Excerpt from Katabasis by R. F. Kuang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She knew that voice. She knew, before she turned around, whom she would find at the door.

Peter Murdoch: coat unbuttoned; shirt untucked; papers flapping from his satchel, threatening to tear away in the wind. Alice had always resented how Peter, who every day presented like he'd barely scooped himself out of bed, had still managed to become the darling of the department. Though this was no surprise: academia respected discipline, rewarded effort, but even more, it adored genius that didn't have to try. Peter Murdoch and his bird's-nest hair, scarecrow limbs balanced atop a rickety bicycle, looked like he'd never tried at anything in his life. He was simply born brilliant, all that knowledge poured by gods without spillage into his brain.

Alice couldn't stand him.

"Leave me alone," she said.

Peter trudged into her circle, which was very rude. One should always ask before entering another magician's pentagram. "I know what you're planning."

"No, you don't."

"Tsu's Basic Transportative Pentagram, with Setiya's Modifications," he said, which impressed Alice, since he'd only glanced briefly at the ground, and from across the room besides. "Ramanujan's Summation with implications for the Casimir Effect to establish a psychic link to the target. Eight bars for eight courts." A grin split his face. "Alice Law, you naughty girl. You're trying to go to Hell."

"Well, if you know that much," Alice sniped, "you know there's only room for one of us."

Peter knelt, pushed his glasses up his nose, and with his own stick of chalk quickly etched some alterations into the pentagram. This was also very rude—one should always ask before altering another scholar's work. But standards of etiquette did not apply to Peter Murdoch. Peter moved through life with an obliviousness that, again, was excused only by his genius. Alice had witnessed Peter spill chocolate syrup all over the master of the college's robes at high table with no more rebuke than a shoulder clap and a laugh. When Peter erred it was cute. She had herself once spent all of dinner in the bathroom hyperventilating through her fingers because she'd knocked a bread basket onto the floor.

"One becomes two." Peter waggled his fingers. "Abracadabra. Now there's room."

Alice double-checked his inscriptions and realized to her dismay that his work was perfect. She would have preferred he'd made an error that left him limbless. And she would have truly preferred that he did not then declare, "I'm coming with you."

"No, you aren't."

Of all the people in Cambridge's Department of Analytic Magick, Peter Murdoch was the last person with whom she wanted to sojourn in the underworld. Perfect, brilliant, infuriating Peter, who won the department's top prizes at every milestone—Best First-Year Paper, Best Second-Year Paper, Dean's Medals in logic and mathematics (which were Alice's worst subfields, to be fair, but until she came to Cambridge she was not used to losing). Peter was one of those academics descended from a family of academics, a magician born to a physicist and a biologist, which meant he'd been steeped in the ivory tower's unspoken rules since before he could walk. Peter already had every good thing in the world. He did not need Professor Grimes's letter to get a job.

Worst of all was how Peter was so unfailingly nice. Always stumbling around with that blithe smile on his face, always offering to help his colleagues puzzle through hiccups in their research, always asking everyone else in seminar how their weekend had been when he knew very well they'd spent it sobbing over proofs that he could have done in his sleep. Peter never crowed or condescended, he was just guilelessly better than, and that made everyone feel so much worse.

No, Alice wanted to solve this problem herself. She did not want Peter Murdoch yapping over her shoulder the entire time, nitpicking her pentagrams because he was just trying to be helpful. And, should she return with Professor Grimes's soul safely in tow, she especially did not want Peter sharing the credit.

Excerpted from Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. Copyright © 2025 by R. F. Kuang. Excerpted by permission of Harper Voyager. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.