Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Babel

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

4 reviews

evan_tually's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective tense medium-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? Yes

4.0

I chewed through Babel in a little over a week, and it’s the kind of book that eggs you on. The clock says it’s 1AM but there’s an inherent need to know what happens next. Its characters live and die by the colonial machine that is the British Empire, and it would kill you to wait till tomorrow to learn how they survive. A boy’s journey to resistance and liberation is painful to put down for a weekend. And towards the end, when you find yourself running out of pages, there’s simply not enough time for them to win, to thrive, and for their lives to be satisfying. How could they live? How could they love?

And yet, it’s over in a quick, confident decision.

In short, the book is fun to read. In my English classes I struggled with Victorian authors like Dickens and the Brontë sisters, but the way Kuang writes is so approachable. She maintains a Victorian-style voice peppered with contemporary dialog and colonial analysis. It feels old and new. Even though these characters would live over a century ago, their struggles are still relevant in our present struggles. Capitalism and colonialism have been and still are gluttonous. They’re still killing us.

Perhaps that’s why Kuang’s prose reads more easily than the authors of the time. She’s crafted characters and stories that are fantastical yet still informed by history. Much research went into its historical pseudo-accuracy, its magic system, and its linguistics. Kuang writes so lovingly and respectfully that you can’t help but empathize and relate Robin’s struggles to your own. You can’t help but wonder- what could I do for liberation?

For those who are very informed on history and politics, a lot of the themes won’t feel new. For some, Babel will feel like the first decolonial/anticolonial novel you'd introduce to someone. It arguably doesn’t add anything new to this discourse, and is more interested in fantasizing what acting towards our liberation looks like. And it does that well for the most part.

Where I take some issue with Kuang’s prose is the heavy hand she takes with her messaging. The result is little room for subtext, as when Griffin explains to Robin how Babel is not actually a place to discover knowledge:
‘How does all the power from foreign languages just somehow accrue to England? This is no accident; this is a deliberate exploitation of foreign culture and foreign resources. The professors like to pretend that the tower is a refuge for pure knowledge, that it sits above the mundane concerns of business and commerce, but it does not. It’s intricately tied to the business of colonialism. It is the business of colonialism. Ask yourself why the Literature Department only translates works into English and not the other way around, or what the interpreters are being sent abroad to do. Everything Babel does is in the service of expanding the Empire…’ (100)

One of Babel’s central themes is about how all parties under a colonial state are complicit in its colonial violence, regardless of the degree of direct involvement. A soldier who murders people to make room for settlers is aided by a scholar who negotiates on the state’s behalf. And the people who enjoy resources extracted from this land enjoy settler-colonial violence whether they realize it or not.But Kuang doesn’t necessarily let the reader come to this conclusion themselves. As Robin spouts revolutionary ideals to cover for his friends (263) or realizes his disgust at how British opium affects the Chinese (317), all this messaging is direct to the reader. The room for analysis is shrunk, and thus, by the end it can feel that Babel has overstayed its welcome. This further exacerbates feelings that none of the messaging is new, though, if this is your first time learning about these topics, it’s still a fun exploration.

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athryn's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

2.5

I mostly enjoyed this book, especially the first half. I really found the exploration of languages and translation to be good.

It ultimately ended up a bit stale to me, like the author had a really good grasp of the translation and language stuff, and yet wasn't all that great at actually writing historical fantasy. The characters at Oxford really didn't resonate with me as much as I'd like. The constant modern phrasing in the dialogue just felt off. Don't get me wrong, I love a "fuck the British Empire" and "fuck capitalism" book, but this just ... I dunno. It feels overrated.

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bloomed's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

aseel_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense 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? Yes

4.0

i really enjoyed the social critique this book had on academia, colonisation, empire, knowledge etc. i actually really like the footnotes, there were not too many of them. it was definitely quite slow in the middle and the big thing that happened, i had been waiting all book for it to happen. i think it had a realistic ending and i like the blend of history and magic that the author managed. i do think i didn't care that much for the characters themselves, just their circumstances.

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