Waiting on Wednesday – Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy. Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them. For this week’s Waiting on Wednesday, I check out one of the more intriguing and complex upcoming fantasy novels of 2025 with the incredible sounding Katabasis by R. F. Kuang.

Amazon

Over the last few years, an intriguing rising fantasy author I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to read was the highly regarded R. F. Kuang. A talented author whose books feature interesting references and insights into Asian culture and how it is perceived in the West, Kuang has produced an impressive and unique body of work. This includes here acclaimed The Poppy War series, as well as the varied standalone novels Yellowface and Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. All these books have outstanding and complex plots behind them, and I honestly wish that I had taken the time to try and read some of these novels in recent years. Luckily it looks like I might get the opportunity to finally read one of her books later this year as Kuang has a particularly epic new novel coming out that has really grabbed my attention.

That book is Katabasis, a compelling dark academia fantasy novel that will see two rival students got to Hell to retrieve their professor’s soul. A suitably unique and quite entertaining plot idea, Katabasis, which is set for release in August 2025, promises to bring together a lot of complex story elements into a very interesting read. I especially love how Kuang will be apparently sending up both classic underworld stories, such as Dante or Orpheus, as well as the more maddening world of academia and post-graduate study. Based on both the distinctive plot and Kuang’s excellent reputation for creating elaborate and clever stories, I feel that Katabasis has a ton of potential and could end up being one of the top fantasy books of the year. As such, I am extremely eager to get my hands on Katabasis, and I think I am going to have an extremely fun time reading it.

Plot Synopsis:

Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:

The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.

That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….

Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.