Nebula Award-winning creator R.F. Kuang returns this week with a brand new fantasy novel. Pitched as Dante’s Inferno crossed with Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Katabasis is a 560-page novel that takes place at a magical college and the underworld. The extremely anticipated standalone novel releases August 26, and writer Harper Voyager is commemorating the launch with a beautiful collectible hardcover. Katabasis Deluxe Limited Edition is out there for $24.48 (was $35) at Amazon and Walmart.
After the primary printing of Katabasis sells out, readers must accept the usual version, which suggests you may miss out on the eye-catching sprayed web page edges, lavish case, and illustrated endpapers. Contemplating that Amazon now additionally has a store page for the standard edition–for solely two bucks less–the Deluxe Restricted Version is probably near promoting out.
Check out the Deluxe Restricted Version of Katabasis under. Followers of Kuang’s Poppy War Trilogy must also take a look at Amazon’s reductions on the new Deluxe Collector’s Editions of the primary two novels within the sequence.
R.F. Kuang Collector’s Edition Books:
$24.48 (was $35) | Releases August 26
R.F. Kuang’s latest fantasy novel revolves around a pair of PhD students, Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, who study Magick at a fictional Cambridge University. When their academic advisor Professor Jacob Grimes dies in what sounds like a classroom exercise gone terribly wrong, Alice blames herself. She couldn’t stand the guy, but as the best magician alive, Jacob’s recommendation letter could jumpstart her career in Magick. And he hadn’t written recommendation letters before his untimely death.
Described as academic rivals, Alice and Peter join forces and risk their own lives to try to save their futures–and Jacob, who happens to be in literal Hell. And so the pair of brainy, aspirational magicians take a trip to the depths of Hell. But all of their training didn’t prepare them for what Hell is actually like.
The title comes from Greek myths that refer to a descent to Hell as a katabasis. The publisher calls Katabasis “2025’s most unexpected love story,” in case you were wondering whether this is an enemies-turned-lovers situation. And while it is, in a way, I’ve read it, and it really does subvert your expectations in this regard.
The 560-page Deluxe Limited Edition hardcover has decorative sprayed edges featuring the college and the underworld. The dust jacket artwork shows Alice and Peter descending a winding staircase surrounded by bookshelves. This 3D representation of their journey is also depicted on the embossed front cover when you remove the dust jacket. The Deluxe Limited Edition also has exclusive endpapers designed to resemble pages from Alice’s notebook with equations, tables, and diagrams.
Signed copies of the Deluxe Limited Edition have been accessible at Barnes & Noble for $35, nevertheless it’s at the moment bought out.
Editions of Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
The Deluxe Restricted Version is for the US market, however Harper Voyager additionally printed a distinct collectible hardcover within the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Large followers of Kuang’s work can import the worldwide restricted version from UK bookshops like Waterstones–though transport prices and potential tariffs could possibly be rough–or buy a copy from a US reseller on Amazon for round $50.
Massive Print editions of Katabasis can be found in paperback, and the UK version is roughly half the price in comparison with the US Large Print edition.
Katabasis can also be accessible as a $15 Kindle ebook and Audible audiobook narrated by Morag Sims and Will Watt.
- The Poppy War Trilogy Box Set — $32.49 (
$60) - The Poppy Struggle: E-book 1 (2018)
- The Dragon Republic: E-book 2 (2019)
- The Burning God: E-book 3 (2020)
- Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence (2022)
- Yellowface (2023)
Kuang is likely one of the most prolific and profitable younger writers working in fiction at this time. Regardless of solely simply turning 29 earlier this 12 months, Katabasis is Kuang’s sixth novel. In 2018, Harper Voyager printed Kuang’s debut novel, The Poppy War, when she was 22–but she was solely 20 when she signed the contract. The primary in a grimdark historic fantasy trilogy set in a fictionalized model of Kuang’s native China, The Poppy Struggle was adopted up by The Dragon Republic in 2019 and The Burning God in 2020. The award-winning sequence is out there in a number of bodily codecs, together with a budget-friendly paperback box set, hardcover, and commerce paperback.
Final November, Harper printed The Poppy War Deluxe Collector’s Edition with sprayed edges, illustrated endpapers, embossed visible results, and a totally illustrated mud jacket. The Poppy Struggle Collector’s Version hardcover is discounted to $24.29 (was $45) at Amazon. The Dragon Republic Deluxe Collector’s Edition launched in June and is on sale for $26 (was $45). Although not confirmed but, we think about The Burning God will get an identical Collector’s Version of its subsequent 12 months.
After finishing the trilogy, Kuang shifted gears to speculative fiction in Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane Historical past of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Sure, that is a really lengthy title. Babel is an interesting alternate historical past that, like Katabasis, revolves round academia. It gained the 2022 Nebula Award for Greatest Novel.
Kuang modified genres as soon as once more along with her riveting 2023 novel Yellowface. The satirical novel takes purpose at racial range in publishing. When you like audiobooks, Helen Laser’s narration of Yellowface is wildly entertaining.
August has introduced a lot of different notable new fantasy and sci-fi novels, together with Charlie Jane Anders’ Lessons in Magic and Disaster, Gareth Brown’s The Society of Unknowable Objects, Louis Sachar’s The Magician of Tiger Castle, and Yasuhiko Nishizawa’s The Man Who Died Seven Times.
