Elizabeth Kerns’s Reviews > Katabasis > Status Update

good riddance but why am i feeling nothing 🤨

it might just be because i’m currently reading sections of the Summa, but the problems of spirits in hell who don’t want to die (cease to be) rather clarifies Thomas’ view of the distinction between being and goodness as only of desirability—ie being (here, God) is goodness & the distinction is just in relationship. all participate in being, the desire for goodness is caught up in the desire for being…

the idea of a rebel citadel in hell is so funny to me but also,,, kinda has some juice. the metaphysics of this book are consistently messy but the moral order is intriguing, even if the explicit moral philosophy of the main character isn’t

alice might be a linguistic philosopher/magician, but she’s a terrible moral philosopher. girlie cannot do anything but all or nothing thinking/determinism/lack of agency re culpability. this is actually her biggest flaw as a protagonist

“Always they had been bodies hurtling just out of one another’s orbit, when all it would have take. was an honest word. But that was precisely what magicians lacked.”

clearest dynamic presented… though the necessary dualism of the magic system is sort of fascinating… especially if the Biggest Thing You Can Do is go to hell

the past sections are definitely the more compelling… i do think that i’m not fond of Alice. not because she’s overly intellectual or rather misogynistic—but because she’s passive. she has a Rooney-esque inability to say what she thinks or needs, but without the suppressed inner life that makes such an inability coherent. it makes the whole thing drag

this is a deeply untheological work, but i do think Kuang gets at something often overlooked in mainstream discussions of lust: the narcissism of it. as a sin, it’s disoriented from God… but also from other people. it’s masturbatory in that the other, the relationship(s) which are the good of desire, are forgotten in/for the self. a review complained it wasn’t erotic—and yeah. it’s not. for the better.