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adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.75⭐️
Thank you SO MUCH to the amazing Harper Collins and their wonderful team for gifting me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
[I will probably be editing this over time]
This one is for the classic lit fans, the Greek and Roman nerds, for the dark academia lovers and most importantly, this book is for the GIRLS.
Katabasis is everything that it was promised. A story about 2 post grad students, Alice and Peter, who go to hell to bring back their professor because they need him to write a recommendation letter for them to get a job.
This story is written in RFK fashion. And we know this because of the brilliant writing, the vivid imagery and her thought provoking prose. The dark academia was dark academiaing in this book. But this is unlike anything she’s written before. This is a very ADULT book with real world ADULT problems. There are words used in here that made me say “REBECCA. DID YOU REALLY JUST FUCKING WRITE THAT?!” I was not expecting some of the lines she threw at me.
She said this book was the most emotionally hardest books she ever written and it very much shows. In Alice’s POV, RFK shows us how HARD it is to be a woman of color in a male dominated field. How women have to work 2-3 more harder to get the recognition they deserve. And how toxic the relationship is between an older professor and a young woman of color in the academia world. Also the subtle SHADE that Rebecca threw in here was CHEFS KISS
Example 1:
“Most schools had stopped offering magicians tenure when it came apparent that their research were more interested in the trivial and esoteric than producing anything useful or profitable…”
- On this specific page, RFK writes how the field of “magick” and being a magician is something that’s kind of frowned upon.
To me, in this particular part, Alice resembles RFK as an author/ writer. How people scrutinize her as an POC author. We see a little bit of this in Yellowface (the shade I’m referring to)and how publishing only pushes out what’s profitable and what’s in trend.
Example 2:
Peter: “… I don’t know, taking into account when they were written, and the author’s social context, and such.”
Alice: “historicalization Murdoch, that’s what we call it. What, do you just take everything you read at face value?”
- TO ME. This was RFK throwing shade at TPW haters. Call me delusional.
Now let’s talk about the beautiful romantic subplot that had me giddy. Peter and Alice’s banter was so mf cute my heart could not handle. Peter is such a hot nerd. I literally want him to slap my hand and tell me to rewrite his name 8000 times.
Now I did end up giving it 4.75 stars. And that’s becaussseeee IM A PUSSY ASS BITCH YALL. but also yall knew that right?! I do NOT read or watch horror and my number one fear in life is death. You gave me a horror book about what happens after death?? Yeah. I was scared and uncomfortable for 75% of this book. But the pay off was extremely worth it. Because why focus on what happens AFTER DEATH when you can focus on the NOW? If you’re not finding the goodness in life then are you really living? If you’re not happy then what is the point?
“There was no answer, only wondrous and inexplicable grace, and the only thing to do in return was to simply live.”
Other than the horror elements and the essential crisis the book put me through. The pay off was extremely worth it. I am very happy with it. And I cannot wait for everyone to read it.
Thank you SO MUCH to the amazing Harper Collins and their wonderful team for gifting me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
[I will probably be editing this over time]
This one is for the classic lit fans, the Greek and Roman nerds, for the dark academia lovers and most importantly, this book is for the GIRLS.
Katabasis is everything that it was promised. A story about 2 post grad students, Alice and Peter, who go to hell to bring back their professor because they need him to write a recommendation letter for them to get a job.
This story is written in RFK fashion. And we know this because of the brilliant writing, the vivid imagery and her thought provoking prose. The dark academia was dark academiaing in this book. But this is unlike anything she’s written before. This is a very ADULT book with real world ADULT problems. There are words used in here that made me say “REBECCA. DID YOU REALLY JUST FUCKING WRITE THAT?!” I was not expecting some of the lines she threw at me.
She said this book was the most emotionally hardest books she ever written and it very much shows. In Alice’s POV, RFK shows us how HARD it is to be a woman of color in a male dominated field. How women have to work 2-3 more harder to get the recognition they deserve. And how toxic the relationship is between an older professor and a young woman of color in the academia world. Also the subtle SHADE that Rebecca threw in here was CHEFS KISS
Example 1:
“Most schools had stopped offering magicians tenure when it came apparent that their research were more interested in the trivial and esoteric than producing anything useful or profitable…”
- On this specific page, RFK writes how the field of “magick” and being a magician is something that’s kind of frowned upon.
To me, in this particular part, Alice resembles RFK as an author/ writer. How people scrutinize her as an POC author. We see a little bit of this in Yellowface (the shade I’m referring to)and how publishing only pushes out what’s profitable and what’s in trend.
Example 2:
Peter: “… I don’t know, taking into account when they were written, and the author’s social context, and such.”
Alice: “historicalization Murdoch, that’s what we call it. What, do you just take everything you read at face value?”
- TO ME. This was RFK throwing shade at TPW haters. Call me delusional.
Now let’s talk about the beautiful romantic subplot that had me giddy. Peter and Alice’s banter was so mf cute my heart could not handle. Peter is such a hot nerd. I literally want him to slap my hand and tell me to rewrite his name 8000 times.
Now I did end up giving it 4.75 stars. And that’s becaussseeee IM A PUSSY ASS BITCH YALL. but also yall knew that right?! I do NOT read or watch horror and my number one fear in life is death. You gave me a horror book about what happens after death?? Yeah. I was scared and uncomfortable for 75% of this book. But the pay off was extremely worth it. Because why focus on what happens AFTER DEATH when you can focus on the NOW? If you’re not finding the goodness in life then are you really living? If you’re not happy then what is the point?
“There was no answer, only wondrous and inexplicable grace, and the only thing to do in return was to simply live.”
Other than the horror elements and the essential crisis the book put me through. The pay off was extremely worth it. I am very happy with it. And I cannot wait for everyone to read it.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
relaxing
sad
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
Easily my favourite of R F Kuang’s books
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
adventurous
challenging
dark
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
adventurous
dark
mysterious
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
i really enjoyed it. it has its faults - it’s babel’s intellectualism turned up to the point where it becomes ‘i’m smart look at me i’m smart do you know i’m smart’ in a way that doesn’t always serve the story, but kuang’s writing and worldbuilding is magical as always. alice isn’t always the most likeable protagonist, and this once again grapples with kuang’s own feelings about academia but dialled up to its extremes. the romance aspect of it as well is incredibly slow burn and very much secondary, so temper expectations there. i think it’s possibly a bit overlong and the middle dragged but as a whole it was a joy to be back in a world created by kuang, with compelling magic systems based around logic and paradoxes and interesting characters in alice and peter
plot:
alice works under professor grimes, and decides to go to hell to get his soul back, being joined but grimes’s other supervisee, peter. they grapple with navigating hell together, working their way through the layers to try and find grimes. there are bone creatures that they discover are the products of the kripkes, a family of mages who are desperate to escape hell. they meet elspeth, one of grimes’s former students who killed herself, and she helps them for a bit. they continue through hell until they get trapped by the kripkes, and they open up about why they’re here. they find out that they’ve both been pitted against each other by grimes as one of his many wrongs (including him tattooing alice with a pentagram to force her to have a perfect memory as an experiment, trying to sleep with her, stealing a paper off of peter that he couldn’t work on because of his chronic illness) and they both think they killed him. peter decides to sacrifice himself to the kripkes, using a logic paradox to get alice out while he’s left there to be drained of blood and killed. she keeps going for him, defeats the kripkes and is reunited with elspeth, who gives her a dialetheia (a plant, evidence of life growing in the realm of the dead, the break of logic). alice goes to lord yama and asks to see grimes, finally becoming utterly disillusioned with him and using peter’s work she exchanges grimes for peter. lord yama allows peter and alice to leave hell.
plot:
A big thank you to Harper Voyager and Netgalley for the advance readers' copy in exchange for an honest review.
I've had a complex relationship with Kuang's work for some time now. I loved Babel, couldn't get through Yellowface, and thought the Poppy War was a strong, flawed debut. I was eager to see Kuang return to the subject of academia for Katabasis, as I found Babel to be an inspiring manifesto. I liked Katabasis a lot less than Babel, unfortunately. Maybe I had more patience for the asides in Babel, but in Katabasis the pages of discussing magicians of the past and logic bored me to tears. The actual plot, following Alice and Peter through hell was great and compelling, but it was hamstrung over and over by the characters explaining things to me. I personally prefer fantasy that makes me feel lost and confused as opposed to fantasy that turns to the audience and tries to fill them in. Don't tell me about the history of brands of chalk chalk, let me see them using different kinds and talking about it without paragraphs of exposition. Alice certainly wouldn't bother to explain anything to a listener.
Again, there's a lot to love about this book. The dark humor was pitch perfect to describe both the rigors and abuse of doctoral life and the journey through hell. I loved how Alice and Peter were developed over the course of the book, and I loved and believed in their relationship. The way that hell was described was both clearly a love letter to myths and legends and a fun new invention pitched perfectly for this story. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for a philosophical book. Maybe I'm not the right reader as I have a lot of religious trauma (we're talking cried myself to sleep at night for months because I was worried I was going to hell). Maybe I'll come back in a few years and like this more.
Whatever the case, I think most people will enjoy it more than me, and I will definitely still recommend it to others who may be a better fit.
I've had a complex relationship with Kuang's work for some time now. I loved Babel, couldn't get through Yellowface, and thought the Poppy War was a strong, flawed debut. I was eager to see Kuang return to the subject of academia for Katabasis, as I found Babel to be an inspiring manifesto. I liked Katabasis a lot less than Babel, unfortunately. Maybe I had more patience for the asides in Babel, but in Katabasis the pages of discussing magicians of the past and logic bored me to tears. The actual plot, following Alice and Peter through hell was great and compelling, but it was hamstrung over and over by the characters explaining things to me. I personally prefer fantasy that makes me feel lost and confused as opposed to fantasy that turns to the audience and tries to fill them in. Don't tell me about the history of brands of chalk chalk, let me see them using different kinds and talking about it without paragraphs of exposition. Alice certainly wouldn't bother to explain anything to a listener.
Again, there's a lot to love about this book. The dark humor was pitch perfect to describe both the rigors and abuse of doctoral life and the journey through hell. I loved how Alice and Peter were developed over the course of the book, and I loved and believed in their relationship. The way that hell was described was both clearly a love letter to myths and legends and a fun new invention pitched perfectly for this story. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for a philosophical book. Maybe I'm not the right reader as I have a lot of religious trauma (we're talking cried myself to sleep at night for months because I was worried I was going to hell). Maybe I'll come back in a few years and like this more.
Whatever the case, I think most people will enjoy it more than me, and I will definitely still recommend it to others who may be a better fit.
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
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
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
finished my proof based math class just in time to read a proof based novel
this is rf kuang at her worst. alice is insufferable. hell is greatly under utilised, and the plot ?? barely holds up. struggled to finish it past the halfway mark, i truly wanted to give up because i was so sick of it.
characters? ungodly unlikeable. Plot? thinly veiled. world building? non existent. References to philosophy and mythology? painfully shoved down your throat.
it’s BARELY a romance. it’s BARELY fantasy. it’s actually barely a story at all but really a thesis forced into fiction for publication’s sake.
Maybe this would go over better if you were smarter than me. maybe it’s not for me at all. but as a voracious fantasy reader and someone who’s read all of kuang’s other books, this was a huge miss.
we get it, you’re very smart, rebecca. but that doesn’t mean you’re a good writer of fiction!
characters? ungodly unlikeable. Plot? thinly veiled. world building? non existent. References to philosophy and mythology? painfully shoved down your throat.
it’s BARELY a romance. it’s BARELY fantasy. it’s actually barely a story at all but really a thesis forced into fiction for publication’s sake.
Maybe this would go over better if you were smarter than me. maybe it’s not for me at all. but as a voracious fantasy reader and someone who’s read all of kuang’s other books, this was a huge miss.
we get it, you’re very smart, rebecca. but that doesn’t mean you’re a good writer of fiction!