Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Babel

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

435 reviews

clovetra's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

ok. i gotta say it. least favourite r.f kuang book right here. which is crazy to say seeing as i haven’t finished the burning god but whatever.

first let me dunk on this book very briefly. i think this book has four issues that hold it back from a perfect novel.

one, rf kuang has set my expectations so high any imperfections seem so glaring when i adore her other works.

two. this book is repetitive at times. when you have 546 pages, i imagine there would be some repetition. but at some point after hearing about how lovell sucks, about how babel sucks, about how colonialism is bad, how exploitation of the lower class for the profits of the upper class sucks, and how racism sucks… i wanted more. which kind of brings up the issue of this book not going deeper with its analysis. ok yes i get it white people are perpetrators of colonialism and racism to the highest degree. now let’s add some more depth to this conversation. Nope! let’s instead

make lovell an almost cartoonish villain, make letty turn on her friends when she had a “redemption arc” coming her way, and have no depth beyond how white people are racist. after a while it felt like every white character became a mythic antagonist. i’m not saying humanise the racists! they can get fucked! especially letty you can eat dog shit at this point. what i am saying is let’s go beyond these fundamentals. rf kuang i know you can do this.

. i don’t think i properly explained what i mean here and i don’t think i actually possess those words. idk i just wanted a deeper analysis of the points kuang raises in this book. and this seems to be the issue with all themes in this book. the theme is explored in a surface way, and then fail to dig deeper and instead we get the same line rewritten every 20 pages. RF KUANG YOU CAN DO BETTER.

this also leads me onto the fact that there is no nuance in this book. everything must be black or white. britain is good or britain is bad. lovell is good or lovell is bad. babel is good or babel is bad. i expected MORE than just surface-level conversations that i’d expect to see on twitter.

robin sucks. robin swift the character isn’t a bad guy, he’s just badly written. at points he goes from the most obvious audience surrogate in the world, to someone with wants dreams and aspirations, to yet again as fleshed out as cardboard. at points robin felt so raw and honest, and other times he felt like he was just doing and saying shit just because the plot beckoned him to, not because that’s what his character would do. because he has no character!!!!! gun to my head other than listing characteristics of robin (e.g orphaned, chinese, a babbler), i could not name you 3 traits he has. i mean i could say he’s a good friend and that’s it.

and let me just say - this book is boring at times. straight up i did not care about this book until The Big Thing. like before that ok i was into this book, but i wasn’t gripped. there is no plot. there is no tension. and don’t sit here and tell me “oh it’s a school story at that point of course there’s no tension” SHUT UP. the poppy war’s school setting ate AND had a good plot. i don’t know what happened here shorty but it wasn’t great! it was fine. passable. tolerable. but not truly interesting.

ok now ive shit on this book let me tell you what i DID i like.

the linguistic side. idk it made this book feel more real. plus you could tell it was interesting and deeply researched
ramy. my love. my dear. you are babygrill. 🫶
after canton 2: electric bugaloo, the book REALLLLYYY gripped me. like i was HOOKED. i think from there i literally finished the rest of this book in one day.
the first half of this book was great in terms of atmosphere ! i actually was really digging it ! but after a while i realised the points raised weren’t really going to go past the basics i became a bit disillusioned

ummm otherwise idk what to say. i mean i very clearly had a good time reading this. i was invested and will always adore rf kuang’s writing. but this? this is a fall from grace compared to the beauty that is the poppy war trilogy.

i’m such a hater oh my god

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lemilysnikda's review

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dark informative sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

endlessly_jasmine's review

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

If you have never thought critically about imperialism and its consequences, then congratulations, this book is for you! Subtlety and nuance are clearly concepts R.F. Kuang is unfamiliar with, so you'll be able to follow her thoughts on imperialism and racism with no issues.

2.5 stars because the concept had potential and could have amounted to something much better if the author had devoted more time and pages to world building and character development instead of repeatedly telling the reading that imperialism is bad and only benefits the rich and powerful.

Content Warnings

inkysplodge's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

annakh16's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Ah. She gets it.

I’ve held off on writing this review for a little while, mainly to process. I feel like I have a lot and at the same time very little to say. The key thing is that the intensity of emotions this book induces - the betrayal and guilt and grief - is such a poignant way to bring its message to the public. And for that, hats off.

More “superficial” things first: the language nerd in me adored having a magic system based around translation. Additionally, I found the footnotes very effective as a method of world-building, as they made it feel like a real history. I also loved all of the thinkers and literary references included.

The Plato quote right at the end nearly made me cry in the office

Really, I had so many thoughts about 3/4 in regarding how cleverly this book was set up and how much I appreciated the analysis. And then it just went a bunch of places I didn’t think it would and that made it so much better.

In my opinion, the pacing was off around the middle - there were too many repetitive bits and the plot dragged. But the ending brought this back a hundred times over.

Griffin was my favourite character for most of it, not because he’s overly likeable though. The clarity of his conviction and analysis, as well as how much he predicts correctly made for a pessimistic but poignant reading. I truly didn’t expect Robin to follow in his footsteps. To see this play out - the conclusion of the themes of this book so clearly brought onto the page, not to be inferred, not to be denied - was a welcome if very sad surprise

An incoherent review for a not at all incoherent novel. Overall, while parts of this book were a little raw, I loved it. There are many quotes and moments I will carry with me from now on and I’m already “looking forward” to re-reading it.

Content Warnings

pencilspeaker's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

luxton's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

This is an emotionally intense, dark, and long book. I had to take a break halfway to read something lighter because I felt myself starting to resent the bleakness of it all.

But I'm glad I stuck with it, and overall I felt invested throughout the story, unlike some other bleak books I've read in the past. The ending was (minor/vague spoilers)

devastating

and I'm still processing it all. It didn't feel dark just for the sake of it either, the emotional heaviness of the story was used very intentionally to reflect the past and present of the real world that we live in.

I think this will sit with me for a long time.

Content Warnings

peachmoni's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring 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? No

4.5

Content Warnings

gologel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I liked the author's writing style and the insights into translation theory, you could really tell how much of a passion it is for her and it transferred onto me. I also liked the unique perspective we take through the characters.

However, there are a few aspects I didn't like. Characterizations as well as plot points felt very often told instead of shown. I didn't form attachement to any of the characters because they felt flat and one-dimensional, two-dimensional at most. Especially

Letty's development from (blindly privileged to) bad to antagonist

seemed rather forced than natural/completely logical to me.
Also, some conversations, especially at the end, felt too academic and not really fitting for the intimate two-people-setting.
And I was disappointed that

Hermes (in Babel) was basically killed off and the last act of revolution was done by two/three characters we know and a bunch of randoms

. I couldn't care less.

Overall, I liked the book and it offered a unique story, but it also had it's weaknesses in execution.

Content Warnings

readingrinasrealm's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

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