“Hell is a campus,” proclaims Peter Murdoch, a character in R.F. Kuang’s most recent novel, “Katabasis,” and it’s this phrase that perhaps encapsulates the premise of the story. It starts with the greatest magician in the world, Cambridge’s Jacob Grimes, or more accurately, his death. Guilt-ridden and desperate to secure a letter of recommendation from Grimes, graduate student Alice Law must accompany her rival into the depths of hell to rescue their professor, only to find that the courts of hell are eerily reminiscent of Cambridge.

Kuang’s hell is fraught with sinister magicians and their chalk creations. In this alternate 1980s England, “magicians” have the power to travel time and space, even manipulate reality, all with chalk and a dash of philosophy. It’s an intriguing magic system, if uninspired; after all, books like “The Rithmatist” and “Ninth House” have similar circles of chalk and blood that serve as the basis of their magic systems.

Perhaps the greatest pitfall of this fantasy world is its lack of definition: what is beyond the walls of Cambridge? Kuang’s choice to place the story in the 1980s, even altering the publication dates of some philosophical texts so that characters can reference them in their own time, seems arbitrary rather than purposeful. Rarely are technology or historical events mentioned; in fact, Katabasis could be set in the 2010s and there would be little difference.

The vague strappings of Kuang’s England detract from the horrors of hell because there’s no sense of normalcy to contrast the Underworld with. It could be that this is Kuang’s point: hell is academia, academia is hell. Yet hell is not Kuang’s own, but rather a messy amalgamation of cross references, from philosophical concepts to ancient mythology.

An academic might be overjoyed at winks to Dante’s “Inferno,” but for the average reader, sentences like “to ascend from hell required the permission of Lord Yama–that was, Thanatos, Anubis, Hades, the Darkness of Many Names, Ruler of the Underworld” are deadweights to the storytelling at hand. The time Kuang spends including every possible version of hell would be better spent developing her own take on it.

It’s the narrative structuring of “Katabasis” that truly detracts from Alice’s journey in the Underworld. Kuang shies away from conflict every time it appears, instead throwing the readers into lengthy flashbacks of Alice’s time at Cambridge. “Katabasis” was marketed as a journey through hell, but for the most part, the plot lives instead on Alice’s head.

Hell is truly just a backdrop. Where Kuang could have deepened the metaphor of hell as a campus, even treating it as a physical manifestation of Alice’s thoughts, she instead leaves descriptions of hell at surface level. The only purpose of the setting seems to be providing segues into flashbacks.

It’s through these flashbacks that readers see more of Alice, where it becomes clear that she has given up almost everything for academia–her health, her time and even the half of her lifespan required to venture into hell. Kuang teeters between themes of academic approval and internalized misogyny, but her development of these ideas is patchy, especially because Alice seems like a caricature of a woman in academia. There’s no backstory beyond her time at Cambridge; she wants nothing more than academic validation.

Kuang’s discussions of academia are extremely narrow, focusing exclusively on the academic’s experience of late nights and extensive readings. Topics like the significance of higher education at large, the systems that enable workaholics or the privileged, elitist culture of many graduate institutions are unaddressed.

These critiques may very well be purposeful choices by Kuang, but they make for bad storytelling. Kuang seems more interested in showcasing her own knowledge than crafting a compelling narrative. References to calculus, Plato and classical logic attest to Kuang’s education at Oxford, Cambridge and Yale, but bloat the novel.

Even attempts at humor fall flat. In one scene, a librarian pokes fun at the unfortunate souls in hell: “Calls himself a Communist, but hasn’t read ‘Das Kapital’…keeps saying he went to school in Boston and expecting everyone to know what he means.” “Katabasis” makes for a self-congratulatory, insular novel, even as Kuang exposes the harsh realities of academia for her characters.

Alice’s journey through Hell may resonate with graduate students who see themselves in the main characters, but for the majority of readers, “Katabasis” is far removed from the real world.