You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
onthesamepage 's review for:
Katabasis
by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Prior to the release of this book, there were lists of recommended books to read before Katabasis making the rounds, because Katabasis draws inspiration from some of them. As someone who went into this without doing any preparatory reading, let me start this review by saying this: you do not need to read any other book to prepare for Katabasis. Feel free to put Dante back down and just dive straight into this, all the context you need is available within the book itself.
This is the first R.F. Kuang book I'm giving less than 4 stars, and considering how much I've loved her work so far, it was honestly a bit of a blow. I was hoping that Katabasis would be somewhat like Babel (probably my favourite book of hers to date), but where I actually didn't have any problems with how Babel was structured, and how detailed some of the exposition was, I did have a problem with that here. I realize that, in part, it's because I care less about what Katabasis is doing thematically. While I appreciate that Kuang is throwing a light on misogyny, racism, and abuse within academia, I'm more of a revolution girlie myself, so Babel worked better for me because of its themes, and I just didn't notice the exposition so much. But I felt it here. There are big chunks of this book that talk about philosophy, theoretical maths, and physics, and they go into great detail, to the point that I frequently found myself uninterested. Most of it didn't even feel very relevant to the plot that was happening around the exposition—it's like it was just there to make the book seem more academic, or as proof that Kuang did her research. I've seen complaints about the footnotes in Babel, but I wish some of the explanation here had been relegated to footnotes instead.
If I look past that, though, I did really enjoy the plot. The character explorations and journeys are good. I enjoyed the relationships. I liked the parts where Alice and Peter were actually doing stuff in hell instead of just philosophizing. There are a couple of twists I didn't see coming. There is a romantic element, but it's more of a subplot than the focus of the book. But the exposition drags the pacing of everything else down with it, and unfortunately, it becomes rather easy to forget what else has happened. I do think Katabasis will find its audience, but that audience was not me this time.
This is the first R.F. Kuang book I'm giving less than 4 stars, and considering how much I've loved her work so far, it was honestly a bit of a blow. I was hoping that Katabasis would be somewhat like Babel (probably my favourite book of hers to date), but where I actually didn't have any problems with how Babel was structured, and how detailed some of the exposition was, I did have a problem with that here. I realize that, in part, it's because I care less about what Katabasis is doing thematically. While I appreciate that Kuang is throwing a light on misogyny, racism, and abuse within academia, I'm more of a revolution girlie myself, so Babel worked better for me because of its themes, and I just didn't notice the exposition so much. But I felt it here. There are big chunks of this book that talk about philosophy, theoretical maths, and physics, and they go into great detail, to the point that I frequently found myself uninterested. Most of it didn't even feel very relevant to the plot that was happening around the exposition—it's like it was just there to make the book seem more academic, or as proof that Kuang did her research. I've seen complaints about the footnotes in Babel, but I wish some of the explanation here had been relegated to footnotes instead.
If I look past that, though, I did really enjoy the plot. The character explorations and journeys are good. I enjoyed the relationships. I liked the parts where Alice and Peter were actually doing stuff in hell instead of just philosophizing. There are a couple of twists I didn't see coming. There is a romantic element, but it's more of a subplot than the focus of the book. But the exposition drags the pacing of everything else down with it, and unfortunately, it becomes rather easy to forget what else has happened. I do think Katabasis will find its audience, but that audience was not me this time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Misogyny, Racism
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Rape