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A review by celestialbronz
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
4.0
i'm pissed that my scattered reading thoughts somehow vanished from my draft and i don't remember exactly what were they, so before i lost more thoughts i'm going to try to write this review down
So. 2 postgrad students went to Hell to retrieve their advisor's soul. Before started reading IDK where did I get the impression that he's a good nurturing kind of advisor so that's why his students were literally hell-bent to bring him back. But no. Apparently he's AWFUL. But I digress.
This is definitely RFK heaviest book so far, thematically. Though it's dark academia like Babel, it's nothing like it. While babel is about translation & colonialism, this is about life & death philosophy while poking fun at academia culture. I needed a lot of concentration to read it but even then I still didn’t fully understand all the analogies & paradoxes etc. Probably my fault for being stupid... Anyway.
If you're going to read this with over-the-roof expectation because you've loved RFK previous books, I suggest you to lower your expectation now. plus its a little tedious since there's only 2 characters and the narrative is using 3rd person limited poc from alice. and she's DULL. rbh if i wasn't already rfk's fan, i think i wouldn't be able to maintain my patience for this. but i know that shes brilliant and i trust her. so i pushed myself through one paragraph at a time
long paragraph & inner thoughts testing my patience
the backstories dragged the plot
the world building was abstract, no solid structure, b
alice was such an unreliable narrator. she withheld facts and thruts and very biased, frankly, i didn’t like her. She’s such a morally conflicted MC and she’s testing my patience many times. I do, however, liked her character development.
though it's dark academia like Babel, it's nothing like it. while babel is about translation & colonialism, this is about life and death philosophy while poking fun at academia culture.
after seeing Alice's character development until the end, i can assure you it's totally worth it
i just want to know what had become of Archimedes the cat after that???
it’s RFK’s heaviest book so far because it grapples with logic and life & death philosophy.
So. 2 postgrad students went to Hell to retrieve their advisor's soul. Before started reading IDK where did I get the impression that he's a good nurturing kind of advisor so that's why his students were literally hell-bent to bring him back. But no. Apparently he's AWFUL. But I digress.
This is definitely RFK heaviest book so far, thematically. Though it's dark academia like Babel, it's nothing like it. While babel is about translation & colonialism, this is about life & death philosophy while poking fun at academia culture. I needed a lot of concentration to read it but even then I still didn’t fully understand all the analogies & paradoxes etc. Probably my fault for being stupid... Anyway.
If you're going to read this with over-the-roof expectation because you've loved RFK previous books, I suggest you to lower your expectation now. plus its a little tedious since there's only 2 characters and the narrative is using 3rd person limited poc from alice. and she's DULL. rbh if i wasn't already rfk's fan, i think i wouldn't be able to maintain my patience for this. but i know that shes brilliant and i trust her. so i pushed myself through one paragraph at a time
long paragraph & inner thoughts testing my patience
the backstories dragged the plot
the world building was abstract, no solid structure, b
alice was such an unreliable narrator. she withheld facts and thruts and very biased, frankly, i didn’t like her. She’s such a morally conflicted MC and she’s testing my patience many times. I do, however, liked her character development.
though it's dark academia like Babel, it's nothing like it. while babel is about translation & colonialism, this is about life and death philosophy while poking fun at academia culture.
after seeing Alice's character development until the end, i can assure you it's totally worth it
i just want to know what had become of Archimedes the cat after that???
it’s RFK’s heaviest book so far because it grapples with logic and life & death philosophy.
Required a lot of concentration & patience to read, especially the first half (it’s SO slow paced) but you just gotta trust RFK guys she always delivers. It’s not as good as Babel though (IMO) so if you want to readjust your expectation, now is the time for it.