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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
yeah. i got to read it. it's fantastic. it's everything i love about rf kuang: the visceral impact of her settings, the academic thought infused in everything, the conflict and principles in her characters. it's the magicians by lev grossman in all the best ways. it's everything to me
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
No words accurately describe how brilliant this book is nor how much I adored it. Katabasis is one of those few beautiful works that make you want to pick them back up and start them all over again as soon as you finish reading because you want to stay in the warm glow of their words forever.
The premise of this novel is fascinating: two graduate students journey to hell to bring back their advisor, encountering heinous obstacles and surprising emotional experiences along the way. While the premise itself is enough to draw you in (and I have been excited about it since the first promotions began), I fell in love with the writing, characters and world.
Kuang is a brilliant author who excels in multiple genres; her writing and voice will forever encapsulate me. She has the ability to perfectly tune her tone to a piece, and has mastered realistically flawed characters and seamlessly enveloping readers into her worlds, no matter how complex they are. You can feel the effort she put into the development of Katabasis.
The characters are brilliant and likeable but comprehensively flawed and almost unreliable. Alice is a confusing, well-constructed main character, and her evolution and struggles throughout the piece (for example, when her mental state devolves partway through) are reflected by the tone and language shifts. Alice and Peter are perfectly balanced; I love how the audience slowly becomes acquainted with them, their past, and their relationship with each other and Grimes (their advisor) throughout the book.
I loved the setting and plot as well. The piece is completely unique and draws the reader into a world of academia and punishment very quickly. While travelling through hell the language and Alice’s mental state shifts, reflecting the world around her. The plot follows her exploration in detail yet is completely unpredictable at all times. Having read both Babel and Yellowface by Kuang, I was aware of her unpredictable endings, but I was still completely surprised by every plot twist. I love dark academia and this piece perfectly encompasses the genre while being completely unpredictable, a quality I admire in novels.
A couple of reviews argue that Kuang name-drops too much in Katabasis, but I believe this adds to the magic and authenticity of the piece and isn’t done to an excessive degree at all. Quite the opposite, I think Kuang using names of authors, famous people, and literature from our world provides extensive background not only to the world but to Peter and Alice’s perception of their world and lives, illustrating how much weight they place on academia.
Overall, I adored this piece. I was incredibly lucky to be able to read Katabasis early as Book Box Australia received an ARC (I was over the moon when it arrived). I am sure not everyone will love this book, especially readers who did not enjoy Babel (which I loved even more than this novel), as we all have different tastes. However, Katabasis is high on a pedestal as one of my all time favourites, and I will certainly reread this book (might have to get myself a hardcover copy when it comes out).
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Katabasis is a novel about a journey into Hell, as two analytic magick students find themselves venturing into the unknown to bring back their PhD supervisor. Alice Law is an outsider—an American in Cambridge surrounded by white male academics—who wants to succeed, but when the death of her supervisor throws her goals into question, she researches how to get into Hell and find him. And suddenly, as she sets off, she finds her academic rival and once-friend Peter Murdoch is coming too. The two of them must debate texts about Hell, philosophy, logic, and everything else that makes up the magic they do if they have any hope of getting through Hell and having the life they want at the end of it.
Having read Kuang's earlier Babel and Yellowface, I was assuming Katabasis was going to be similar to Babel, especially as it is very much marketed as dark academia. The "dark academia" label is basically meaningless by now, but I would say that despite both being about magic (and different kinds of fascinating magic at that) and Oxbridge, Babel and Katabasis are very different. Katabasis is what I want to call very affectionately "pretentious trash", in that it is full of references to literary texts and philosophy and academia, but it is also a ridiculous story of two academic rivals who secretly like each other journeying through Hell. That's not to say it doesn't have plenty of serious things to say, about academic burnout and power structures and the misogyny and prejudices of academia, but it isn't as deep as Babel and it isn't trying to be.
The narrative is pretty simple, with a few twists and turns but mostly being a classic journey structure, with the characters meeting others along the way and things coming back to be relevant. The romance side of things is pretty low key, but it is also part of Alice's wider need to realise there are things outside of just being the best in her field of magic. I enjoyed all of the references to literature about Hell and the way in which real texts and authors, both fictional and non-fictional, are a key part of the magic and mythology of Katabasis' world. The main issue I had with this book is that as someone who is British and knows Oxbridge fairly well, there's a number of misused terms/references (mostly in a UK vs US way) that might be intentional (as Alice is American) or might be picked up later (as I read a proof copy), but for me that sort of mistake does pull me out of the story, especially as initially I didn't realise Alice was American.
Even though Katabasis is a long novel, I found it gripping and fun to read. I love books about Hell and I enjoy reading about pretentious people having drama at elite universities, so I think I was always going to like Katabasis as long as it didn't mess up on those elements, and for me, it fulfilled the kind of book I wanted it to be. Babel is probably a better novel (and I find myself telling people about its magic system and how it relates to colonialism quite often), but Katabasis just ticked off a lot of boxes for things I enjoy. Basically, if you want a Cambridge students of magic go to Hell book, this is a lot of fun.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I will eventually come back to this book, but having got over half way through with little to no investment with the character or the story is making me struggle. I find that the concepts of the story are well done and yet the execution is not enjoyable, it feels like a repeat of babbel, it feels like the characters could be swapped around and the story would remain the same.
because of this, it will be a dnf for now.
until i feel like i have to come back and finish
because of this, it will be a dnf for now.
until i feel like i have to come back and finish
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Murder, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Sexual harassment
2.5, maybe 3? I'll probably change my mind, star rating doesn't mean much anyway.
I had been thinking I was probably going to end up writing a long rant to review this book, but now that I'm done with it I think I can just say it was fun.
It doesn't talk about anything I wasn't somewhat familiar with, but I'm a postgraduate student with a humanities background and I'm particularly interested in literature, Greek mythology and philosophy, so it makes sense I didn't have to google many things or that I've read all the literary works referenced. And it's not that it's filled with super obscure references, most of the mathematics, linguistics and logics concepts the book mentions will be familiar to anyone with a similar academic background, so it didn't feel like a textbook to me (which is the main complaint I've seen and what actually excited me about this book, as I was expecting something that would make me want to stop and read about a new, unfamiliar subject, similarly to how I feel whenever I read Calasso or A.S. Byatt), but I understand it will be annoying for younger or non academic readers who need to constantly stop to look up a paradox, a philosophical concept or a literary reference, specially if they just wanted a fantasy-romance book.
Overall, I can see Kuang had a lot of fun researching and writing this book, and even though it didn't offer anything new to me (I would have enjoyed it more had I not read and loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke already), I had fun following Alice around this version of hell, and I really liked how accurately she described what academia is like, even if it was triggering at times. It reminded me of Percy Jackson more than anything else (except they are adults and in Cambridge), which is not bad but it's not really what I expected or wanted from it.
I had been thinking I was probably going to end up writing a long rant to review this book, but now that I'm done with it I think I can just say it was fun.
Spoiler
Now, for the longer review that isn't really a rant: It was frustrating at first because it's an adult fantasy, but the first 20% made me feel like I was reading a YA novel, which annoyed me not because I dislike YA (I don't) but because it didn't make sense considering the characters are adults working on their PhDs. It does get better though, and I didn't mind that for a good part of the story the two main characters aren't even together and that there isn't a lot of romance (not until the end at least, but I do consider this to be a love story).It doesn't talk about anything I wasn't somewhat familiar with, but I'm a postgraduate student with a humanities background and I'm particularly interested in literature, Greek mythology and philosophy, so it makes sense I didn't have to google many things or that I've read all the literary works referenced. And it's not that it's filled with super obscure references, most of the mathematics, linguistics and logics concepts the book mentions will be familiar to anyone with a similar academic background, so it didn't feel like a textbook to me (which is the main complaint I've seen and what actually excited me about this book, as I was expecting something that would make me want to stop and read about a new, unfamiliar subject, similarly to how I feel whenever I read Calasso or A.S. Byatt), but I understand it will be annoying for younger or non academic readers who need to constantly stop to look up a paradox, a philosophical concept or a literary reference, specially if they just wanted a fantasy-romance book.
Overall, I can see Kuang had a lot of fun researching and writing this book, and even though it didn't offer anything new to me (I would have enjoyed it more had I not read and loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke already), I had fun following Alice around this version of hell, and I really liked how accurately she described what academia is like, even if it was triggering at times. It reminded me of Percy Jackson more than anything else (except they are adults and in Cambridge), which is not bad but it's not really what I expected or wanted from it.
adventurous
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
This is a difficult one to review because I’m still not 100% sure how I felt about it. On the one hand, it was enjoyable enough and I had a good time with it. On the other hand, however, had I not had a three hour car journey during which I read a huge chunk of this, I think it would have taken me a very long time to get through and I’m not sure I would have been eager to continue picking it up.
At its most basic level, this was an underworld quest adventure story, which I had a lot of fun with. What I struggled with was the scientific and philosophical concepts that my little brain just couldn’t quite grasp. I also think you’d get added enjoyment from this if you’re an academic/have spent time in more academic university settings, which I have not.
The concept intrigued me from the get go and that intrigue didn’t lessen. However too often (for me) something exciting would happen, only to be cut off with a long winded scientific or philosophical explanation that jolted me out of the story and broke the momentum. This similarly happened with the character building. Each time I felt I was finally getting to know a character, the thread would be lost by a mathematical equation or complex magical theory I couldn’t get my head around. I wanted to love Alice and Peter and whilst I definitely warmed to them, I just wanted more.
All this is to say, I had a good time with this Katabasis and I can very much see its merits. I think it’s one that a lot of people will utterly adore and I can see why but while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t for me in the way I’d hoped it would be.
At its most basic level, this was an underworld quest adventure story, which I had a lot of fun with. What I struggled with was the scientific and philosophical concepts that my little brain just couldn’t quite grasp. I also think you’d get added enjoyment from this if you’re an academic/have spent time in more academic university settings, which I have not.
The concept intrigued me from the get go and that intrigue didn’t lessen. However too often (for me) something exciting would happen, only to be cut off with a long winded scientific or philosophical explanation that jolted me out of the story and broke the momentum. This similarly happened with the character building. Each time I felt I was finally getting to know a character, the thread would be lost by a mathematical equation or complex magical theory I couldn’t get my head around. I wanted to love Alice and Peter and whilst I definitely warmed to them, I just wanted more.
All this is to say, I had a good time with this Katabasis and I can very much see its merits. I think it’s one that a lot of people will utterly adore and I can see why but while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t for me in the way I’d hoped it would be.
Content Warnings
Minor: Eating disorder