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In retrospect, this is probably my fault.

Up there are four of the seemingly unlimited Special Editions of R.F. Kuang’s new book Katabasis. I own three of them; two are currently in my house and I believe one is on the way. The fourth is the UK edition and despite everything I’m about to say it is still a maybe. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision to order three expensive hardbacks of a book I hadn’t read yet, even if it was by one of my favorite authors! But as we’ve firmly established by now, I cannot be trusted with adult money.

Katabasis is the sixth book Kuang has written; I have read them all, and previously my least favorite of her books was one that was ranked third on my end of year Best Books list. My least favorite, mind you. Least. And part of me really thinks that I should sit with this for a minute and not write the review just yet, because part of the problem is that this book did not match the expectations I had set for it, and because I’ve enjoyed Kuang’s work so much in the past, I feel a need to be fair to it that I might maybe not feel with other authors. Then again, maybe not. Maybe, much like main character Alice Law about her mentor and Ph.D advisor Jacob Grimes, I’m making excuses so that I’m not disappointed.

Katabasis, somehow, has made Hell boring.

But let’s back up. Katabasis is the story of two graduate students (in theoretical Magick, of course) who travel to Hell to rescue the soul of their doctoral advisor, not because he doesn’t belong in Hell– he clearly does, and they’re both fully aware of this– but because their careers will be damaged by him being dead, and they need him for recommendation letters and such. I feel like this aspect of their motivation could perhaps have been explored a bit more; sadly, it was not. Katabasis (kuh-TAB-uh-sis, the word is Greek for “descent”) was supposed to be this dense, deeply literary work, heavily reliant on previous let’s-traipse-off-into-Hell books; there were pre-Katabasis reading lists floating around, and while I’m not actually completely certain Kuang was behind any of them, they were kinda intense!

And … well. Kuang is an academic writer; most of her books have at least partially involved schooling in some way and Babel was literally about a group of Oxford students who powered the world with magic based on translation, so this isn’t exactly a road untread for her. But this book is no more complicated than Babel was and no more academic; I was expecting a challenging read, and just didn’t get it. This is also the book that showed Kuang’s youth (she is still, somehow, not even 30) the most, I think; what she knows best is academia and grad school and I think that finally caught up to her with this book. And I get it! I’m not exactly a stranger to pretentious/prestigious graduate experiences; I hold an AM from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, after all, which probably left me better prepared for going to Hell than most people’s educations, and I “hold” an “AM” rather than “have” an “MA” or a pedestrian “Master’s Degree” because, well, University of Chicago gotta University of Chicago. Those letters being reversed mean something. To somebody. I don’t know what, but they do.

Anyway, Alice (and is that name an accident, no, it is not) and her friend/fellow genius/academic rival Peter Murdoch head off to Hell to drag Grimes back into the world with them, and the book spirals (I see what you did there) back and forth between the past and the present as they argue about the map of Hell and, for the sake of argument, descend down to the final level to find him. They go in without much of a plan, and “no plan” really never gets better; they have a couple of never-ending water bottles and a sackful of, this is really what it’s called, Lembas bread with them so that they don’t starve to death or have to drink anything in Hell, and they mostly just wander around for five hundred pages, occasionally interacting with some of Hell’s shockingly small number of denizens. Most of Hell is an empty wasteland. They eventually arrive at the city of Dis, and I feel like if we’re going to start with a pre-reading list, maybe one of the New Crobuzon books, or Gormenghast, or the Shadow of the Torturer, or something like that should have been on there, because I have definitely read better infernal cities before.

It’s not … bad? Or at least I’m not willing to admit it was bad yet? And if you are someone who reads books for character development, this probably is right up your alley, as Alice Law and Peter Murdoch really are two of Kuang’s more completely drawn characters. But I don’t really read for character; I read for story and setting, and the story and setting here are both far too thin for my tastes. I probably owe this book a reread in a year or two regardless, just to let the expectations clear and to go into it with a better idea of what I’m about to read. But right now I’m deeply disappointed in it. The extra copies are still going to look great on my shelf, and Kuang is still an insta-buy author, but this one really didn’t do it for me.

This book sort of danced on and off my radar until a guy I follow on BookTok (which is TikTok but about books, in case you aren’t In the Know) read it and proceeded to wax rhapsodic about it for a solid week, at more than one point calling it his favorite book of all time. This, from someone whose book tastes I am already inclined to trust, is absolutely a phrase that is going to cause me to sit up and take notice, and the book got ordered immediately.

tl;dr: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue isn’t my favorite book of all time, but it’s my favorite book of the year with a damn bullet so far.(*)

The titular Addie LaRue, having sold her soul to the devil in the 1700s, is suffering under a curse: no one remembers her once she’s out of their sight. Any interaction with her is instantly forgotten, and any trace she’s left in the world disappears as well; things she breaks are immediately repaired, her writing vanishes from paper, and she cannot say or write her own name. She is also effectively immortal; she cannot die of thirst or hunger (although she can experience both) and minor wounds, at least, vanish instantly; one presumes she would survive larger injuries as well although the book spares us a scene where she tries to, say, jump off a bridge or anything like that. As the book begins, she is over 300 years old, and the devil, who she calls Luc, has been visiting her on the anniversary of her deal from time to time to see if she is ready to end her curse.

(Let’s address the book’s biggest weakness head-on: if you’re thinking hey, that kind of sounds like Hob Gadling from Sandman #13, you’re absolutely right, and while other than in the broadest strokes the book doesn’t borrow from that story much, the line “Death is a mug’s game. I got so much to live for.” would not sound entirely inappropriate coming out of Addie’s mouth.)

The book jumps around from “now” in 2014 to various points in time throughout Addie’s life, as she evolves from a terrified, orphaned young girl to someone who is effectively a master thief, who more or less survives solely through stealing everything she needs. You can imagine life for someone who cannot be remembered can be terribly difficult; you can’t rent a room, because your reservation disappears; you can’t hold down a job, because the second your new boss wanders into the back room he’ll forget you exist, you can’t even have a meal at a restaurant because your waitress will forget about you immediately. Relationships and friendships are effectively impossible, although Addie has a reasonably active sex life– she’s just grown unfortunately used to the men not remembering her when they wake up the next morning. But as it turns out, it’s not hard to charm people when they forget who you are every time you disappear from their view– you can just try again with a different approach the next day, or the day after that, and as the book starts she’s effectively been living with the same guy for several weeks.

There’s a lot more to it than that; I’m making it sound like a thriller and it’s absolutely not; it’s both richer and more character-driven than one would typically expect from that kind of book; this is not quite a Litratcher, as it’s a bit more story-heavy than I typically see in my Smart Person Books, but it’s still smart as hell and I need to check out more of Schwab’s work. Eventually, Addie meets someone who actually can remember her, and from there the story really takes off.

This book does a phenomenal job of dealing with an exceptionally old character, which is a really damned difficult thing to write about, and Addie herself is a marvel of a character, and her relationships with both Luc and Henry (who are the only people she can actually have relationships with) are well-drawn and hugely interesting. Henry starts off as a little bit of a cypher but once you find out why he can remember Addie when no one else can … *chef’s kiss*

Oh, and there’s an element of art history that I liked a hell of a lot, too. More books need art history.

I loved the hell out of this book, guys, and it’s another one that’s going to be ending up very high on the list at the end of the year. Go snap it up and set aside a weekend for it.

(*) The next book I’m reading is Requiem Moon, by C.T. Rwizi, the sequel to Scarlet Odyssey, which was my favorite book of last year, and which I have enormously high hopes for.