Review: Katabasis

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This isn't a book for readers, this is a book for pretentious asshats that think of themselves as 'scholars'.

The hype for this book was real - I hadn't read any of this author's books before but The Poppy War is a favourite of my good friend Juliette so we were both hanging for this and were lucky enough to get ARCs from Harper Collins.

So this was a Buddy Read with Juliette.

A journey to Hell sounds like just my kind of premise, and this book started by taking us straight there with Alice Law and her fellow student/colleague, Peter. Magic(k) in this world mostly involves drawing pentagrams and reciting absurd paradoxes so a little of that and away we go.

So let's get it out of the way: this book made a journey to Hell about as exciting as sitting through a lecture on the scientific properties of dry paint.

Although, to be fair, science is much more interesting than this awful, bland blend of mathematics, linguistics and philosophy.

Almost immediately, the narrative switches to flashbacks detailing how hard Alice worked as a student under Grimes, and goes on (and on, and on, and on ...) about word puzzles, paradoxes, mathematical properties and implications regarding Hell and all manner of pointless things in between. A little bit tested the brain so at the start I didn't mind so much, but as the book went on and all this extra stuff took precedence over the continuation of the story I became increasingly frustrated. We get about three chapters of this random, way-over-my-head crap for every chapter of actual journeying through Hell. The average reader is not going to be interested in this amount of superfluous speculation. GET TO THE GOOD STUFF ALREADY.

Sadly, even 'good stuff' is a stretch because, Kuang's Hell? It's all flat, monotonous plains and other ridiculously dull iterations that I won't mention just for spoilers-sake. There is no kind of LIFE in her story - no demons or devils, no fire and brimstone, no pitchforks or pits or meaningful monsters. The creativity she does develop in this area is washed away easily by those other chapters of random stuff I mentioned, meaning there's really not much exciting about their journey at all.

This is a book about a PHD student who is just the BESTEST STUDENT EVER. She's Not Like Other Girls because she doesn't mind being treated like a piece of crap by her advisor because it's all totally worth it: one day she's going to get A Really Good Job out of it.

Honestly? The whole 'student life' she detailed was depressing AF but, with Kuang being a PHD student herself, I can only assume we're supposed to admire Alice's dedication to a life entirely devoid of anything other than her studies. I myself felt sorry for her lack of living, but that wasn't a subject that really made its way into this book the way it should have.

So then we have the 'magick' which mostly amounts to a whole lot of nothing. It felt a stretch to refer to it as magic since it's just chalk drawings and paradoxes and there's no real decent explanation of how it all works. Basically, it's maths. 'Just be okay with it' is kind of the message here. Magic has never been less interesting to me.

Finally, the whole reason for Alice and Peter going after Grimes was POINTLESS. Allow me to veer into SPOILER territory:
(view spoiler)[Both claim they want to get Grimes back because he's their only hope of landing a good job. But then it turns out that Alice wants to bring him back as some kind of ridiculous revenge, and Peter just feels guilty because he believes he's the reason Grimes died. Given the level of sacrifice that needed to be made by both, I found neither of these things plausible. I also LOATHED the sexual assault because it was such a trope moment - this book is supposed to be telling a different kind of story and you still had to have this same student/teacher rapey BULLSHIT??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I was so mad reading it. It's such an old, tired crutch for authors to lean on, to give their characters A Bad Time. There was nothing clever in the way it was done. It was just shoved in to make some kind of point that made zero sense to the whole plot of this book. (hide spoiler)]

Essentially, this book had zero reason to exist because the premise thins to nothing as the book goes on.

In the same line of thinking, a quick comment on the 'romance' this book is promoted as: what romance? There is some awkward smooshing of Alice and Peter's feelings here and there but nothing about their relationship feels organic. It's more like she threw in a little bit just so this book could cash in on the current trend of 'Romantasy.' I'm not even into romance and I found this relationship dull. And communication misunderstandings is one of my least favourite things in any book - JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER FFS.

Don't get me started on the additional pointlessness of the fking CAT.

This started out as a four star read for me, but dropped dramatically to a place of loathing. I wanted so badly for it to meet the high expectations I had for it, but it ended up turning me off Kuang completely. I've heard it mentioned that she believes people who don't like her books 'just don't get it' so I guess I'll happily admit she would think I'm a dumbass. Because this book was terrible.

I'm throwing it a bonus star for keeping me curious for the first hundred or so pages, but it's more of a pity star and an apology to Harper for such a hate-filled review of a book they so generously provided.

With thanks to Harper Collins for an ARC

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