November Fantasy Book Recommendation: Katabasis

After a short break, we are back with our monthly fantasy book recommendation. And this month, I decided to choose one of the best fantasy novels I read this year; Katabasis by R.F. Kuang.

I often wonder if I should just make this into a blog focused on solely fantasy novels. But then I remember all the amazing books I read that aren’t fantasy novels that I also want to share. So I figured I should just share some more fantasy books with my fellow readers.

Katabasis was released in late 2025 and is about two students who go to hell to bring their professor back to life. If you haven’t read a book by R.F. Kuang before, I would recommend reading another amazing novel by her called Babel.

The writing in this novel is easy to follow but there it can get overwhelming for some people. The magic system isn’t too complex but also it isn’t your normal fantasy magic system that you would find in most novels. And maybe that is how Kuang separates herself from her peers.

Alice Law is a postgraduate student at Cambridge who is practicing magic. She wants to land a great job after she finished school but knows that her only chance to do so is with a recommendation from her former professor and advisor Jacob Grimes.

But because of a simple mistake by Alice, Jacob died while doing a magic spell and now is in Hell. And Alice plans to go to Hell to bring him back to life.

Just as Alice is about to create a magic circle to go down to Hell, her colleague and rival Peter Murdoch walks in and tells her that he is going to join her to bring back Grimes. They both descend to Hell and what follows is an adventure unlike any other.

While most of us have thought of hell, few of us have actually imagined what it would be like and what rules it would abide by. This novel takes from some of the most famous philosophers and creates a hell that has been written about for over centuries.

Without spoiling anything major, the second thing that drives the novel is how magik is used. Theorems are used to make a spell and it requires logic. The system itself can be complicating but Kuang does a good job of explaining it.

The plot is a simple one but what truly makes the novel are the cast of characters for me. The protagonists have their flaws but we all know that grad school can drive anyone insane.

This novel is a critique against the established systems and the abuses that students have to deal with along with the stress. So much so that they have to go to hell to save a professor if they want to work in this field. Because we know that it’s usually who you know that gets you the job.

I have been a big fan of Huang after reading Babel but that wasn’t always the case. Her novels before then were also good and her writing style has always been great. But I didn’t think she was a must read author until reading Babel and seeing someone who was also a big fan of fantasy novels that was doing something different.

It is hard to compare Katabasis to anything in the fantasy genre because it is unique. Many authors would avoid a novel like this because it can alienate readers and who wants to read about grad school and rescuing a professor that is questionable?

Still, if you want something different and also like fantasy novels, then Katabasis should be your next read. Happy reading!

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