R.F Kuang is a New York Times bestselling author with a particular preoccupation. In her latest fantasy, Katabasis, academia is a horror show. Protagonist Alice Law has pushed her mind and body to the limit for her graduate degree, only for her thesis advisor to die before he can write her a recommendation. And so she embarks on a journey to the underworld with her fellow student, Peter, to seek out the mentor who tormented them both.
Katabasis is a literal and philosophical exploration of “hell,” unpacking Alice’s ambition, depression, and desire as she faces down the dangers of the land of the dead. Following the news that Kuang’s book is being developed as a series at Amazon MGM Studios, A.V. Club staffers Mary Kate Carr, Matt Schimkowitz, and Saloni Gajjar came together to discuss this latest entry into the dark academia canon.
Mary Kate Carr: To start with, what did you guys think of magic in Katabasis? I’ll be honest, the magic system was an obstacle for me. I found it a little hard to wrap my head around. The use of logic puzzles was interesting, but I didn’t always understand how it was working to make magic, or even really what the use or value of magic is in this world. The fact that it seems to be a high-effort, potentially low-reward discipline is obviously baked into the themes of the book, but it made it hard for me to understand sometimes why Alice had devoted her life to it and why she was willing to sacrifice so much for it.
Matt Schimkowitz: I obviously found it confusing, but that complication helped make it seem more real than, say, Harry Potter. The fact that Alice had to study all these different subjects, unlike “potion making” or whatever, grounded it in a way that allowed me to relax and not look for plot holes. I just accepted that Alice and Peter knew what they were doing and relied on them to work out the problem. The book is quite dense in some ways, so I was more than happy to accept that I wouldn’t totally understand everything (particularly the Escher trap and paradoxes). What I really liked, though, was that Kuang included sleight-of-hand magic as a part of the magical community.
To your last point, I think it’s the difficulty that got her invested. If she can be the best at this, someone will finally appreciate and validate her.
Saloni Gajjar: The book, despite a promising and action-packed start, quickly lost my interest because of how it felt too contrived and had a lot of ideas that weren’t fleshed out well. I had to force myself to keep going. There were parts of it that felt compelling, but almost everything—the magic stuff, Alice and Peter’s relationship, etc.—felt like wasted potential to me, despite the near-constant attempts to tell us that academia truly is hell and the pursuit of greatness (no matter what field it is in) will likely wreck you. I was enamored by the descriptions of the underworld and the various “stops” they make to find Prof. Grimes, and the agony of being a Shade, but I wish the two protagonists’ motives or, as you point out, their connection to magic, were equally fleshed out.
Initially, I didn’t mind the magic system, but it becomes clear she’s populating the material with a lot of research she’s done about A LOT of things—but all the ideas, inspired by various religions and philosophers and schools of thought felt strung together loosely and that was an obstacle for me as well. It was less about “Oh, I don’t fully understand this” and more of a “You’re jumping from one thing to another to another in a way that doesn’t make sense plot-wise.” This isn’t an issue I had while reading Yellowface, which I really enjoyed, but I haven’t read any of R.F. Kuang’s other works so I’m curious what the pattern is.
MS: I just assumed it’s like philosophy or comparative lit: Really difficult, practically useless, but essential for understanding how we live. As a metaphor for academia, I thought it worked really well, like talking to a friend so deep in a grad program that I have no idea what they’re saying. I liked it less when the metaphor became too literal, like the student center in Hell. I thought that it was smart to back away from that, but in hindsight, it feels a little inconsistent. Some areas of Hell were straight one-to-one, others were just Mordor.
MKC: I agree regarding the inconsistency. It seemed set up that we were going to visit each specific realm, but then there were shortcuts and side quests that did feel purgatorial to read—so I guess the metaphor worked on that level too! But as Saloni is saying, it often felt too layered with ideas, like adding non-Hell related deities. That felt a little convenient for what was specifically going on with Peter and Alice, but not for what this depiction of “hell” should be.
The underworld of this book is scholarly on multiple levels, both in that it’s specifically a hell for academics and also built on a lot of research that Kuang did of literary and philosophical works about the afterlife. It made sense for this very referential world that Kuang is operating in, but it could be a little exhausting to take in.
SG: The line “Hell is a campus” made me chuckle. Nevertheless, the point that Hell mirrors your reality and everything you go through on a daily basis, and is meant to teach Alice and Peter lessons about their identities, memories, and letting go, is such an intriguing concept. That’s why the maps (Pride being a library and such) worked for me at first, and then I fear Kuang lost track of the narrative or even what the purpose of her own story is. It also became far too predictable and lacked stakes as a result.
MKC: It’s interesting that you say the book felt predictable, Saloni. I felt like it got a bit unpredictable when we moved away from going through each realm in order (for better or worse), and there were definitely surprises like the big third act death, though I didn’t love how that ended up being resolved (we can circle back to the ending later). Where did it fall flat for you?
SG: I think in general, she set up the writing such that none of the problems they faced dragged on for too long, except the Kripkes, of course, which is what made me feel like there aren’t stakes/it’s predictable. So even when Peter sacrifices himself, it didn’t shock me, and that’s when I thought that if she gets the opportunity, Alice will revive him and not Prof. Grimes. For a while in the middle, when she’s lost in Dis and it’s a reflection of how lost she feels in her real life, I thought that perhaps Kuang would throw me a curveball, but no. It’s not that I mind how it ended or that Alice finally takes control of her choices and fights back, but I can’t say any of it surprised me. But if I had to key in on a moment that it felt flat or got a little too par for the course for me, it was when Elspeth saves them from the Weaver Girl debacle.
MS: I agree that as soon as Alice read Peter’s note, I figured out where the book was headed, but am I the only one who found this book pretty breezy? I’m not a fast reader by any stretch, and my heart sank when I saw how long this book was, but I tore through this thing. I’ve never read “dark academia” (is that what this is?) and never really had much interest. Still, Kuang really surprised me with how successfully she could apply her grad school insecurities to this world. Maybe it’s because so much of it reminded me of Frodo and Sam’s final march to Mount Doom in Return Of The King (Peter’s Tolkien name drop gives me free rein to bring up LOTR as much as I want), and maybe it’s that episodic structure that got me, but I really enjoyed this.
SG: I thought Yellowface was super breezy, and that’s why I was excited about this one and to read about this subject matter through her lens. But I’ll be honest, I really had to force myself to continue at several points. I see what you mean about how she brings her grad school insecurities to this, but I don’t think she balanced that well with the larger genre stuff.
MKC: LOTR is a fun comparison, and kind of hits on something I struggled with in this book—it’s so many things at once. It’s a quest and a philosophical study and a satire and dark academia all wrapped in one. The Weaver Girl scene is a part where I felt the plot was overstuffed, but I liked the introduction of Elspeth as a foil to Alice, a different perspective on a female student’s relationship to Grimes. I think the big strength of the novel is digging into that uncomfortable, nuanced relationship and Alice’s really complicated feelings about it, and some of the more over-the-top adventures in Hell (which, as we’ve all said, were often really on-the-nose metaphors) I think just served as distractions to the emotional core for me. I was definitely hooked by the end with Peter’s death and the Kripkes confrontation, but I did feel the resolution was a bit too neat. What did you guys think about the ending?
MS: Some of the Kripkes’ stuff wrapped a little too quickly for me, though I found Kuang’s language of the shades fading into the Lethe really beautiful. I really just wanted to know about the Kripkes and felt that we could’ve used more of a confrontation between them and Alice. All the stuff with Grimes, going back to Saloni’s point, was a bit too predictable, but I was relieved that Peter returned because he didn’t deserve such a violent end. I found the very end with Prince Yama really sweet—not something you always get to say about the Lord of the Underworld. His little joke about not looking back has stayed with me in the week or two since I finished.
MKC: Agreed on your Kripkes point—to circle back to the beginning of the discussion, it would’ve helped to hear more from them about why their obsession with magic would drive them to do such heinous things. The descriptions of them as inhuman were really effectively chilling though, with their feral shade child. (I did keep thinking, why do they have to drain all Peter’s blood? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to keep him captive and drain a few liters on a regular basis? Maybe that’s part of them having lost their humanity and sanity.)
SG: I do think that Elspeth’s POV was necessary, and I appreciated how she appeared again in the end to help Alice with the most important tool. But that really complex dynamic Grimes had with Elspeth and Alice that you mentioned wasn’t delved into as deeply (for Elspeth, at least), because the overall text is too bloated. I didn’t think she was a fully realized character as much as a plot device at many points because of this. As for the ending, I wasn’t really satisfied as much as relieved I was done because it went exactly like I thought it would. When Grimes’ Shade finally pops up, his attitude is exactly what we’re told it would be. I already loathed him, so who cares? I guess Lord Yama’s sense of humor was a surprise, but again, it took away any stakes (not that there were too many left by this point). The Kripkes’ defeat also didn’t work for me, it happened too quickly after establishing them as the smart, horrific monsters that they were. Can you tell I did not enjoy the experience of these 541 pages?
I will say, as much as it feels like I didn’t like the book, there are certain parts I was totally into. I did love the bits where Kuang gets truly philosophical about the meaning of life and why humanity exists, what everything leads to, the ideas of reincarnation, etc., especially in light of the world we’re living in now, and when daily tasks seem so futile. Those parts of the book spoke a lot to me on a personal level. I just wish the book wasn’t so damn lost in its ideas (As MK said, a quest/satire/dark academia) so that these parts would shine more.
I thought her ideas on reincarnation and stuff with memory, particularly with the pentagram on Alice’s body, was the most interesting part of the book for me. What did you all think about it?
MKC: It was really interesting. It also ties into the Kripkes’ inhumanity a bit and how far they’ve lost themselves, where the worst thing for a magician and for many of the shades is to lose your mind/memory, the thing that makes you yourself. (A horror!) But as Matt pointed out in the writing of that section with the Lethe, Kuang also makes a convincing argument for letting that wash away, and for that version of afterlife being a grace.
SG: I thought there were some interesting takeaways about the difficulty of letting go and how our identities are shaped so much by what we choose to hold onto/what drives us. The Lethe was definitely the most intriguing part of Hell in that sense, and I appreciated at least that part of what she wants to say in this jumbled-up mess.
MS: Alice’s tattoo was such a terrifying monkey’s paw wish, especially for a grad student. The idea of her abusive professor tattooing her with the curse of never being able to forget any of the terror of grad school feels about as apt a metaphor for the endeavor as any. We forget what a blessing it is to forget sometimes.
SG: Gonna apply that last line to Katabasis.
MKC: Well, this is a good segue: If you didn’t enjoy the pages, what do you think about seeing it on screen? There’s a TV adaptation of Katabasis in development as we speak. There are definitely some stunning set pieces here that I could see really popping in a visual medium. In some ways, I could see it working even better as a show—there is something very episodic about it, as Matt mentioned. What do you guys think about the adaptation potential here? Will you tune in?
SG: A lot of that depends on who is helming it/starring in it, etc. I believe it’s The Walking Dead franchise’s Angela Kang, which gives me a little bit of a pause, but hey, those early seasons were promising too, so who knows. The visual potential is certainly unmatched, but having read the book, I don’t know if that’s reason enough for me to be excited about it. It’ll probably just make me miss The Magicians.
MS: This feels like the type of book that’s written with a deal already in place. But while I enjoyed the book, when I imagine a TV show about it, it just seems too derivative of the types of fantasy epics we’ve been seeing for years—none of which have been unmissable triumphs. I’d probably watch an episode because I read the book, but it feels like the type of show I’d drop out of fast.
MKC: The referential nature of the underworld here suited the academic setting, but it is a drawback for the adaptation—makes you wish it was more of a Hell of Kuang’s creation than a pastiche of other classics.
MS: It had kind of an Alan Moore sensibility in that way, which I love. But that’s a bigger ask on screen.
SG: Thinking of the amount of exposition that any adaptation will have to include scares me.
