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A review by zilver
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
dark
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Katabasis drops your right in the middle of the action, as PHD student Alice Law is in the act of drawing the pentagram that will take her to Hell so she can bring back to life her esteemed advisor. She is interrupted shortly by fellow advisee and once-friend-maybe-lover-now-enemy-questionmark Peter Murdoch who insists on coming along, and then they're off. To Hell.
I can always admire an author that challenges themselves to write a different genre each book. Even though this has a lot of overlap with Babel when it comes to themes and locations, reading Katabasis gives off a completely different vibe. There's darkness, yes. We're exploring the implications and effects of deep-rooted misogyny and abuse (and ableism, to a degree) in academia. But it's also giving buddy rom-com. Like: what if we hated each other but we're both really smart but we also had to share the emergency blanket we brought to Hell?
Another way that Kuang has drawn me in in both Babel and Katabasis, is her magic systems. I think they're so inventive and work so well for their purposes. In this book, the magic (sorry, magick) system is based on paradoxes: that's where the "veil" between real and unreal is thin and where we can believe fantastical things can be true. It's great fun to see Kuang play with this concept and implement it so creatively.
I can always admire an author that challenges themselves to write a different genre each book. Even though this has a lot of overlap with Babel when it comes to themes and locations, reading Katabasis gives off a completely different vibe. There's darkness, yes. We're exploring the implications and effects of deep-rooted misogyny and abuse (and ableism, to a degree) in academia. But it's also giving buddy rom-com. Like: what if we hated each other but we're both really smart but we also had to share the emergency blanket we brought to Hell?
Another way that Kuang has drawn me in in both Babel and Katabasis, is her magic systems. I think they're so inventive and work so well for their purposes. In this book, the magic (sorry, magick) system is based on paradoxes: that's where the "veil" between real and unreal is thin and where we can believe fantastical things can be true. It's great fun to see Kuang play with this concept and implement it so creatively.
"The point was that Professor Grimes hadn't tormented just anyone. He'd tormented them. Because they were strong enough to withstand it. Because they kept the faith. Because they were special, and worth the effort, and because whatever they became when he was done with them would be so dazzling."
I appreciated both Alice and Peter as characters, though it felt at times like Kuang wasn't sure whether they both supposed to be protagonists or not. I mean, Alice is the main protagonist - almost the entire book is from her pov. But then at some point we did take a couple of field trips into Peter's pov, and while it was nice, because it was kind of a one-off it also felt like it was just there to give us some Peter backstory without having to spend too much time on it. Some more Peter pov would've done the relationship we're also supposed to be investing in good, I think (I was invested. But I could've definitely been invested-er).
Despite it's whopping 540 pages (basically the same length as Babel) this book is definitely a page-turner. It took me maybe 5 days to read. By comparison: Babel took me a month and a half and I was on holiday for part of that. But I have to say: it did Not need to be 500+ pages. Where Babel really uses its length to slowly broaden the scope of the story, Katabasis is hyperfocused on a goal that reveals itself fairly early on and it does not really skew away from that at any point.
The book also lacked some of the depth and layers that I appreciated so much in Babel. I felt like the point was clear to me pretty early on, and while that point is interesting and serious and complex, I felt like it did still remain pretty singular. And the hyperfocus on it actually made me feel like we weren't able to explore some of the complexity because it's hammered home from so early on that at some point I felt feeling a little like I was just waiting for Alice to get there as well. The focus on theory that I so appreciated in Babel didn't fit the genre of this book as much, and sometimes bogged it down a little - like it was trying to be something it wasn't. I think that's also why the ending, while inevitable, fell sort of flat for me. Some things happened just too quick that I would've liked to spend some more time on, now that we were finally at the end, where all those 500+ pages had led to.