As a followup to my other post, I started the book Katabasis last night. I downloaded it first, before I had even heard of Piranesi and the cover said it was similar, so I thought that was serendipitous since I was looking to scratch that similar itch.
And wow, is it a badly written book by comparison. This book might be inspired by the plot of Piranesi, but it completely misses with execution. Where Piranesi was stripped back, told you very little and had you infer things from the characters, Katabasis just drops everything in front of you with an omnipotent narrator that just spews exposition at you. I can also see all the tropes in the first chapter; singularly focused protagonist that needs to learn to chill out, enemies to lovers forced buddy situation, ‘naturally gifted’ expert who it turns out things aren’t so easy for, and macguffin plot that won’t be realised by the end because of the inherit flaw of the main character pursuing it.
These differences really stand out after reading Piranesi and Get Shorty previously. This writing breaks all of Elmore Leonard’s rules and is worse for it. Leonard even says his rules are guides and can be broken, but his books are so readable and enjoyable without being overly flashy or feeling dumbed down.
I’ll give Katabasis a bit more of a chance, but I can’t see myself getting through the 800 odd phone screen sized pages of this book compared to the 300 of Piranesi.
After reading tv and movie reddits for a while I can see there would be a readership for that kind of book. There are so many people who really do need and want everything spelled out. You can’t even show people things, they actually need it to be explained verbally.
I was talking to a guy years ago who said reading takes so much mental capacity that he can’t focus on anything else or have hard to read prose. I totally get that, reading doesn’t come naturally to everyone and some people want the book equivalent of an Amazon TV show that explains everything for the people making spaghetti at the same time.
As a followup to my other post, I started the book Katabasis last night. I downloaded it first, before I had even heard of Piranesi and the cover said it was similar, so I thought that was serendipitous since I was looking to scratch that similar itch.
And wow, is it a badly written book by comparison. This book might be inspired by the plot of Piranesi, but it completely misses with execution. Where Piranesi was stripped back, told you very little and had you infer things from the characters, Katabasis just drops everything in front of you with an omnipotent narrator that just spews exposition at you. I can also see all the tropes in the first chapter; singularly focused protagonist that needs to learn to chill out, enemies to lovers forced buddy situation, ‘naturally gifted’ expert who it turns out things aren’t so easy for, and macguffin plot that won’t be realised by the end because of the inherit flaw of the main character pursuing it.
These differences really stand out after reading Piranesi and Get Shorty previously. This writing breaks all of Elmore Leonard’s rules and is worse for it. Leonard even says his rules are guides and can be broken, but his books are so readable and enjoyable without being overly flashy or feeling dumbed down.
I’ll give Katabasis a bit more of a chance, but I can’t see myself getting through the 800 odd phone screen sized pages of this book compared to the 300 of Piranesi.
After reading tv and movie reddits for a while I can see there would be a readership for that kind of book. There are so many people who really do need and want everything spelled out. You can’t even show people things, they actually need it to be explained verbally.
I do like stripped back noir 😺
I was talking to a guy years ago who said reading takes so much mental capacity that he can’t focus on anything else or have hard to read prose. I totally get that, reading doesn’t come naturally to everyone and some people want the book equivalent of an Amazon TV show that explains everything for the people making spaghetti at the same time.
I enjoy the occasional ‘cheese’ novel. Having said that, if it’s 800 pages, I’ll give it a miss 100%
I put it on my phone so it wouldn’t actually be that long, but I don’t think I’d go the distance when I just read a much better, shorter novel
Susannah Clarke is an infinitely more gifted storyteller than R. F. Kuang.
There’s a delicacy and deftness in Piranesi that’s very hard to get right