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adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This review is for Katabasis by R.F. Kuang which releases in the UK on the 26th August! Thanks so much to Netgalley and Harper Voyager for giving me an eArc copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
I’m a massive fan of R F Kuang, so as soon as I saw this was available, I was in! Thankfully this publisher actually has me on auto approve, so I was able to get this fairly easy, thank you Harper Collins 🥰
It was actually fairly different to how it was advertised, but I think I would have enjoyed it either way. I had the expectation for it to be more similar to her Poppy War series, something a little faster paced with fantasy elements but it was actually more along the lines of Babel, where it focuses more on academia and deeper thinking. It was pretty slow paced but I actually enjoyed it that way, and loved the detail describing everything.
I loved the setting in this book, where you seen the main character enter Hell and work their way through the levels to find their professor. Hell is such a super interesting aspect to focus on, and I loved the detail you get in the different realms found. I did feel I was probably missing a lot of background context though, as I have seen some mentions that you need to read other books before coming into this one to recognise a lot of the setting and world building. I also really enjoyed the magic in this book, with it being more based on academia style magic.
I did struggle a little with the FMC, she was really hard to relate to I felt really disconnected to them for the majority of the book. Thankfully Peter made up for it though, the loveable goofball who actually turns out to be deeper and smarter than you think, when you find out a little more on their background.
Overall, I really enjoyed this and believe it lives up to all the hype around it. It definitely will not be some people’s cup of tea, but if you love a good dark academia, then you’ll probably love this!