anabradley's review against another edition
3.0
Thanks to Ana for changing my mind on Babel! And apologies for the characteristically long and OTT review...
Part love letter to the power of language and part damning condemnation of Britain’s (and specifically Oxford’s) colonial legacy, ‘Babel’ is a book that made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I didn’t enjoy it, not because I disagree that colonialism was and is an atrocity that has carved the wealth of Britain, but for a multitude of reasons including, perhaps, my own white privilege.. There is also the issue of Kuang’s writing style, which is incredibly powerful but also deceptively binary. Despite all this, I have been unable to think of anything other than ‘Babel’ since reading the very first page, which, for me, is the mark of a great book.
I’ll start with what I loved. Kuang’s knowledge of language is exceptionally well-researched, and you can feel her love for words jumping off the page. “Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one.” Kuang captures the importance of language with perfection. She explains the origins of words in enough detail that they wouldn’t be out of place in a textbook, yet renders them fascinating enough to make up part of a commercial fiction. And language is where Kuang’s genius shines through: a magic system based on what is lost in translation is both beautiful and effective.
However, this is where the nuance so perfectly captured in the exploration of language in Babel’s first half begins to be lost. Everything hinges on this one system of magic. The entire British empire relies solely on these ‘silver’ bars, imbued with linguistic magic. At first this seems ingenious. The British empire was built on the exploitation of the colonies. Our language is full of stolen words, as is our culture, our food, our institutions, and our wealth. However, the use of ‘silver’ as a metaphor becomes too binary when its destruction can bring down the entire empire. Giving colonialism a root as solid and defined as a singular tower of Oxford academics dealing in magical silver bars is simplistic and unrepresentative. It leads to moral dilemmas which have no relation to the real world. If colonialism could be destroyed from the source, by destroying a single institution, the colonial trauma experienced by so many today could be removed with one blow. The issue is far more complex than that, which left me thinking: what is Kuang’s point?
That colonialism is bad, obviously. Kuang makes that abundantly clear with her sometimes ironically amusing and other times frankly patronising footnotes, explaining that, yes, that clearly racist thing she refers to is, indeed, racist. So, given that colonialism is bad, what do we do about it? The full title includes the phrase, ‘the necessity of violence’. As the main character, Robin, develops, he begins to see that violence is necessary to take down the empire. We are swept along as murder is justified and a building is taken over by force. There’s a strike (which I’m all for), but it quickly leads to civilian deaths, and a final stand that is strikingly similar to the suicide bombings made use of by real-world terrorists. The story is told from the point of view of a man who has come to believe that all this is necessary and just, and Kuang’s writing is so powerful that you catch yourself agreeing with him.
Perhaps because of the heavy-handed didactic of the first half of the book, or perhaps just because at this point I was so caught up with the narrative of ‘the necessity of violence’, it didn’t occur to me that this might not be what Kuang was genuinely recommending. But of course it wasn’t. A woman who has studied at Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale cannot possibly advocate for the complete destruction of Oxford as an institution without sounding severely hypocritical. We never find out if the suicidal finale actually makes any difference (my suspicion is that it doesn’t) and the final chapter is told through the eyes of a character who (weakly) advocates for a slightly less extreme approach. She is the only character who gets away with both a guilt-free conscience and her life.
I have to conclude that I initially missed the point. That Kuang isn’t advocating for the ‘necessity of violence’ at all, but perhaps for the necessity of action instead. I read with a growing sense of unease, but Kuang must have meant for readers to feel this, especially those of us who benefit from colonial legacy. There are still bits I disagree with (the lack of sympathy for Letty, for one) but my own discomfort should not be a reason to condemn ‘Babel’. It is insanely powerfully written, and although often heavy-handed on the surface, its incredibly subtly nuanced when you pick it apart.
aspera's review
challenging
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
theciz's review
1.0
Apologies in advance for the wall of text that follows. Tl;dr, didn’t like it.
A great premise, let down by.an extremely lacklustre execution. I generally don’t read YA anymore (I got fatally pretentious about it when I was 12/13 and it’s just never been the same since) but the last time I was recommended one with literary themes and the power of words it was Vita Nostra, so I was willing to give this one a go. Truly, I wish I hadn’t bothered, as this was excruciatingly mediocre and predictable.
To start with, for a so-called historical fantasy novel, there’s so little effort and imagination put into either the history or the fantasy. The world building is a joke - Kuang gave the conquistadors literal magic 300 years before the book starts, and the world is exactly the same. History somehow happened exactly as it did in the real world, and the "new" institutions for this magic and the technology produced mirror exactly the old ones, you really wonder what the point of it all is. We’re supposed to believe Babel and the silver are oh so important, but given history plays out exactly the same, I was at no stage convinced there was any point to what happened. Like, why is the silver set up as a metaphor for Britain’s colonial impetus, or the Industrial Revolution, when these also still exist in the text - what’s the point? So the world-building is practically non-existent.
Also, this book is set in the 1830s, but everyone talks like it’s the present day with the odd old fashioned word shoe-horned in. Georgian/Victorian English isn’t exactly Shakespeare, so I don’t think you can claim it helps comprehension to avoid it. And it’s not like there isn’t copious written evidence from the period, of how people thought and talked about social justice issues back then. You don't even have to go full Susanna Clarke! Once again, there just seemed to be no attempt or effort made to really imagine what this world would actually look, sound and be like. Some of the modern vernacular used makes it more twitter 2022 than Oxford 1837 - examples include "he can’t access it" (as in understand a poem), "too bourgeois", "narco-military state", and many more. The most egregious and tasteless example was a literal "say her name" moment, that made me want to cringe straight out the window. Basically, you know someone’s supposed to be a good guy because they act and speak like a modern person, and a bad guy because they act and speak (a little) more old-fashioned.
In fact, the overall lack of imagination is the worst part of this book. The author has a very defensive note right at the start about an oyster dinner that impressed her in her own life, and how she wanted to replicate that experience. So she just stuck it in unchanged, with no effort to make it historically accurate, it’s utterly baffling. And all that for what's ultimately one sentence, while gliding over every other historical inaccuracy in this book? Truly bizarre.
And this just reminds me of every issue I had with Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations. In that book, climate change has gotten so bad that most animals have died off, including all insects… but people grow and eat their own vegetables. Sea levels have grown rapidly due to warming... but people in Ireland still live in stone cottages by the sea playing diddly-dee music to random strangers. I could go on, but the point is the fatal lack of imagination. Both Kuang and McConaghy make the, to my tastes anyway, mistake of sacrificing logic to the overarching metaphor they want their story to be.
And that doesn’t even get to the multitude of extremely patronising footnotes dotted throughout the text. I don’t know whether the author didn’t have enough confidence in her own writing, or none in her intended audience, but she seems to feel the need to explain every reference, or make trite statements like "slavery was bad" or "that guy is a bad racist". Like, yes, thank you, I could figure that out for myself. It’s like all the worst cliches people say about Gen Z needing everything to be morally black and white and explicitly spelt out. Kuang tries to have a few discussions of grey morality, but it’s incredibly shallow and unconvincing. A few were narratively appropriate, but mostly I was rolling my eyes every time.
The main character Robin is a wide-eyed, naive wet blanket, with brief, unconvincing flashes of being less of one. None of his weather vane emotional turns made any sense to me, other than plot convenience. Oh, but then he suddenly turns into Rambo at the end, great, totally convincing. All the other characters are mostly bland archetypes as well, as if the author had a set checklist of personality types to include. Or maybe they’re just there so every time the story grinds to a halt for an exposition dump on why colonialism/racism/etc. is wrong, it’s not always the same person. And don’t even get me started on Griffin. Ultimately, I felt like I didn’t get to know any of the characters as real people, and so couldn’t care what happened to them.
Basically, this is a book where subtlety and nuance go to die. It’s also repetitive - I think I counted at least three "in retrospect, it was the best time of their lives" and Robin is constantly saying "I’m sorry, I didn’t know" every time a shocking and tragic backstory is revealed. The plot is pretty predictable, which wouldn’t be so annoying if the world-building wasn’t so mid.
So overall, I couldn’t recommend this to anyone, maybe someone who was pretty young and terminally naive about history/the world? But then this book has apparently been crazy popular, so what do I know. Apologies for the rant, but this was excruciatingly long and I am stupidly stubborn, so I had to get it off my chest.
A great premise, let down by.an extremely lacklustre execution. I generally don’t read YA anymore (I got fatally pretentious about it when I was 12/13 and it’s just never been the same since) but the last time I was recommended one with literary themes and the power of words it was Vita Nostra, so I was willing to give this one a go. Truly, I wish I hadn’t bothered, as this was excruciatingly mediocre and predictable.
To start with, for a so-called historical fantasy novel, there’s so little effort and imagination put into either the history or the fantasy. The world building is a joke - Kuang gave the conquistadors literal magic 300 years before the book starts, and the world is exactly the same. History somehow happened exactly as it did in the real world, and the "new" institutions for this magic and the technology produced mirror exactly the old ones, you really wonder what the point of it all is. We’re supposed to believe Babel and the silver are oh so important, but given history plays out exactly the same, I was at no stage convinced there was any point to what happened. Like, why is the silver set up as a metaphor for Britain’s colonial impetus, or the Industrial Revolution, when these also still exist in the text - what’s the point? So the world-building is practically non-existent.
Also, this book is set in the 1830s, but everyone talks like it’s the present day with the odd old fashioned word shoe-horned in. Georgian/Victorian English isn’t exactly Shakespeare, so I don’t think you can claim it helps comprehension to avoid it. And it’s not like there isn’t copious written evidence from the period, of how people thought and talked about social justice issues back then. You don't even have to go full Susanna Clarke! Once again, there just seemed to be no attempt or effort made to really imagine what this world would actually look, sound and be like. Some of the modern vernacular used makes it more twitter 2022 than Oxford 1837 - examples include "he can’t access it" (as in understand a poem), "too bourgeois", "narco-military state", and many more. The most egregious and tasteless example was a literal "say her name" moment, that made me want to cringe straight out the window. Basically, you know someone’s supposed to be a good guy because they act and speak like a modern person, and a bad guy because they act and speak (a little) more old-fashioned.
In fact, the overall lack of imagination is the worst part of this book. The author has a very defensive note right at the start about an oyster dinner that impressed her in her own life, and how she wanted to replicate that experience. So she just stuck it in unchanged, with no effort to make it historically accurate, it’s utterly baffling. And all that for what's ultimately one sentence, while gliding over every other historical inaccuracy in this book? Truly bizarre.
And this just reminds me of every issue I had with Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations. In that book, climate change has gotten so bad that most animals have died off, including all insects… but people grow and eat their own vegetables. Sea levels have grown rapidly due to warming... but people in Ireland still live in stone cottages by the sea playing diddly-dee music to random strangers. I could go on, but the point is the fatal lack of imagination. Both Kuang and McConaghy make the, to my tastes anyway, mistake of sacrificing logic to the overarching metaphor they want their story to be.
And that doesn’t even get to the multitude of extremely patronising footnotes dotted throughout the text. I don’t know whether the author didn’t have enough confidence in her own writing, or none in her intended audience, but she seems to feel the need to explain every reference, or make trite statements like "slavery was bad" or "that guy is a bad racist". Like, yes, thank you, I could figure that out for myself. It’s like all the worst cliches people say about Gen Z needing everything to be morally black and white and explicitly spelt out. Kuang tries to have a few discussions of grey morality, but it’s incredibly shallow and unconvincing. A few were narratively appropriate, but mostly I was rolling my eyes every time.
The main character Robin is a wide-eyed, naive wet blanket, with brief, unconvincing flashes of being less of one. None of his weather vane emotional turns made any sense to me, other than plot convenience. Oh, but then he suddenly turns into Rambo at the end, great, totally convincing. All the other characters are mostly bland archetypes as well, as if the author had a set checklist of personality types to include. Or maybe they’re just there so every time the story grinds to a halt for an exposition dump on why colonialism/racism/etc. is wrong, it’s not always the same person. And don’t even get me started on Griffin. Ultimately, I felt like I didn’t get to know any of the characters as real people, and so couldn’t care what happened to them.
Basically, this is a book where subtlety and nuance go to die. It’s also repetitive - I think I counted at least three "in retrospect, it was the best time of their lives" and Robin is constantly saying "I’m sorry, I didn’t know" every time a shocking and tragic backstory is revealed. The plot is pretty predictable, which wouldn’t be so annoying if the world-building wasn’t so mid.
So overall, I couldn’t recommend this to anyone, maybe someone who was pretty young and terminally naive about history/the world? But then this book has apparently been crazy popular, so what do I know. Apologies for the rant, but this was excruciatingly long and I am stupidly stubborn, so I had to get it off my chest.
joelleypark's review
4.0
almost made me cry at the end. an epic story that i didn't expect to be so dark (before knowing what r. f. kuang's books are like lmao). the last quarter of the book was intense
faithharmony's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
ainsleymckee's review
80 pages in and I just don’t care what happens next. I’m surprised because I know people love this one. Maybe would try again, likely just my mood need something faster/lighter.
reinasultan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I honestly am not even sure what to say other than “damn.” I had a hard time getting into it at first but then I was enraptured by the plot but even more so the characters who I was so invested in. They were forced to make impossible decisions to fight against empire and I was sobbing when they did. Want to talk about this with someone but R.F. Kuang is a really special writer.
junod4t's review against another edition
4.0
4.5
I feel like I am alone when I say that I absolutely loved the craft and tone of the first half much more than the second.
I hoped that the events that eventually played out, as well as the characters, were a little more fleshed out, but I still deeply enjoyed the social commentary on British Imperialism
I loved how much inspiration Kuang took from Susanna Clarke with her approach to writing this book, the footnotes really added a nice touch for some historical context.
I feel like I am alone when I say that I absolutely loved the craft and tone of the first half much more than the second.
I hoped that the events that eventually played out, as well as the characters, were a little more fleshed out, but I still deeply enjoyed the social commentary on British Imperialism
I loved how much inspiration Kuang took from Susanna Clarke with her approach to writing this book, the footnotes really added a nice touch for some historical context.
ogatka's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0