Akantha, the heroine of To the Ravens, my novel set in the lunar colonies of ancient Rome.
One thing I really liked about this book is that I got to blend historical facts with totally made up things. (Like the Romans, you know, getting to the moon.)
One minor thing is Akantha's short hair. Most artwork from antiquity shows women with long hair -- in fact, I can't think of any artwork that doesn't, but I say "most" because you never know. According to my research, the only females who had short hair among the Greeks and Romans would have been young girls and slaves. So it was heard of, but I infer it was somewhat belittling.
However, my other source (aside from history) was, of course, Lucian of Samosata, who assures us with a straight face that all of the Lunarians are running around bald. Now, I didn't want to go that far, in part because I like drawing hair and it would be harder to distinguish the characters on a design level if they were all bald. But I decided Lunarian (specifically Kynthian) beauty standards would include bald heads on men (often) and very short hair on women. So Akantha and her sister Karyai, and her mother Tanais all have short hair. Akantha's cousin Menaios is bald, though Pas' hair is chin-length because he dresses femininely, whereas Galana, Brixia, and Kokkonas are all set apart as foreigners by their long hair.
And the nice thing was, no one can tell me I'm wrong because it's not like they know what's going on on the moon.
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is an interesting fantasy novel about a woman who gets her sustenance through consuming written word instead of food navigating what it means to love, a complex high control family, and mountains of trauma
It is a very interesting novel with a cool premise and interesting characters, but it definitely has its flaws. I feel like the world building is a little bit silly at times (the families are confusingly too big and too small for everything that is happening) and it feels like Dean has to repeat herself multiple times to make sure her audience is able to keep track of her complex web of houses and knights and dragons which can be a bit frustrating. I think it is a case of needing the Dragons to be rare for the drama factor but needing them to be common enough for the plot to happen and not quite being able to strike that balance well enough (in my opinion)
I do really like seeing the different ways in which characters react to the trauma and how it makes some of them fight to break the cycle and others fight to reinforce it. It makes for some very dynamic and realistic relationships between certain characters
The audio book has absolutely stunning narration, so if you at all like audio books and are interested in this one, I highly recommend checking it out
Overall it was a fun read/listen. Not my top absolutely raving. But I did enjoy it for sure
Paperback, published between 2015-2024 in the UK. Historical fiction/fantasy.
Blue spine.
Front cover - title embossed, metallic (reflective) title in bronze.
Illustration of buildings in distance
Back- illustration of ocean
Summary on yellow parchment
Possibly a male author
Please help me find this book- I stupidly donated it because I felt bad about not reading it while the person who gave it to me was dying, and by the time I came to my senses it was too late and all I can remember is that the summary had the word Kingdom in it.
After her supervisor dies in a lab accident, Alice Law realises that the only way to complete her PhD in magick and secure a postgrad job position is to drag the infamous Professor Grimes back from Hell. Her unwilling companion in this quest is Grimes' other student and her academic rival, the infuriatingly gifted Peter Murdoch. Descending into Hell, the two must learn to trust each other while harbouring a number of terrible secrets between them.
Review
The concept of this book is both fun and phenomenal with PhDs in magick, a journey to the underworld, and copious amounts of mythological and literary references along the way. I was very excited to read it, not least because I got it out of the library in anticipation of seeing R.F. Kuang speak at a writer's festival. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bit of a let down.
Firstly, the book had a great many strengths that allowed me to persevere and finish it. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have finished it. I really enjoyed when it engaged with different mythological traditions and the literary references, though very frequent, were done in a way that gave greater depth to the characters, relationships and setting. The mythic element is what drew me to the book in the first place. It really is such a unique take on a motif that occurs across cultures and tim, with a journey to the underworld being one of the oldest and most universal recurring motifs in world literature. Make it a metaphor for an internal struggle and a journey towards healing? That's the good stuff!
I also felt the way Kuang described burn-out and the unhealthy side of postgraduate study deep in my soul, right down to the physical sensations caused by that kind of extreme fatigue. The root of the book's plot being the idea that 'academia is hell' really does ring true. So does our main characters' obsessive need to continue on and push themselves for ultimately pathetic rewards and the sort of existential questioning and self-loathing this prompts. This really is a 'write what you know scenario' and Kuang knows.
Where I feel the book falls short is its over-reliance on these references and jargon-heavy magic system to provide substance. The prominence of the 'dark academic aesthetic' is at least in part to blame for this, with Katabasis quite obviously trying to capitalise on the trend by choosing a fantasy version of Cambridge in the 1970s. In fairness, Kuang is much better positioned than the average person to actually grapple with this setting given her academic background. However, that same background certainly raised my expectations and led me to expect a more meaningful book than what I actually read. Katabasis seems desperate to come across as profound, but not in anyway that might intellectually threaten the imagined 'average' reader.
I do want to say that I respect the author a great deal and was really impressed with the talk I attended. The impression I took away from it was that Kuang doesn't approach writing like the next project is going to be her magnum opus; she's perfectly happy just having fun and playing around with ideas. In light of this, I want to be forgiving. I fully intend to read more of Kuang's books, as everything I've been told suggests that this is not her best work and it was probably not the best choice for me. I think some of the reasons the book didn't land with me were the genre itself (Romantasy is not for me) as well as my admittedly inflated expectations. Nevertheless, Katabasis has the makings for a much better book and that's what makes it a disappointing read.
Reading Notes
The idea that she’s so tired that she feels like she’d dissolve like a sugar cube...YEP
Lembas bread! I remember people mentioning this when it first came out and I really do enjoy it. At a very basic level it speaks to the fact that the vast majority of students in postgrad are absolute nerds. At a more meaningful level, however, it positions LOTR as a sort of katabasis in its own way, with the Fellowship (or more specifically Frodo and Sam) requiring sustenance on their way to Mordor (hell).
Cats being able to see the dead and enter the eight courts feels like a great choice both in keeping with folkloric traditions of cats being weird little guys and in owners' experience of cats being weird little guys.
I’m reading The Aeneid simultaneous to this for unrelated reasons and I’m planning on reading Dante at some point so this may be a very underworld-y kind of year. Also Gilgamesh. And the Odyssey. There's actually a lot of katabasis reads planned!
Climbing a wall of human bodies enmeshed together into a creepy bone wall and crying is absolute nightmare fuel. I'd never recover.
Climbing club people always try and recruit you to climbing club. I tell them I am afraid of heights and they insist that I can work around it, it’s just that fun! Pass. This is climbing club propaganda and I won't stand for it.
LINGUISTS REPRESENT
See this is where I feel like Kuang just put a bunch of Romantasy tropes into a hate and pulled one out because I don't think it was terribly necessary to have the pair of them have this awkward moment where of course Alice has to accidentally feel Peter's erection. Just... I'm all for sex in books, that's not the issue here. It's just so... meaningless. Juvenile even. Like the way this stuff is treated in fanfic, not published books.
Yeah, this book just isn't feeling particularly deep. I know some people on booktok (that infallible community) were whinging about it being pretentious because it alluded to books they hadn't read/myths they weren't aware of/used big words, but if anything it's only got a veneer of anything intellectual and once you get passed that it's really... nothing.
Lol I have often been in situations where the thing you want to read has not been translated into a language you speak and it is fucking infuriating. And a major motivation to learn more languages, of course.
Teaching a grown man (or any adult) about how historical context and language works fucking sucks but also yeah you have these conversations all the time and with very intelligent people who nonethelss have never had to think about such things in their own academic career.
Peter just volunteering that they had arrived in Hell via double suicide ‘which Alice found rather dramatic, but did not challenge.’ LOL
‘As Aristotle put it, complete happiness was some form of study.’ YES
When listing small prides it specfically mentions the 'had more of a comment, not a question' situation YES YES YES
'I feel sometimes it is so difficult to be conscious'. My chronic illness self felt that to the bone.
Imaging she's going to be torn apart by wild beasts as David Attenborough commentary plays is hilarious.
So she just crossed a line saying Yorkshire puddings taste like sand. For those of you who haven't had them, this is a lie.
That light absent feeling she describes? I used to honestly like that. Or I used to.
The idea that it's every grad student’s dream is to be their supervisor’s pet monkey / abomination experiment paraded around is not unusual but also not very universal. I mean, sometimes people are normal about it.
The whole profesor and his experiments with the tattoos really does feel like the classic 'academia without any moral core' issue.
Peter brought Tolkien for company… Lúthien pleads for Beren in the Halls of Mandos, which is an obvious example of katabasis, but the way the scene is described it feels a bit more like Sam and Frodo. I do think this is a good example of how literary references when done well can enhance the reader's understanding of the text.
"There was a time when she felt all she ever wanted to do was to make Peter Murdoch laugh."
Elspeth not telling them everything cause everything is a fucking competition.
Okay massive error I can not stand: lembas bread allegedly invented by Grimes in WWII when LOTR wasn’t published until 1954. There is no in-universe explanation as to how it could have been named lembas bread.
I'm not sure how well Kuang executes the issues arround sexual harassment here, but I'm not in a position to critique her on that.
“Pain is interesting, and you can bear anything as long as it’s interesting.”
“You thought people were giants, and they devastated you by being so human.”
what if trolls just do the riddles thing for liability purposes. like they gotta eat but they can't just go around murdering people right? the fantasy government would take them out. so you come up with a work-around. a wager. wagers and deals are generally binding in fantasy, so it's not like anyone could blame a troll if they played a game where the wager was death, then when they won, they killed the other person.
"your honor, they agreed to the terms when they tried to solve the riddle. as i stated clearly, if they answered the riddle incorrectly, they would die. since they accepted the terms and lost, it was a fair wager and i did NOT murder that tradesman when i killed and ate him!"
WIP Wednesday: Lots of Updates!
(Image Source) If you're subscribed to my blog, you've probably noticed I've been fairly regularly posting reviews....
https://literaryloon.com/2026/07/01/wip-wednesday-lots-of-updates/
