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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
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!
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-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:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Blood, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Sexual content, Vomit