evolk0524 's review for:

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
5.0

~4.5 stars

This was a wild ride and I loved it. Will have to take some time to digest, but it might be my favorite so far (right next to Babel).

Things I liked:
The prose
The magic system
The relationships between Alice and Peter, and all of the other characters that crossed their paths
The characters themselves - they felt deliciously real, RF Kuang is the queen of representing the moral-greyness of humanity
The journey that, at first, I thought would be straightforward (my fault entirely for thinking this, I should have known better) and definitely was not

Things that I liked and disliked at the same time:
That I had to look up many references and definitions of words
That, as a PhD student myself, some things hit very close to home

Very excited to have won this advance reader’s copy in a goodreads giveaway:)