Premise: 2 students, Alice Law and Peter Murdoch go through Hell to bring their Professor Grimes back.

If Babel was Historical fiction + Linguistics driven, Katabasis is Mythical and Magick driven (i.e, exposing flawed logic structures). Kudos to Kuang first of all, for delving into such fun and varied themes. I can say Katabasis is VERY different from Babel. Both are Dark academia genre, but Katabasis’ Young Adult/Romance overshadowed the plot for me, and the interesting themes too.

Some great themes here were:

1. Dante-esque descent and experience of going through layers of Hell

2. Yama as King of Underworld, Reincarnation discussed thoroughly (Kuang takes a cheeky jibe at Christianity for not giving serious thought to it XD)

3. Standard Logic structures and their limitations fuelling Magical spells (similar to Linguistic Translation ambiguities powering the Silver bars in Babel)

4. Dark Academia: unequal power structures, professors exploiting students (mentally, physically) - the most important theme in this novel.

As much as I liked Babel, (won’t stop singing its praises ever, I think) I disliked Katabasis to that extent, simply due to YA overshadowing other themes. Reflects my bias of course.

My main takeaways were: the fun she had with breaking Logic AND the EXTREMELY important discussions about power structures in academia.

Still, Katabasis wasn’t too engaging for me. Maybe YA fans will enjoy it thoroughly. Regardless, full credit to Kuang for exploring new themes and genres!
 {{Kuang maybe playing with us all on a meta level too, 1st Babel - towards academic heights (Tower of Babel/Upward ⬆️ journey), now Katabasis (Hell/Downward ⬇️ journey). Just a random thought.}}

Will be eagerly waiting for her next project. She’ll cook up some unique madness for sure! Have you guys read it? Any thoughts?



KATABASIS - Descent Into Hell thru Magic and Logic! (M/L: Murdoch/Law) Quick review