The Hollow Descent of Katabasis

R.F. Kuang has built her reputation on ambitious, politically charged novels. The Poppy War confronted empire and violence; Babel wrestled with language, colonialism, and academia. With Katabasis, Kuang sets out to reimagine a descent into hell. The premise is rich with literary and cultural weight: from Dante to Milton to Bosch, hell has long been a site of imagination, theology, and moral reckoning. Unfortunately, Katabasis squanders this potential. What could have been a searing exploration of the underworld instead becomes a shallow and frustrating read, one that leans on shock, repetition, and academic flourishes rather than substance.

The first and most glaring issue is the novel’s reliance on disturbing content as a substitute for depth. Animal cruelty, eating disorders, child murder, bestiality, sexism, suicidal ideation, lesbophobia, gaslighting, sexual harassment — the list is long and unrelenting. Kuang is not wrong to introduce such material; literature has always had space for the disturbing and the grotesque. But in Katabasis, these moments are presented graphically and then abandoned. They don’t evolve into critique, commentary, or even sustained thematic concern. Instead, they function as spectacle. The result is not illumination but revulsion, leaving the reader with shock value rather than insight.

The characterisation compounds this problem. Alice, the protagonist, is abrasive in a way that feels less provocative than lazy. She sneers at activists, dismisses feminism, and undermines solidarity with other women. Lines such as “She couldn’t stand those screeching activists who believed the only politically just thing was to become a lesbian” land not as the development of a flawed but challenging voice, but as the uncritical ventriloquism of misogynistic discourse. Worse, this repeats a troubling pattern across Kuang’s work. Her female characters often emerge as hostile to solidarity, dismissive of activism, or antagonistic toward their own sex. While in Babel this stance had contextual grounding and was interrogated, in Katabasis it stands unopposed. What should be a descent into the underworld of meaning instead reproduces tired, regressive tropes.

The setting of hell itself is another missed opportunity. Kuang borrows freely from Dante, Mad Max, and The Atlas Six, but without integrating these influences into something original or meaningful. What should be a space rich with theological, cultural, and mythological resonance is reduced to set dressing. Hell becomes generic rather than generative. Compared with works that bring nuance and imagination to underworld settings — such as The Saint of Heartbreak — Katabasis feels superficial, a backdrop for aesthetic gestures rather than ideas.

The romance subplot further weakens the novel. Marketed as a romance, the relationship between Alice and Peter lacks chemistry, intimacy, or purpose. Peter is inert, his twist predictable, and the dynamic between the two reads less like passion and more like proximity dressed up as intimacy. For an author who has never truly written romance before, the attempt here exposes a clear limitation.

Finally, the prose is riddled with long inserts of academic-style writing that disrupt narrative flow. Instead of enriching the story, they feel like intrusions — as if Kuang could not resist showing off her academic training, even when it undermines immersion. Combined with flat characters and a regressive take on gender politics, these digressions make the novel feel alienating rather than profound.

There are flashes of Kuang’s talent here — moments where the prose cuts sharply or an image lingers — but they are rare. Ultimately, Katabasis is less a bold descent into the underworld than a hollow masquerade. Kuang is a gifted writer, but this novel left me more annoyed than anything else. What once felt ambitious now feels like repetition, regression, and spectacle without purpose.

My Rating: 2.5/5