It’s with some trepidation that I wade into an argument that regularly divides readers (and, I daresay writers), but I’m going to do so boldly as I state, unequivocally, the following:
Writers are ultimately responsible for any errors in their works.
The buck stops with them. The perception of those who haven’t published seems to be that a writer turns over a manuscript, and doesn’t see it again until it’s published, when in fact, she (or he, but for this rant, she) sees it several times: developmental edits, line edits, galley proofs and final proofs are all checkpoints that she signs off, giving her okay, thumbs up, whatever you want to call it. Thus, if she didn’t check everything, it’s all on her.
Which is why I am so angry about Katabasis. Admittedly, some of my ire stems from how excited I was for this book. The premise—Hell—is in my wheelhouse! (No, I didn’t use GenAI. You’ll have to pry M-dashes from my cold, dead hands.) I loved both Babel and Yellowface. The release date was in my calendar. The only reason I didn’t pre-order is that I didn’t want to schlep a hard-back novel all over Ireland. So when I saw a copy in W. H. Smith in the Dublin airport—a British paperback, no less—I eagerly forked over €22.40.
And for a time, all was good. I was immediately engaged in the tale of a grad student who journeyed to Hell. Then page 168 happened: a comma that should have been a colon. My mind stumbled over the error, knocking me out of the narrative. Immediately, I began to rationalize. It’s a small error, probably only me and three others would have noticed. Maybe she can’t use colons. Some formatting freaks out e-books. It’s kind of a style issue.
I read on…only to run into an unnecessary comma on page 188. (It was at this point I stated cataloguing.) Page 274, a weird M dash. Later, a comma splice. Irritating, but not entirely unheard of, even for a Big 5 book. A weird continuity error involving tea.
But then, on page 294, she writes that for Dante, the final Hell was Heresy.
At this point, I shut the book and tucked it into the seat pocket. For a book about Hell to be so egregiously wrong pissed me off. (For the record, Dante’s worst sin, the ultimate evil, is, in fact, betrayal, (which is all of level 9) or if you want to be precise, betrayal of country (Section 3 of level 9.)
It’s one thing for a novel to have one or two esoteric grammar errors; it’s another to have TWO developmental issues. Dev edits are the first few rounds. To have missed these things, either the editor compressed their edit rounds or there was a ton wrong with the book, and this slipped through. Writers are warned to be careful of continuity because readers (like me) catch them and complain about them; therefore, an editor should be, too. Regardless, Kuang is ultimately the one who signed off on these edits.
A week later, I picked the book back up. I’d already invested several hours at this point, but I went back to the book wary and still angry, which isn’t a good frame of mind. I found two more grammar errors, and I also want to know why there’s a whole chapter narrated from Peter’s POV. He could have told Alice the information, and it’s the only one in the novel, which is jarring. (You could argue that the interstitial chapters, like “On Chalk,” have a different POV, but those feel old school Narrator, closely tied to Alice’s POV, and…they’re also weird. I don’t really like them.
Do I like this book? Meh. It’s alright. I can’t get away from all of the issues.
Which brings me back to the beginning: they are ultimately Kuang’s fault.
Period.
D.S.Dehel 