R. F. Kuang

Review: Katabasis

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Cover image of "Katabasis" by R. F.. Kuang

Katabasis, R. F. Kuang. Harper Voyager (ISBN: 9780063021471) 2025.

Summary: Two graduate students studying Magick follow their deceased advisor on a journey through Hell, struggling to trust each other.

Katabasis. The word refers to a descent into the underworld, a theme in mythology from the Odyssey and Aeneid to Ovid and Dante. In fact, just about every culture has its katabasis myths. And now R. F. kuang has given us one for dark academia in a post-post-modern twenty-first century.

The story, in brief, is about two doctoral students studying Magick at Cambridge, Alice Law and Peter Murdoch. Both work under Jacob Grimes, by many estimates, the greatest magician in academia. But he is not a nice man–manipulative and brutal, and many have dropped out. Murdoch and Law are determined not to, and are rivals. That is until an accident with a pentagram drawn by Alice rips his body apart and sends him to Hell.

The real disaster here is the loss of an advisor, which can mean starting over. Not only that, a recommendation from Grimes held the key to their futures, futures they had worked so hard to achieve. That is why they are willing to forfeit half of their life span to gain entrance to hell. Somehow, they hope to find Grimes and restore him to the upper world, at least long enough for those coveted degrees and recommendations. And the spell they use works to get them into Hell.

This novel is many things in one. Perhaps the dominant one is that it is an academic satire. Hell, as it appears to them is an academic campus. And it is one that reveals all the pretensions and petty rivalries of academia. For example, the first level, Pride, is not unlike a research library, with its inhabitants competing to compose theses that will allow them to move on, and perhaps across the River Lethe. But no one knows of any who have succeeded despite all the latest theories.

It’s also an adventure. Throughout the narrative, Alice and Peter are pursued by bony creatures energized by the Kripkes, extremely clever magicians who never made it in the academic world but were wildly successful in popular culture. Then there are others, like the Weaver Girl, who tests their loyalty to each other through posing them a Prisoner’s Dilemma challenge.

That challenge raises another aspect of the book. Kuang’s characters survive not merely by their wits and magical training. Throughout, they draw upon logic, philosophy, as well as a crash course in the mythology of the underworld. If you like intellectual puzzles, you will enjoy this.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma, exposes another element–their trust in one another. Alice discovers in some of Peter’s papers that it looks like he is prepared to sacrifice Alice to retrieve Grimes. And there is a long history to their rivalry, including a compromising moment between Alice and Grimes, witnessed by Murdoch. Everything seemed to come easy for him while Alice would grind away.

Finally, while many of Hell’s inhabitants seem oblivious to their sins, the journey lays bare those of Alice. She comes face to face with the overweening ambition behind her relentless pursuit of her degree–an ambition revealed in a willingness to harm others for her own ends.

Kuang portrays a Hell without a God or paradise, only a King Yama, on which their hope of return hinges. But the irony is that in the end, survival will depend on grace of a sort.

So what did I think? Having worked in college ministry with grad students and professors, Kuang’s satire of their pretensions as well as the portrayals of the delights of the life of the mind seemed spot on. As in the Poppy Wars trilogy, Kuang is a world builder. She has added to the mythology of the geography of Hell. Most of all, she explores flawed, fallen human nature, and our blindness to our flaws. And we watch her lead character grope toward the realization that in the end, the greatest virtue is love. But we wonder if she will learn in time.

Review: Yellowface

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Cover image of "Yellowface" by R. F. Kuang.

Yellowface, R. F. Kuang. William Morrow (ISBN: 9780063250833) 2023.

Summary: What happens when a famous author dies immediately after sharing an unpublished draft of her latest work with her writer friend.

Athena Liu and June Hayward met at Yale. Both were aspiring writers. Athena rocketed to literary stardom. June’s book received lackluster reviews and didn’t sell. Both are living in DC and meet up. They migrate to Athena’s apartment, get drunk, and share a lot of girl talk. Athena shows June the draft of her latest, yet to be submitted book. No one else has seen it. It’s on Chinese laborers in World War I and June sees its potential. Next thing, Athena is choking, June’s efforts to save her fail, and Athena dies before help arrives. When June finally leaves, it is with Athena’s manuscript.

Reading through the manuscript, she recognizes both the brilliance and the unfinished state of what Athena had produced. At first, she edits the work as a writing exercise, for Athena. But the more she works on it, including her own extensive research, the more she considers it hers. She sends it off to her agent, representing it as her work, and not only does he think it brilliant, but so does her publisher, who offers her a huge advance. June publishes under the name Juniper Song (June’s full first name and middle name, but also ethnically ambiguous) with an equally ambiguous author photo.

The book enjoys critical acclaim…and booming sales. Then the controversy hits. At first, she has to defend herself against charge of cultural appropriation as a white girl writing on an Asian subject. Then the first allegations of plagiarism arise, which she manages to fend off, but at a steep internal psychic cost. In this sense, the novel is a kind of “crime and punishment” study of the deepening fear of being exposed coupled with the allure, yet the impossibility of coming clean. In the writing community, plagiarism may be worse than murder. But she also discovers that in stealing Athena’s work, she has become a captive to Athena’s voice, losing her own.

Kuang also exposes the capricious world of publishing, and the vicious world of social media. In particular, Kuang portrays how quickly adulation can turn to death threats and other forms of cancellation. There are even the complicated relationships between authors. June claims Athena stole from her, taking her secrets and turning them into stories. June, of course, uses this to justify her own theft.

This is not a pleasant book to read. Kuang makes us look at our rationalizations, the ways we re-narrate our stories. Simultaneously she explores the dark sides of the publishing, literary, and social media worlds. And she weaves all this together in a compelling story.

Review: The Dragon Republic

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The Dragon Republic (The Poppy Wars #2), R. F. Kuang. New York: Harper Voyager, 2019.

Summary: Seeking revenge against The Empress of Nikan, Rin joins the effort of the Dragon Lord to create a republic, who seeks to enlist the support of southern warlords and a foreign power, the Hesperians.

[Note: This review includes a synopsis of the plot set up and some details that will be spoilers for those who have not read the first book in this trilogy.]

Rin and the small band of Cikes have turned into mercenaries for Moag, a pirate availing herself of the weakness of the Empire after the war. She is leading them after the loss of Altan. Rather, she is struggling to lead, remembering the devastation she wrought by calling the fire of the Phoenix and the nagging vision that it should have been she and not Altan who should have died. Her efforts to deaden the pain with opium are eroding her ability to lead. All that drives her is her desire for revenge against The Empress of Nikan.

After her last raid, a marginal success imperiled by her sighting of The Empress, she is kidnapped by Vaisra, the Dragon Warlord, sold off by Moag who recognizes her as a liability, and not one that she wants to give ships for a futile venture. He helps her shake her opium addiction and convinces her to join him in a coup effort against the Empress, after which he hopes to unite the warlords under his leadership, creating a republic instead of an empire. The coup plot fails and in the process, the Empress “seals” Rin’s ability to call the fire, injecting a “poison” that will eventually destroy her. But not yet. She retains her skills as a warrior.

The failed coup attempt doesn’t end Vaisra’s efforts. He plots a war against the Empress. This brings her alongside one time rival, and later friend, Nezha, Vaisra’s younger son, fighting together under Jinzha, his older brother. All through this story Rin struggles under her own guilt, the burden of leading the Cike, and her inability to regain her shamanistic power. She also struggles under being used as an instrument of war by Vaisra, and the probings by his allies, the Hesperians, who either would convert her or kill her. Yet her own struggle attunes her to try to help Nezha, who also struggles with an awakening awareness of his own shamanistic powers. Amid all this, she is faced with the consequences of Vaisra’s war for the people of Tikany, under the Monkey Warlord, Gurubai.

So many, including the Empress, want to use her. Increasingly, she becomes aware that it is a world where warriors like her are likely to be discarded or killed once their usefulness is past. Yet fighting wars for someone else is all she has known, and knows how to do. Not only her life, but that of those closest to her are at risk as she navigates this perilous gauntlet.

R.F. Kuang has created a story with twists and surprises as we wonder whether this instrument of the Phoenix, Rin, can rise from the ashes like her god. Whether she does or not, can she survive the forces both within and without that would tear her apart? Also, there is much unresolved at the end of this story setting up the third book in this trilogy, The Burning God.

My review of The Poppy War.

Review: The Poppy War

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the poppy war

The Poppy War, R. F. Kuang. New York: Harper Collins, 2018.

Summary: First of a fantasy trilogy, focuses on an orphan woman, Rin, who escapes from her village by testing into a military academy, overcomes prejudice, only to discover disturbing powers that reveal her true identity, thrusting her into life-changing choices as war breaks out between Nikan and the Federation.

Rin is an orphan in a remote village of the country of Nikan, facing an undesirable marriage match. She determines to take and pass the test to win a place at Sinegard, the country’s military academy. She ends up achieving the highest place, only to find she is an outsider among the children of the country’s warlords and other elite families. Nezha, son of a warlord, despises her, even as she becomes his principal rival. Prevented from training in martial arts, she finds a mentor, Jiang, who trains her in older ways. In an annual match, she defeats Nezha, but awakens a fire within that only with the help of Jiang she comes to understand.

She becomes his only apprentice in Lore, learning to commune with the sixty four gods of their pantheon. She learns her “fire” is connected with the god of fire, the Phoenix, but Jiang discourages her from seeking the power, which he believes will destroy her. Her training ends when war breaks out anew between Nikan and the Federation. When the Federation is on the verge of taking Sinegard, and Nezha, who has become a friend, is severely wounded, Rin summons the fire, destroying her enemies and barely avoiding destroying everything.

When other surviving students of Sinegard are assigned to different divisions, Rin is assigned to a different group, the Cike, a group of crazy, powerful misfits, all able to summon the power of a different god, led by Altan, an incredible fighter Rin had admired and felt drawn to. Altan is, so it is thought, the one remaining Speerly, of a race obliterated in the Second Poppy War when betrayed into the hands of the Federation.

As she works with Altan, and is frustrated in her ability to summon her power, she comes more and more to face the question of whether to fully surrender to the god, which likely would lead to the destruction of her personality. As the war goes badly, descending into genocide and betrayals, Rin comes to understand her own identity, to the choice she must make, and the terrible consequences that could follow.

The fantasy world created by R.F. Kuang, a doctoral student in Modern Chinese studies creates a world similar to a Chinese, east Asian context, with threatening island nations and another power, Hesperia, that sounds like the U.S. It is also a world of shamans, of opium and psychedelic use, sometimes to attain transcendence, more often to feed and fail to satisfy addiction. There is brutality–rape, genocide, and gruesome deaths. Prospective readers will need to consider whether such content is appropriate for them.

Even with her petulance, we are drawn to the fierce resolve of Rin, her journey of self-discovery, and the choices she must make, a choice between the wisdom of Jiang, and the quest for power of Altan. As conditions worsen, we wonder whether Rin and her people will be able to stop the relentless Federation, perhaps aided by the apparent betrayals and flight of the Nikan Empress. The intensity of the book continues to grow from the rivalries of the academy to the desperation of the fight. It was one of those books you wanted to read whenever you had the chance.

The second book, The Dragon Republic will be out in the summer of 2019. I’ll be looking for it.