Those who know me, knows I am an R.F. Kuang devotee. She is one of my favorite authors, so naturally, I began reading this book with high expectations.

Katabasis had a very solid, remarkable start. R.F Kuang truly has a talent for setting the idea for her readers, no matter how complex it seems. I know we have all seen the tiktok that went viral for suggesting “books to read in preparation for Katabasis”, and while multiple references were really inserted left and right, I do believe that whoever has a basic knowledge of Greek mythology can still keep up without difficulty. It’s all the math you have to worry about /lh.

Setting aside their rivalry and differences, we follow two graduate students, Alice and Peter, as they descend into Hell to return their professor back into the land of the living. For the first half of the novel, they proved their determination to accomplish it. But as the chapters went by, they slowly began to lose sight of their goal. That, and not to mention the amount of times we were sidetracked due to the lengthy narrations. The thing is, while the descriptive and in-depth style of writing worked for Babel, here it simply, heavily, overshadowed the story itself. I know it’s dark academia, but a journey to Hell would also entail plenty of adventure, no? It was the textbook sort of information overload, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed the life out of Babel—because for that novel, we at least maintained a balance.

In my own opinion, it doesn’t matter whether you can follow the references or not. What good are these if none of them lead to anything more than just a reference?

Now, despite the extensive history we read about our two main characters, neither Alice nor Peter stood out to me as much as R.F. Kuang's other characters. It truly is a shame to say so, since they had an impressive introduction too. But as far as the book went, they were both so underdeveloped. Dare I say, even neglected. Their personalities at the beginning were not retained throughout the later pages—it was as if they were slowly being wiped into blank slates the longer they were in Hell. Whether or not this was on purpose, I have no idea. All I know is that I was more attached to the side characters than either Alice or Peter. Good gods, I just did not care about them, I’m sorry.

Originally a 4/5 rating, I thought a flat 3 was more fitting. Partly because I also deducted .50 due to a part where an animal was murdered gruesomely towards the end. I understand how vital it was for the story to progress, but... Well. I, unfortunately, am just very queasy when it comes to animal death and cruelty. Always mind the TWs, folks.

Regardless of everything mentioned above, I have high hopes that, since this is still an ARC, there might be a chance for improvements before it is officially published. I wanted to love it. Truly, I did, and the unique magick system had me floating in wonders. There were themes that genuinely resonated to me as well, but alas, I have to be honest and say that this is my least-liked novel of R.F. Kuang’s. It even took me two weeks to properly write a review because I was so confused, so conflicted.

rating: 2.25 stars | rfk please put down the textbooks and bibliographies, i’m begging you !!

no one is more sad than i am that my most anticipated read for the last 3 years fell flat. this disappointment is perhaps partially my fault. my expectations for a new book from rf kuang were too high, and as you can see, i did not enjoy my time reading this book. i imagine what i experienced was akin to how it feels to crawl through hell

one of my least favourite storylines in books is the quest trope: i hate making our way along a journey to retrieve an item (in this case a person) as i usually find my self dragging through the pages until we can finally get to the conclusion. it did not help that rfk somehow made hell boring.

i was not attached to either alice or peter, especially not in the way i usually am to rfk’s characters. why this is extra damning, is that you spend the whole time with them. so if you aren’t clicking with your main characters, and there aren’t really any other characters to lock onto…who’s flying the plane? you don’t get any character depth, learn their motivations, backstories and history until very far in, so i spent way more than half of the book emotionally detached from them.

one of my critiques with babel was the amount of info dumping not relevant to the story; somehow this book was even more excessive. the writing truly was so exposition heavy with the plot taking a back seat. i was frustrated because i could really feel this book’s length. i hate to say it, but this felt like rebecca’s weakest writing to date.

the commentary on the way academia destroys you from the inside out - even more so as a woman of colour, written by someone as academically accomplished as rebecca, should have made this book a stand out. however, by the time these themes came into play, i was too detached to care after being into inundated by a narrative that read 65% textbook.

i sold my soul to rfk when i read the poppy war in 2020, which means i will read anything this woman writes. unfortunately, this one i will not remember fondly. in fact, i don’t believe that i will think of it again! but, hey, at least i will always leave an rfk book learning some obscure facts.