Episode 12.1: ‘Katabasis’ by RF Kuang
Season twelve is here and we’re kicking off the season with one of the biggest releases of the latter half of 2025: RF Kuang’s dark academia fantasy, ‘Katabasis’.
We had a rocky time wth ‘Babel’, but we’re taking another chance on Kuang for her latest novel about a pair of academics taking a journey into Hell to rescue their professor. Everything about the synopsis ticks our boxes, and even though the reviews have been a bit more mixed than with ‘Babel’, we’re optimistic about this one.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.
Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick.
But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.
But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.
That’s if they can agree on anything.
Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?
Is ‘Katabasis’ going to restore our faith in RF Kuang and her dark academia fantasy?
In this episode we discuss:
Hell, and what that might look like
The perils of being a woman in academia
How far obsession can, and should, take a person
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Katabasis’ by RF Kuang
‘Babel’ by RF Kuang
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
‘Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil’ by VE Schwab
‘Gallant’ by VES Schwab
‘We Love You, Bunny’ by Mona Awad
‘Blood Over Bright Haven’ by ML Wang
‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton
‘Inferno’ by Dante
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Grey Gardens’ (1975 documentary)
Please sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer for exclusive book club content, extra episodes and special content!
