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 stunning collectible hardcover. Katabasis Deluxe Restricted Version is obtainable for $24.48 (was $35) at Amazon and Walmart.
After the primary printing of Katabasis sells out, readers must accept the usual version, which implies you will miss out on the eye-catching sprayed web page edges, lavish case, and illustrated endpapers. Contemplating that Amazon now additionally has a retailer web page for the usual version–for solely two bucks less–the Deluxe Restricted Version is presumably near promoting out.
Check out the Deluxe Restricted Version of Katabasis under. Followers of Kuang’s Poppy Battle Trilogy also needs to try Amazon’s reductions on the new Deluxe Collector’s Editions of the primary two novels within the sequence.
R.F. Kuang Collector’s Version Books:
$24.48 (was $35) | Releases August 26
R.F. Kuang’s newest fantasy novel revolves round a pair of PhD college students, Alice Regulation and Peter Murdoch, who research Magick at a fictional Cambridge College. When their tutorial advisor Professor Jacob Grimes dies in what appears like a classroom train gone terribly incorrect, Alice blames herself. She could not stand the man, however as the perfect magician alive, Jacob’s suggestion letter might jumpstart her profession in Magick. And he hadn’t written suggestion letters earlier than his premature demise.
Described as tutorial rivals, Alice and Peter be a part of forces and threat their very own lives to attempt to save their futures–and Jacob, who occurs to be in literal Hell. And so the pair of brainy, aspirational magicians make a journey to the depths of Hell. However all of their coaching did not put together them for what Hell is definitely like.
The title comes from Greek myths that confer with a descent to Hell as a katabasis. The writer calls Katabasis “2025’s most surprising love story,” in case you had been questioning whether or not that is an enemies-turned-lovers state of affairs. And whereas it’s, in a approach, I’ve learn it, and it actually does subvert your expectations on this regard.
The 560-page Deluxe Restricted Version hardcover has ornamental sprayed edges that includes the school and the underworld. The mud jacket paintings reveals Alice and Peter descending a winding staircase surrounded by bookshelves. This 3D illustration of their journey can be depicted on the embossed entrance cowl whenever you take away the mud jacket. The Deluxe Restricted Version additionally has unique endpapers designed to resemble pages from Alice’s pocket book with equations, tables, and diagrams.
Signed copies of the Deluxe Restricted Version had been obtainable at Barnes & Noble for $35, however 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 delivery prices and potential tariffs may very well be rough–or purchase a replica from a US reseller on Amazon for round $50.
Massive Print editions of Katabasis can be found in paperback, and the UK model is roughly half the worth in comparison with the US Massive Print version.
Katabasis can be obtainable as a $15 Kindle e-book and Audible audiobook narrated by Morag Sims and Will Watt.
- The Poppy Battle Trilogy Field Set — $32.49 (
$60) - The Poppy Battle: Guide 1 (2018)
- The Dragon Republic: Guide 2 (2019)
- The Burning God: Guide 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 in the present day. Regardless of solely simply turning 29 earlier this yr, Katabasis is Kuang’s sixth novel. In 2018, Harper Voyager printed Kuang’s debut novel, The Poppy Battle, 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 Battle was adopted up by The Dragon Republic in 2019 and The Burning God in 2020. The award-winning sequence is obtainable in a number of bodily codecs, together with a budget-friendly paperback field set, hardcover, and commerce paperback.
Final November, Harper printed The Poppy Battle Deluxe Collector’s Version with sprayed edges, illustrated endpapers, embossed visible results, and a totally illustrated mud jacket. The Poppy Battle Collector’s Version hardcover is discounted to $24.29 (was $45) at Amazon. The Dragon Republic Deluxe Collector’s Version 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 yr.
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 Finest Novel.
Kuang modified genres as soon as once more along with her riveting 2023 novel Yellowface. The satirical novel takes goal at racial range in publishing. If you happen to like audiobooks, Helen Laser’s narration of Yellowface is wildly entertaining.
August has introduced numerous different notable new fantasy and sci-fi novels, together with Charlie Jane Anders’ Classes in Magic and Catastrophe, Gareth Brown’s The Society of Unknowable Objects, Louis Sachar’s The Magician of Tiger Citadel, and Yasuhiko Nishizawa’s The Man Who Died Seven Instances.
