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Comment by libraryofbabel | Hacker News Reader

This is a review of Katabasis, R.F. Kuang's new book. I wonder if there are any fans of Kuang here who can convince me to give her another go; I did not much like Babel, and only got 20% of the way into it. (This despite being a recovering humanities scholar who still wears dark-academiaish tweed skirts to her programming job.) From what I remember, the characters were a bit flat, the plot didn't draw me in, and the writing style was a little formulaic. I can't help compare with Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which I absolutely adored.

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Babel is a story structured like a certain YA wizard series with very clear antagonists that are not remotely good people with very little in terms of shades of gray. Kuang has very clear themes and ideas that she wants to convey, and she leaves little to the imagination in terms of plot arcs and motivations and morality.

On the other hand Babel has interesting characters that have a realistic representation of what it's like to have grown up in a cross-cultural context and how it can feel like you're betraying someone no matter what you do, which is not something I see in much media at all. She also starkly portrays and analyzes a trap that minorities can fall into where they are complicit in their own oppression.

Also, I appreciate Kuang's refreshing approach to having the bad people be bad people as opposed to misguided or misunderstood people with good intentions. Some kinds of bad-ness really shouldn't be excused, or perhaps have been explored to death already.

I read The Secret History at an impressionable age and arrived at university grossly misinformed. I love it anyway.

I quite like _The Secret History_ too.

I think in _Babel_ (and _Katabasis_ as well), Kuang is a bit more prone than Tartt to showing off legit academic tidbits, which gives a nice scholarly glint (the illusion of high-brow? authenticity, dare I say?) to the environment, while not compromising the easy fantasy reading. More details than vibes, perhaps?

(When she gets details wrong, it does break the illusion. Like a small tangent on the etymology of the Greek word for truth in _Katabasis_.)

Oxford also simply has a certain aura for me, being from the US. All in all, I think Kuang's books are great "binge" or "airplane" reads with a smack of academic authenticity.

I saw _Possession_ mentioned elsewhere, which I think does academic vibes _and_ details very and IMO resides in a more refined literary category than either of the two other books. I should reread it!

These are the common complaints about all of kuang's books and I think even the people who like her work generally acknowledge they are well-founded. Her stuff clearly resonates with people despite those weaknesses, but if they don't for you then why push. There are a lot of books.

> dark-academiaish tweed skirts

A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months

~ https://ia801302.us.archive.org/20/items/ThePhilosophyOfDres...

Appello, non ad Caesarem, sed ad Caesaris uxorem

Yeah, Babel had an interesting premise that didn't ultimately coalesce into a good book. I stuck with it, but only because I'm a compulsive book finisher.

Despite the traumatic stuff I find Rebecca's books very childish, Tartt is truly literary and every attempt by anyone else to ape her work or simply the associated "Dark Academia" aesthetic just pales...

My experience has been that a large majority of books that get hyped on social media and make the rounds as a hot book-club sort of read… are terrible. Whatever process causes a book to reach that point appears to have no connection to how good it is.

Taste, ah, varies.

This has been a thing for my whole life, though probably made worse by social media. But I remember as a teenager a mentor telling me to be skeptical of "books that are read a lot by people who don't read a lot." But not to dismiss them entirely. There have been some good books on oprah's list or whatever and I'm sure there are some good ones coming across tiktok too.

There is also non-literary value of doing the culturally resonant thing while it's relevant. It was fun to watch game of thrones when everyone was watching it, it was fun to play elden ring when everyone was playing it, it's fun to read acotar when everyone is reading it. Not everything has to stand alone on its own merits, social participation is a value too.

It's like this with everything. Hyped movies are trash, hyped music is trash. I made fun of hipsters in the early 2010s but at this point the mainstream is such a cesspool you have to really hunt to find good, authentic art.

Yep. Scifi and Fantasy reads that break out mainstream these days seem to be universally below average. More and more consumers are demanding less which weirds me out. They want sexless, romanceless, conflict free drivel that just regurgitates feel good memes without any introspection or complex thought.

I straight up dont give people recommendations if they mention liking a subset of authors who are known slop peddlers.

You've got nothing for lovers of Georgette Heyer or Agatha Christie then?

Wouldn't even stoop to recommend Baroness Orczy?

I read babel this year. Not the most memorable book, but an easy one to finish regardless. Nothing so off-putting they I couldn’t finish it.

But taste does vary, no reason to push it if you dislike it. De gustibus et coloribus..

Did you like the rest of Donna Tartt's work as much as Secret History?

Babel read like YA to me.

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