When I learned R.F. Kuang was taking readers to hell in her newest book, I groaned. Haven’t we done this enough? I’m not just talking about Orpheus retrieving Eurydice, Dante’s “Inferno” and Virgil’s “Aeneid.” Nor the 19th century poets and cults obsessed with everything chthonic. We as a culture have done katabasis — that is, a journey into the underworld — a lot recently: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Gods of Jade and Shadow” (2019), Leigh Bardugo’s “Hell Bent” (2023) and Netflix’s “Kaos” (2024).

(I’m sure it has nothing to do with the political instability we’re facing. We probably shouldn’t worry about the historical pattern of writers becoming obsessed with the living journeying into hell whenever things aren’t going great in society. I’m sure it’s fine.)

I didn’t think there could be much new here. “Katabasis” is a dark academia fantasy where the protagonist — a psychologically wounded but talented student, lacking self-love, perspective or even just one friend to talk sense into her — journeys into hell to fetch the soul of a mentor she’s in thrall to … and may have killed. If this sounds familiar, well, Kuang’s newest hero, Alice Law, does bear similarities to Bardugo’s Alex Stern.

But I was wrong — there are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it.

Like “Babel,” which relied on R.F. Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her familiarity with the subject.

(John Packman)

Alice Law and her partner-in-hell, Peter Murdoch, are acutely aware of their literary predecessors, even guided by maps based on those journeys. They go because their doctoral advisor, a man they hate and worship in equal measure, has died and they need him back to ensure they get a good teaching position after graduation. It’s a flawed reason, and a greedy one, a fact neither character seems to understand. They don’t seem to see themselves fitting in anywhere in hell, actually — that tension is both annoying and amusing. Their trip is an intriguing take on the journey; things in hell have changed since Virgil played tour guide.

In “Katabasis,” we’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered. Like “Babel,” which relied on Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her knowledge of the subject, her deep familiarity with its shape and philosophy. Also like “Babel,” “Katabasis” revolves around the dark inequities cracking the foundations of a fictional department in an Oxbridge school, a place people would kill to get into and then die in while they’re there.

A warning: The nesting doll of literary references in “Katabasis” will be a delight to some and impenetrable to others. People who aren’t familiar with chthonic myths might want to do some research before reading. For example, there’s a joke toward the end about how John Gradus is clearly a fake name: The reference is never elucidated, and you’ll only get the joke if you know the phrase gradus ad parnassum means “a step toward Parnassus,” which is the mountain where Apollo and the Muses live in Greek myth, and that the phrase is often used by scholars to indicate a process of gradual mastery over a subject. So John Gradus is a journeyer in his own right, learning where he went wrong in life to reach the Lethe and reincarnate. This novel is not for the intellectually indifferent.

But generally, “Katabasis” is a more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier works. Perhaps this isn’t surprising; Kuang’s first book was published when she was just 21 and she’s 29 now. A person’s 20s are transformative even if they don’t study in China, at Oxford, at Cambridge and at Yale in quick succession. Readers who thought “The Poppy War” trilogy didn’t stick the landing, or that Rin became insufferable by the end, will be pleased that “Katabasis” does stick it, and that Alice evolves.

Some of the same themes from “The Poppy War” return — the horror of sex, the power of delusion to transform reality. But when Alice faces challenges, she lets go of her delusions. Peter is not disposable like Kitay. Both Alice and Rin sacrifice, but this isn’t Rin’s abject despair; Alice’s sacrifices are more nuanced than Rin could ever fathom.

As much as “Katabasis” has in common with Kuang’s earlier works, tonally it might have most in common with “Yellowface.” Unlike the brutality of “The Poppy Wars” or the tragedy of “Babel,” “Katabasis” maintains a slight wry humor throughout. There’s a satirical subtext here that wasn’t present in her earlier earnest fantasies. I mean, these PhD candidates choose to go to actual hell rather than have an honest conversation with someone at Cambridge. Kuang shows us how self-destructive that is, intriguing as the story reads. Like June Hayward/Juniper Song in “Yellowface,” Alice and Peter are so trapped in the flimsy reality they’ve constructed that they can’t see the obvious way out.

Because in “Katabasis,” hell is not other people. It’s defending your dissertation.

This is my one sticking point with writers taking readers to hell. Cultural images of the underworld are bound by writers, and though Kuang introduces new elements, she adheres largely to their canon. Her take on Dante’s City of Dis is — spoiler! — a regal college where academics spend eternity writing self-absorbed dissertations (shortened by real PhD candidates, of course, to “Diss” — there’s that wry humor). There’s no feedback, no advisors, just faith that someone’s reading. I understand why a PhD student would envision this as the worst kind of punishment, but I’m not convinced it’s the worst possible sin.

“Katabasis” is hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes. Orpheus’ journey has stood the test of time because he went for love. Dante went for knowledge. Alice goes for a recommendation letter. It’s an intriguing addition to the canon, but for mere mortals who haven’t survived abusive, plagiaristic and mystifying advisors to earn Oxbridge degrees — or even just bad bosses — it might be unrelatable.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”