bellas_reads 's review for:

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

4.75

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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Talented doesn’t even begin to describe R.F. Kuang’s writing. If that wasn’t proven with any of her previous works, Katabasis has completely knocked that title out of the park. Rebecca is able to write in this mesmerizing and eloquent way. In classic RFK fashion, she’s not afraid to show you what a well educated writer she is. This book was clearly so well researched and thought out that reading it feels like learning despite the book being fiction. It’s very lore and magic dense in the way that Babel was, but manages to feel less heavy and weighed down by the “smartness” of it. It’s pretentious, but not snobby. Despite all the information packed into this book, the pacing never stalled. Everything was so compulsively interesting, I was eating out of Rebecca’s hand this entire book. 

 

Even more so than Babel, Katabasis was the very essence of what dark academia should be. Rebecca’s characters are cynical academic weapons. They’re geniuses and you can feel every bit of their rising instability as the book progresses. Their hunger, their obsessions, their drive—it all just flys off the page. You recognize all of their toxic thinking and self-gaslighting, but you spiral right there with them. It was such an incredible portrayal of the academy in a fictional and magical alternative. The magic system that is rooted in academia and logic just created this perfect all immersive dark academia read. 

 

While this is Rebecca’s book with the most “romance” please be advised it is still very much so a SUBPLOT. This book highlighted so many of the broken systems in academia as well as following such strong character arcs that break down conquering ones own personal hell and reaching so much growth by the end.