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adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
tl:dr: for me personally, not as good as Babel though I will try not to draw too much comparison and review it on its own merit. not as much a "love story" as the jacket is currently pushing it.
I was thrilled to read another ARC from RF Kuang because I frothed Babel, and while there are many of the same elements that I love in this one, it didn't quite hit the same way. actually I was terrified this was going to be an attempt to jump onto the romantasy bandwagon and I am thankful to be able to report that the romance aspect is rather mild and certainly not the central beats of the story.
what I truly enjoyed was the exploration of racism, sexism, ableism and ego/privilege in the area of academia, which was definitely a theme of Babel as well but perhaps explored with more specificity in Katabasis. the blending of magic with formal logic was fairly well done and I enjoyed it, and maybe it's just my autism but I wish we could solve real life arguments by just admitting the other person applied logic better.
I would have liked to see more of the magic system and how it worked, I felt like Babel had such a novel and interesting and previously unexplored system that the one in Katabasis is a little bit of a let down, but satisfying enough nonetheless. (it could be that as a bilingual Babel was simply that much more relatable in terms of being aware of "how much meaning is lost" in translation)
Unfortunately this book falls prey to a trend which I am seeing in a fair few of the ARCs I read, which is that the plot feels extremely slow burn until the last 100 pages where everything comes to fruition, but kind of leaves me with emotional whiplash. I guess it's a good gimmick for marketing, get them to read the whole book wanting to know what happens and then wrap it up quick to leave them wanting more, but it feels dissatisfying and cheap for an author that I think could be capable of much more depth and more appealing pacing. Not sure how much of this is publishers pushing authors or authors seeing the bandwagon and hopping on, but personally I much prefer a book that leaves me with questions on philosophy or human nature, not just "what just happened? is that seriously it?"
I was thrilled to read another ARC from RF Kuang because I frothed Babel, and while there are many of the same elements that I love in this one, it didn't quite hit the same way. actually I was terrified this was going to be an attempt to jump onto the romantasy bandwagon and I am thankful to be able to report that the romance aspect is rather mild and certainly not the central beats of the story.
what I truly enjoyed was the exploration of racism, sexism, ableism and ego/privilege in the area of academia, which was definitely a theme of Babel as well but perhaps explored with more specificity in Katabasis. the blending of magic with formal logic was fairly well done and I enjoyed it, and maybe it's just my autism but I wish we could solve real life arguments by just admitting the other person applied logic better.
I would have liked to see more of the magic system and how it worked, I felt like Babel had such a novel and interesting and previously unexplored system that the one in Katabasis is a little bit of a let down, but satisfying enough nonetheless. (it could be that as a bilingual Babel was simply that much more relatable in terms of being aware of "how much meaning is lost" in translation)
Unfortunately this book falls prey to a trend which I am seeing in a fair few of the ARCs I read, which is that the plot feels extremely slow burn until the last 100 pages where everything comes to fruition, but kind of leaves me with emotional whiplash. I guess it's a good gimmick for marketing, get them to read the whole book wanting to know what happens and then wrap it up quick to leave them wanting more, but it feels dissatisfying and cheap for an author that I think could be capable of much more depth and more appealing pacing. Not sure how much of this is publishers pushing authors or authors seeing the bandwagon and hopping on, but personally I much prefer a book that leaves me with questions on philosophy or human nature, not just "what just happened? is that seriously it?"