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Month: December 2025

Book Review: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Book Review: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

ARC provided by the publisher—Harper Voyager—in exchange for an honest review.

Cover art illustrated by Patrick Arrasmith

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Series: Standalone

Genre: Fantasy, Dark Academia

Pages: 540 pages (Hardcover Edition)

Word Count: 160,000 Words

Published:  26th August 2025 by Harper Voyager


At this point, it is safe to say Katabasis by R.F. Kuang has an assured path to take the bestseller spot in many outlets around the world. That being said, can this relatively bizarre novel win the reader’s heart?

“How wonderful, truly, to have a friend whose silence you adored.”

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Book Review: Isles of the Emberdark (Secret Project, #5) by Brandon Sanderson

Book Review: Isles of the Emberdark (Secret Project, #5) by Brandon Sanderson


Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Sometimes the only path forward is costly. We must travel it regardless.”

Isles of the Emberdark is a story I’ve been both excited and nervous to experience. Getting a new novel in Sanderson’s Cosmere is always an amazing feeling, but I always have this small sense of trepidation when approaching a new world, a fear that I might not love it as much as I’ve loved those onto which he’s already invited me. He’s never let me down so far, and Emberdark didn’t break that trend. I loved this new world, and I loved seeing how the technological development of these fantastical worlds is making the Cosmere smaller in a sense. The opening, in which a young Dragon is finally getting her draconian form, delighted me. It was a sweet, lovely, joyful way to start a story. From there, we shift to a place and people wholly different. It was interesting to see how the two disparate parts of the story interact. Starling, the young Dragon, and Sixth of the Dusk, an Eelakin trapper on the isle of Patji, on the world First of the Sun.

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