Katabasis

Overview

Borrowed from the library on a display of books that someone on GoodReads rated 1 star. (I know a bit gimmicky, but I’d wanted to read RF Kuang, altho Babel is probably the place most people start.)

Came with a bookmark:
“Journey to Hell should be this boring.”

Review

While it wasn’t boring, it was a bit slow-paced, with several flashbacks to the protagonist’s (Alice) and duotagonist’s (Peter) lives before their journey to hell.

I did appreciate the Dante and TS Eliot references. (Dante taking potshots at his opponents compromises his objectivity, and The Waste Land is too self-referential.)

The book is dark academia fantasy. This is evidenced in several places, not only by the first 2 layers of hell resembling a university campus, but several pedantic discussions of riddles and formal paradoxes.

On the whole I enjoyed the read; the characters were well-developed and the depiction of desire and the brokenness of condemned humanity were philosophically interesting.