This book is messy sure, but every now and then I like a messy romance. & Some of the hottest sapphic smut scenes I've read.

The amount of 1 star reviews I've seen saying 'ick' because of the age gap - it's on sight. Why are you reading this book if you don't like age gap romance? Are you rating straight age gap romances the same? because if you're not THAT is 'ICK' and SUS!

Do I totally believe that at the end these two women actually get engaged?? uhhhhhh idk tbh but I think that has more to do with me wondering why Erin really felt the need to get married again?Erin is (scarily) not that much older than me, so maybe I just feel like if I was in her situation I would've just lived my life as freely as possible and not felt the need to get married again. Long term partner sure, but something about the ending just wasn't quite believable to me *shrugs*

This was my fav of the series so far. I've been looking forward to Gus's book ever since his character introduction to the series. We just love a responsible, dependable man! 

My favorite thing about this book was how normalized queer people in F1 is. Cause you KNOW they exist irl...
Harper being the age he is reads that way and as someone closer to Kian's age that was irksome to me at parts. Something about the book didn't quite hit for me. I'm not sure if I quite believe in the end that these two end up together forever.

This was fun! I like a rag-tag group of outcasts. Heists and scheming. The story was engaging and kept my attention the whole time, the changing povs probably helped with that.

This book made my heart ache (positive). Me the entire time was just like "awwwww" *tear eye smile emoji* 
I love Nick and Andy with my whole heart they must be protected at all costs! I really just can't say anything else, but I will recommend this book to everyone I know! Cat Sebastian is fast becoming one of my favorite romance authors!

Unfortunately this didn't work for me bc it included several tropes that aren't my favorite: Insta-lust/one-night stand, CW:

accidental pregnancy

, and when the third-act breakup happens I was actively mad at the MMC enough that I didn't get over it.

There were also a few things that came up in the spicy scenes that were yellow flags

I'd call it "dom/sub lite", but it wasn't a discussion beforehand and all of a sudden there's spanking happening? I'm not against kink at all, but I do believe it needs to be discussed before being in the moment for all parties to be safe.

Audio: why does the MMC have a British accent when he's Austrian and the FMC does the correct accent? FMC narrator was fine tho.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced audio arc. 

This ended up being a lot of potential that didn't quite payoff for me. The Viking/Norse inspired setting is cool, and the concept I think it was going for also interesting.

In the initial chapters I was intrigued by our 3 main povs, and wanted to learn more about them and the wider world. But by the end I felt like I had just read 480 pages of setup for books 2 and 3. I read a lot of fantasy and the entire first book in a series shouldn't take this long to basically end where the action finally starts. The whole book felt extremely slow to me. On top of that I didn't feel like there was enough lore explanation until much later in the book and even that was minimal. And this lead to making it feel like once we got this information it was too late to do much with it until later books. And yet I was still able to guess how the multiple povs would eventually come together in a way that was too predictable. I think connecting to the characters was a challenge because they all have some kind of 'mysterious past' that they're hiding so we as readers are kept at arms length.

As for what actually happens in this book? A lot of violence and battles that don't feel super meaningful. I don't normally enjoy reading battle scenes and they happen so often here that they don't have any gravitas. Varg as a character and his storyline was the most interesting, but I also kept getting parts confused with Elvar's pov. I think all the characters traveling doesn't help. There are a million side characters mentioned, but I guess they're not all that important as they don't often go by much of a mention. I had trouble remembering what side characters were members of the Battle Grim or Bloodsworn.

Trying to find the positives: this is a world where women warriors are normal and badass. I also know I'm struggling when clinging to a barely simmering potential romance is one thing that kept me reading.

I'm undecided on if I will continue the series or not.

R.F. Kuang is a master and though Katabasis was both what I was expecting and also not...I'm in awe of her craft. I laughed. I cried (multiple times). I can't wait to reread it (which I will be doing immediately upon publication). Now onto the nitty gritty...

Important context for this book: it takes place in the 1980s. I haven't really seen this discussed anywhere, but this is a crucial expectation to set for the vibes of this book. A book set in the 1980s borders on historical (which pains me to say as someone born in the 80s bc does that mean I'm also historical? *cries*). I digress...

Similar to Babel, we enter the hallowed academic world (this time at Cambridge) slightly altered by the existence & study of magick (yes spelled with a k - please Rebecca explain why you made this choice? I trust she has good reason). While magick is seemingly widely known to exist in the world, we are still otherwise culturally similar to life in the 1980s and more importantly in academia.

Overall story/plot: two phD students travel to hell to save their professor because without him their careers as students at Cambridge (and in magick academia) are over. The simple tagline-type premise describes literally what this book is about, but a lot of the book happens in flashbacks to Alice and Peter's time at Cambridge leading up to the events that sent their professor to hell. While there are trials and tribulations to be had in hell, in all honestly this book uses hell as a metaphor to draw comparison to a lot of things (discussed further down). It's still a harrowing journey, but so have been their careers as students. What happens in hell is really only a portion of what this story is really about.

Preparation: I've seen discourse around whether certain texts (namely Dante's Inferno, The Aneid, The Odyssey etc) are necessary to read before this. While I did read Inferno in advance, and also have basic working knowledge of Greek mythology - I certainly did not have familiarity with all the referenced texts. I think the references made are explained well enough that no preparation is necessary. I did enjoy the jabs she took at Dante, and having a general idea of Greek mythology is helpful as a general fantasy reader bc it inspires so much. There's lots of literary references throughout this book (the main characters are named Alice and Peter!).

The love story: this is NOT a romance forward book. One should not read this book for the romance as there is SO MUCH else going on. I'll actually scream if I hear anyone call this romantasy. If you are a long time fan of Kuang's books you'll know that she notoriously has only ever given us crumbs of a romance before, and often has us reading subtext to hold together our hopes and dreams of characters being together. Katabasis is the most blatant love story she's written, and the 'romance' connecting our two main characters only enhanced the (incredible) character development. To me it's a bonus plotline. That being said, Kuang was able to write some incredible interactions and I was definitely kicking my feet at some parts. I enjoyed the way she built the romance and how it weaves into the overall story.

The magic system: was really cool! Combining logic problems with geometry and pentagrams. As someone who is not math-brained I was a bit nervous knowing that she had studied these things in preparation for writing this book. But again, everything is explained in a clear and interesting way. My tiny not math-inclined brain was fine, it mostly focuses on logic problems. If you don't like to learn new things, honestly Rebeca's books just aren't for you. I personally love the way she weaves historical facts and knowledge into the story.
I also really loved how different culture's depictions of hell/mythology are weaved into the journey through hell. It's not just the Christian-typical Hell. Again, teaching us beyond what the average person might know.

Writing style/themes/etc: especially compared to Babel, her writing style is much more casual and humorous at parts. We really jump right into the action and humor in the first half, but absolutely there's heavy topics covered here as the character's pasts unfold. While there are for sure denser areas where she's explaining logic etc, the style of writing is easy to read.

At it's core Katabasis is about the lengths to which academic students will go in order to get ahead in the grueling, competitive and downright abusive higher education system. Kuang is not new to the dark academia subgenre, and I personally don't think anyone else is writing criticisms of academia like her. Those who are part of academia will surely relate to the relentless obstacles, bureaucracy, and utter exhaustion required of students to "succeed." 

And if you're not an academic (I'm not) but rather are just a woman, or particularly a woman of color, trying to excel in any male dominated field. Yup THIS ONE IS FOR YOU.

Kuang's character work here is her best yet. Alice is by NO means a likable character. Writing morally gray/unlikable characters is also not a new vein for Kuang, but what she's able to do here with Alice's character development is a masterpiece. Alice is a deeply complex and flawed character, yet still human and relatable in so many ways. 

Katabasis is a story about depression. About the dual edged sword of being a woman. About contradictions. About power. What it means to have a physical body. About the will to live and keep going despite all the obstacles set before you.


Thank you SO MUCH to the publisher Harper Voyager for this arc.

This was kinda like Princess Diaries 2 plus Red White and Royal Blue? I hate to make media comparisons but that's how I'd best describe it. But still wholly it's own thing.

Definitely some heavier topics (check CW) but I do think they were handled well for a YA/NA audience. These characters really go through it!

I love a musician main character - there were some beautiful quotes about music. Danni was definitely the more relatable MC as she's not royalty and is worried about fitting in at a new school being the scholarship student. Despite Rose being a very complex character who has been through a lot, and has lived her life always in the public eye, I think the fact that she is a princess made some of her struggles in the book a little unrelatable. But if you remove the whole having to hide your gay bc you're a royal and insert any other situation a teen might not feel comfortable coming out, then maybe it is more relatable. The topic of 'is love/romance worth it even if xyz might happen' is a big subject between Rose and Danni.

Overall there's a lot of drama in this book but it does lead to some interesting discussions between the MCs and their friends especially around mental health (shoutout to Molly whom I didn't initially like but won me over by the end).