If You Loved Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, You’ll Devour These 7 Dark Fantasy Novels
7 Books Like Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
(Short Summaries Included For Each Book)
TL;DR: Your Quick Guide to More Dark Academia
🔑 Key Insights:
- The intellectualization of magic—where knowledge itself is power—is central to Babel, The Atlas Six, and Ninth House in different ways.
- The psychological descent and morally grey survival instinct of Alice Law finds echoes in the protagonists of Ninth House and Vicious.
The List of 7 Books Like Katabasis
1. Babel by R.F. Kuang
While Katabasis weaponizes logic, Babel weaponizes translation.
It follows Robin Swift, a Chinese boy brought to 1830s Oxford to master “silver-working,” a magic that exploits the gaps between languages.
Read Babel Book Summary
2. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
This is the ur-text, the novel that codified the dark academia genre. While it lacks supernatural magic, its magic is social and psychological.
It follows a group of elitist classics students at a small college, led by a charismatic professor, who become entangled in a murder.
Explore The Secret History Summary
3. The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
This book captures the competitive, deadly academia of Katabasis and transplants it into a secret society.
Every decade, the Alexandrian Society selects six uniquely talented magicians for a year of initiation. Only five will be initiated.
Read The summary: The Atlas Six Summary
4. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Alex Stern is a dropout offered a second chance at Yale to monitor its secret magical societies.
Like Alice, she’s an outsider using her unique, illicit power (seeing ghosts) to navigate a world of privileged occultism.
Explore the full Summary: Ninth House Book Summary
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It begins in the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” a library that guards forgotten volumes, and unfolds into a haunting tale of a cursed author.
Full summary of The Shadow of the Wind
6. This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Two agents, Red and Blue, on opposite sides of a temporal war, begin a forbidden correspondence across time and space.
Their relationship is a battle of wits and words, growing from rivalry into something profound.
The Summary: This Is How You Lose the Time War
7. Vicious by V.E. Schwab
This book mirrors the scientific arrogance and metaphysical trauma at Katabasis’s core.
Two brilliant, obsessed college friends, Victor and Eli, do just that, and their partnership curdles into a deadly feud.
Explore the Full Summary
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is Katabasis a standalone novel, or part of a series?
As of now, Katabasis is a standalone novel.
I haven’t read Babel yet. Should I read it before or after Katabasis?
You can read them in any order. They are separate stories with different magic systems.
Are The Atlas Six and Ninth House part of series?
Yes. The Atlas Six is the first in a trilogy (with The Atlas Paradox and The Atlas Complex). Ninth House has a sequel, Hell Bent, with more expected.
