Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Babel

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Babel by R.F. Kuang

522 reviews

misszierose's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring tense fast-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

5.0

This is a dense, erudite, and dark book. I truly believe everyone who loves language and books and believes in basic human rights even if people different from you should at least attempt this book. It is so important especially in the social and political and cultural time we are currently living through. Our choices matter. People deserve respect. Knowledge is power. Who holds that power is something that can alter the whole world’s future.

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endlessallison's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring 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? Yes

5.0

This book is so relevant to today and captures the perspectives of both the colonizers and the colonized on such beautifully blunt painful ways I truly believe everyone should read it.

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danieriv's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

Long, tedious exposition that isn’t entirely necessary to the main plot of the book. Highly academic writing that you truly have to focus on to understand the book. The writing itself is very good, but this is not a leisure read.

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aidamaria_reads's review against another edition

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

5.0

This is a literary middle finger to colonialism, capitalism, racism, classism, sexism and all the other -isms, basically. I admire the way the author came up with the magic system (as a former translation student, it was truly amazing) and how it plays into the historical setting. The writing was wonderful. I wonder how long we’ve got until some government(s) bans this book.

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splashcat360's review

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challenging informative inspiring 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

4.5

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amyradak's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This book was very well written, and I appreciated the very important points made about the horrors of colonialism as well as the xenophobia, racism, sexism etc. of the very insular academic world of 1830s England. These themes and others made for a very rich book club discussion. I also LOVED the Oxford setting, and found myself happily sinking into the campus environment as Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty advanced through their education at Babel college.

That said, by the end of the book I realized that I did not enjoy the reading experience . Beginning at about the 70% mark when

Robin murders professor Lovell

the book did a complete 180 from the a compelling, well-told dark academia novel to a chaotic, frenetic series of murder cover-ups, mental deterioration, and terrorism plots. We learned next to nothing about Hermes until the last 30% of the book, at which time we became fully immersed in Hermes underworld and their life-or-death game of trying to remain hidden while bringing colonialism down from within the walls of Babel. Everything began to move so fast that key pieces of the plot were not fully fleshed out and required quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. By the end, people were outright murdering each other out of hatred and mania. Robin changed from a meek, mild-mannered student - not into a dedicated, rational champion of the anti-colonialism cause, but into a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac. I understand that the point of the novel was to make the reader consider whether violence is necessary to take down insidious institutions like colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. And I'm not saying it isn't necessary. I'm simply saying I didn't enjoy reading about it, and I also didn't enjoy that by the end of the book almost everyone had so much blood on their hands that I couldn't in good conscience root for them. I think I identified most with the mindset of Victoire who couldn't stand to see the casualties being wrought on civilians by Robin's actions, and who simply wanted to live too much to

go down in flames with Babel itself

. I did get very emotional at the end when everyone in the tower at Babel had to choose whether to

run or stay inside Babel while Robin brought it down on them

, and it was very hard to watch Robin go through with his plan. Overall, the last third of the book was a too bleak, violent, and chaotic for me to consider this an enjoyable reading experience.

Quotes I bookmarked

Ch. 1: "He understood the necessity of gratitude. Of deference. One did not spite ones saviors."

Ch. 7: "They argued endlessly, the way bright young people with well-fed egos and too many opinions do."

Ch. 8: "I don't think you two quite understand how hard it is to be a woman here," said Victoire. "They're liberal on paper, certainly, but they think so very little of us...Every weakness we display is a testament to the worst theories about us, which is that we're fragile, we're hysterical, and we're too naturally weak-minded to hand the kind of work we're set to do."

Ch. 9: "We hold the secrets, and we can set whatever terms we like. That's the beauty of being cleverer than everyone else. "

Ch. 9: "...for he had never been happier than he was now, stretched thin, too preoccupied with the next thing before him to pay any attention to how it all fitted together."

Ch. 12: "It was actually easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away."

Ch. 17: “These trade networks were carved in stone. Nothing was pushing this arrangement off its course; there were too many private interests, too much money at stake. They could see where it was going, but the people who had the power to do anything about it had been placed in positions where they would profit, and the people who suffered most had no power at all.”

Ch. 19: "It was relaxing in a way, to imagine the very worst that could happen, since it took the terror out of the unknown."

Ch. 20: "But you think the thing is martyrdom. You think if you suffer enough, for whatever sins you've committed, then you're absolved." "...Every time you come up against something difficult, you just want to make it go away. And you think the way to do that is with self-flagellation. You're obsessed with punishment."

Ch. 20: "It would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Lettie, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comforting."

Ch. 23: " abolition happened because white people found reasons to care, whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves. You can't appeal to their inner goodness. I have never met an Englishman I've trusted to do the right thing out of sympathy."

Ch. 24: "They both thought this was a matter of individual fortunes, instead of systematic oppression. And neither could see outside the perspective of people who looked and spoke just like them."

Ch. 25: "Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against it's own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence"

Interlude: "They'd beaten the system. Why in God's name did they want to break it as well?"

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