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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
adventurous
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
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:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
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
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
As someone who has (& not to trauma dump teehee <3) been having one of the worst years of my life in a while, & has been in the trenches with mental health and also wondering what the point of even waking up every day is; my favourite author writing a book with one of it’s central thesis’s arguing why you should keep going in the face of that suicidal ideation is so….. we are actually so back & this was… personal!
Positives:
- Think if Guillermo Del Torro and Tim Burton were directing Piranesi/The Starless Sea & Hozier’s Unreal Unearth album was playing on a loop??
- I know this is pitched as Dante’s Inferno x Alice in Wonderland & it very much IS that, but dare I say this reminded me SO much of Beetlejuice?? Also I can’t emphasize enough the level of whimsy to the world and how cool it was & how much it surprised me.
- The characterization of Hell I think was genuinely so cool & out of the box & interesting (I think it will be polarizing, but me personally, I loved it.)
- I actually really enjoyed where she went with the romance sub-plot, & it felt genuinely really sweet in the end and touched my soul a little bit. Never thought in my lifetime I would leave an R. F. Kuang book with happy tears in my eyes!
- Everyone saying this book is too hard to read is WRONGGG, I straight up think it overwhelmingly reads almost YA, and any references to literary things are very much explained to you, so there’s absolutely no literal required reading.
Negatives:
- R. F. Kuang was adamant Yellowface was her silly gremlin novel & dare I say she is wrong in that regard & her gremlin novel is this one?
- I do think sometimes the pacing in the middle was a bit off/repetitive
- I also think the story moved a little too conveniently at times & it would almost take me out of it having to suspend my disbelief?
- For a book about magicians I feel like the magic system was very much under-utilized & could have been explained more as well
Now, to argue against some core Anti-Kuang arguments I often come across:
- She’s too heavy handed in her commentary & is beating you over the head with it
This critique has always felt annoying to me. In regard to her other books, I think this is very much the point™️. & I mean this in the sense that her books are commentaries of things that arguably are and should be very obvious to the common crowd, & yet for whatever reason are not? This is where the rage in her books comes in, because why aren’t people getting it when it’s so obvious? (& literally, look at the rise of media illiteracy, fascism, book banning, AI, I mean god look at who is president of the US right now…)Katabasis I think is her first novel that is less obvious in what it is trying to say, & I think that is where a lot of the negative reviews of this are bred from. (& I know this is arguably a cheap answer on paper) but genuinely, I think a lot of people are just not understanding the book.
- Her books are boring and read like textbooks & like a scholarly article and are too dense
This argument has also always confused me because…. That’s what you signed up for my dude! We have a brilliant PHD Scholar writing books steeped with commentary & pulling from scholarly resources… two of which now being Dark Academia specifically? Like… yeah? Of course it’s gonna be dense? Though personally I do not find her books boring and textbooky, & I would love to know what textbooks you guys are reading that feel like R. F. Kuang so that I can read them 😈
- dnfing/didn’t like because it doesn’t deal with colonialism in the same way as her other books
This take feels….. deeply questionable. Putting Kuang in this box simply because her past works deal with colonialism quite honestly feels like treating Kuang as your token racial author who couldn’t possibly write a book about something else/do other commentary outside of this. (Do we not see how weird it is to enforce this expectation onto her 🤔🤔🤔)
- Marketed as a romance/isn’t a romance/fails as a romance
This book is absolutely not & has never been categorized as Romance. R. F. Kuang made a comment about how “in Katabasis she for the first time felt the freedom to explore with an element of romance” & booktok took that & RAN with it. If you are going into this with the expectation that this is a romance book, you are going to be disappointed. That being said, I truly think the elements of romance that exist within this book prove to be quite wholesome & beautiful honestly, and the way it overall wrapped up touched my soul quite frankly. I am shocked an R. F. Kuang book has left me feeling this level of peace.
- Deals with shock value/morally questionable content in a way that is not explored meaningfully
This take to me genuinely feels bred from people who are simply just missing the point. While yes, this book surface level is following two students travelling to hell, this journey works as a metaphorical body to showcase how the journey into academia, especially historically was LITERALLY hell, and corrupted the human soul/morality etc. that being said, of course there are elements of questionable and disgusting morality & some of the takes/inner mind of Alice are absolutely not meant to be taken literally at face value, or as R. F. Kuang’s personal beliefs, nor is she trying to defend them by ANY means. They I think, quite obviously are meant to be devastating to read and see as the reader how warped this girl has become by her surroundings and internalized harmful thought processes/behaviours. She is deeply tragic & complexly flawed and I fear her character is cursed to be misunderstood in similar ways as Rin from The Poppy War.
Positives:
- Think if Guillermo Del Torro and Tim Burton were directing Piranesi/The Starless Sea & Hozier’s Unreal Unearth album was playing on a loop??
- I know this is pitched as Dante’s Inferno x Alice in Wonderland & it very much IS that, but dare I say this reminded me SO much of Beetlejuice?? Also I can’t emphasize enough the level of whimsy to the world and how cool it was & how much it surprised me.
- The characterization of Hell I think was genuinely so cool & out of the box & interesting (I think it will be polarizing, but me personally, I loved it.)
- I actually really enjoyed where she went with the romance sub-plot, & it felt genuinely really sweet in the end and touched my soul a little bit. Never thought in my lifetime I would leave an R. F. Kuang book with happy tears in my eyes!
- Everyone saying this book is too hard to read is WRONGGG, I straight up think it overwhelmingly reads almost YA, and any references to literary things are very much explained to you, so there’s absolutely no literal required reading.
Negatives:
- R. F. Kuang was adamant Yellowface was her silly gremlin novel & dare I say she is wrong in that regard & her gremlin novel is this one?
- I do think sometimes the pacing in the middle was a bit off/repetitive
- I also think the story moved a little too conveniently at times & it would almost take me out of it having to suspend my disbelief?
- For a book about magicians I feel like the magic system was very much under-utilized & could have been explained more as well
Now, to argue against some core Anti-Kuang arguments I often come across:
- She’s too heavy handed in her commentary & is beating you over the head with it
This critique has always felt annoying to me. In regard to her other books, I think this is very much the point™️. & I mean this in the sense that her books are commentaries of things that arguably are and should be very obvious to the common crowd, & yet for whatever reason are not? This is where the rage in her books comes in, because why aren’t people getting it when it’s so obvious? (& literally, look at the rise of media illiteracy, fascism, book banning, AI, I mean god look at who is president of the US right now…)Katabasis I think is her first novel that is less obvious in what it is trying to say, & I think that is where a lot of the negative reviews of this are bred from. (& I know this is arguably a cheap answer on paper) but genuinely, I think a lot of people are just not understanding the book.
- Her books are boring and read like textbooks & like a scholarly article and are too dense
This argument has also always confused me because…. That’s what you signed up for my dude! We have a brilliant PHD Scholar writing books steeped with commentary & pulling from scholarly resources… two of which now being Dark Academia specifically? Like… yeah? Of course it’s gonna be dense? Though personally I do not find her books boring and textbooky, & I would love to know what textbooks you guys are reading that feel like R. F. Kuang so that I can read them 😈
- dnfing/didn’t like because it doesn’t deal with colonialism in the same way as her other books
This take feels….. deeply questionable. Putting Kuang in this box simply because her past works deal with colonialism quite honestly feels like treating Kuang as your token racial author who couldn’t possibly write a book about something else/do other commentary outside of this. (Do we not see how weird it is to enforce this expectation onto her 🤔🤔🤔)
- Marketed as a romance/isn’t a romance/fails as a romance
This book is absolutely not & has never been categorized as Romance. R. F. Kuang made a comment about how “in Katabasis she for the first time felt the freedom to explore with an element of romance” & booktok took that & RAN with it. If you are going into this with the expectation that this is a romance book, you are going to be disappointed. That being said, I truly think the elements of romance that exist within this book prove to be quite wholesome & beautiful honestly, and the way it overall wrapped up touched my soul quite frankly. I am shocked an R. F. Kuang book has left me feeling this level of peace.
- Deals with shock value/morally questionable content in a way that is not explored meaningfully
This take to me genuinely feels bred from people who are simply just missing the point. While yes, this book surface level is following two students travelling to hell, this journey works as a metaphorical body to showcase how the journey into academia, especially historically was LITERALLY hell, and corrupted the human soul/morality etc. that being said, of course there are elements of questionable and disgusting morality & some of the takes/inner mind of Alice are absolutely not meant to be taken literally at face value, or as R. F. Kuang’s personal beliefs, nor is she trying to defend them by ANY means. They I think, quite obviously are meant to be devastating to read and see as the reader how warped this girl has become by her surroundings and internalized harmful thought processes/behaviours. She is deeply tragic & complexly flawed and I fear her character is cursed to be misunderstood in similar ways as Rin from The Poppy War.
adventurous
dark
reflective
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:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
emotional
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’ve never read a more ironically pretentious novel; it was so amazing. The whole thing is a critique of the academic ivory tower inside of a twisted odyssey. The love story was really the heart, though, and it builds the academic rivals to lovers relationship very intentionally from the beginning. Rebecca Kuang you never miss!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Rape, Sexism, Violence, Grief
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
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
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I think I spent most of the book pleading with Alice to please stand up. And the entire book feeling such a heavy pain in my heart toward them both.