In this book, Annie Ernaux talked about her father, his life, and how his modest youth shaped him as person.

What surprised me the most is the writing style in which she chose to tell this story. She writes with such detachment, that sometimes, it’s disconcerting and we forgot that she talking about her own father and his death.

For me, this choice in this writing style gave a certain distance and explain—in a subjective way— the ditch between herself and her father over the years.

The place is a story of a father who tried to desperately fit in but at the cost of moving away from his daughter.

3,75 ⭐️

I waited so long for that book and I don’t even know where to start. I start 2025 by reading the poppy war trilogy and I fell in love with Kuang writting so I was really excited when she announced Katabasis.

I never read Dark Academia book before and I knew that it will be a heavily referenced book, so i was quite scared about if i would fully understand it. I found that the way she explained the paradox and everything else was easily understandable. However, the magic system was confusing at times as much as the map of hell.

My problem with this book resides in two main things :

• The characters and their lack of depth and grows. It feels like i barely know them (especially Peter) even after 550 pages. At first, I didn’t mind the fact that Alice was insufferable but by the end, it felt so empty. No growth or development.

• My second issue was the plot and the world building . It was so alluring at first, they need to bring back their professor from Hell. We get to explore Hell from Kuang perspective (even if she based most of her model from Dante and others philosopher). The first two court of hell was really creative. But after that, i felt lost and underwhelmed. It felt like she lost interest in them. By 75% of the book, I was really wondering what was all that for. The initial plot was no where to be seen and it felt like she was just ranting about her knowledge of Hell and existentialism.

I felt that pace wised, this book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. I still had a great time reading this but for me this book is my least favourite of hers (I didn’t read Babel yet).

Thank you NetGalley for this Advance reader copy.

This book is based on Grec Mythology and is about the concept of Katabasis : the journey to the underworld. Ty is a young man who is forced by circumstances to go to the underworld and steal from a goddess but he found out that he is a just a pawn in a bigger play.

This book is divided into three parts. For me personally the first and last one were really good.

The second part was where i was not fully convinced. There is too much going on, i feel like the multiple plot point from different characters’ pov, sometimes lost me. I also think that the writing style was not my favourite because there were times when the descriptions of fight scenes and places made me feel like the author was trying too hard to put allegories everywhere which didn’t help comprehensive wise.

There was a tiny bit of romance in this book but personally i felt like it was superficial—which made it kinda unnecessary and flat—and would have loved if we dived a little more deeper into it.

It is still a good fantasy book for Grec mythology lovers that i would recommend.