"Fuck it, nothing matters, everything has gone to shit, so let’s go to Hell." Katabasis by R. F. Kuang
A review:
I want to preface this by saying that I love R. F. Kuang's writing. I went into Katabasis thinking it was going to be a five star read. It was not.
It was a three star read.
Some of the criticism of Katabasis is in bad faith and just plain anti-intellectualism. You do not need a PhD or even an undergraduate degree to understand this book. If you've been in a GCSE (or equivalent) English class, you'll be able to understand what this book is about.
My friend and I picked up Katabasis after we read Babel for our book club. We LOVED Babel. I think we both gave it either four and a half or five stars and people said that this book was just the same, if not better.
My main problem was with the pace of the book. For 400 pages it felt like nothing happened. Alice and Peter trudged their way through the sands of Hell and all I could do was think: 'man, I wish something, anything, was happening right now'.
I had hoped Hell would be truly horrifying. Having done a postgraduate degree, I know how scary academia can be. I had hoped that there had been actual stakes but, much like the sand they were walking through, the first 400 pages were bland. I wish the analytic magick aspect of the novel had the same depth as the silver based magic system in Babel.
The last 100 pages saved it from being a two star read. I enjoyed the ending except for the fact that I was annoyed it had taken me 400 pages and four months (yes, this book took me four months to read, but we will come back to this) to get there. I felt that the introduction of what I would class as the 'real conflict' happened way too late and if those characters had been introduced earlier, I would have found myself caring more.
This book took me four months to read. This is not normal for me.
It took me that long because I did not care enough to pick it back up. Every time I thought about reading it, I decided I'd have a better time doing and reading literally anything else. But I powered through.
For me I don't mind that Alice and Peter are 'unlikeable'. What I didn't appreciate was the fact that there was little to no character growth.
I really wanted to enjoy it but this just didn't do it for me.
Anyway, if you made it to the end, you might as well follow my TikTok account: @ bookshelfofchelsea.
