Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Babel by R.F. Kuang

543 reviews

bookcheshirecat's review

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.0

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?” 

➽ 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Violence, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Drug use, and Slavery

sparky101015's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

Holy cow. This is fantastic. There's language play, fast friends, struggle against colonialism and white supremacy. It is so elegantly and cleverly written and I dare you not to let it break your heart.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Suicide, Torture, Xenophobia, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Slavery and Islamophobia

themoostconfused's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny 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? Yes

5.0

"That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands." (pg. 535)

I don't even know where to begin. R. F. Kuang has done it again. She has rattled me, shaken me to my core and I thank her for it. Going into it - having read the entire Poppy War series - I knew I was not bound for a happy, carefree book. Coming from an anthropology background, the extent of human destruction and hatred of "the other" it not news to me but it continues to move me every time. 

I can already sense that I will return to this book over and over again in the future and will recommend it to everyone I come across, although not without warning. 

The book's alternate title "The Necessity of Violence" captures the journey this book takes one on while reading quite succinctly, althought the extent of this might not seem obvious upon first glance.

In the process I have learned a great deal about linguistics and am planning on dealving into that further. But first I am going to have to digest what I have become witness to by reading this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Islamophobia, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation

Minor: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Drug use, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Grief, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, and Classism

terranstorm's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

The messy, flawed characters moved me. As did their struggle against power and entitlement, but nothing quite as much as the ways they clung to each other and hurt each other and tried to make sense of each other. More plot-driven than character-driven on the whole, and the cleverness (academic and otherwise) of the world the author created is really something special, but it was the main characters' difficult decisions and personal griefs that kept me dialed in.

The message(s) of this book are not subtle. It got a bit heavy-handed for a while (especially during the strike), but then the character relationships would save it again. I'll also add that I was not on board with the footnotes at first... not until about halfway through. It had to grow on me, needed time to develop the sense of that narrative frame and what it was for (other than either over-explaining or making smart-ass quips). But I think the footnote device earned its keep in the end. I felt it played a strong part in the unfolding commentary on translation/betrayal, colonization and extraction, even on how western scholars typically annotate eastern texts half to death... as a way of co-opting the narrative, the Englishman staying in frame. So chalk one up to the author for pulling it off.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture and Xenophobia

Moderate: Confinement, Death, and Violence

Minor: Death of parent

lemilysnikda's review

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Xenophobia, Colonisation, War, and Classism

endlessly_jasmine's review

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Sexism, Torture, Violence, and Blood

Minor: Drug use and War

inkysplodge's review against another edition

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicide, Death of parent, and Colonisation

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Blood, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and War

Minor: Alcoholism, Child death, Cursing, Drug use, Gun violence, Excrement, Vomit, Islamophobia, and Sexual harassment

joshkiba13's review against another edition

informative mysterious reflective tense 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

5.0

I reeaaallly wish I'd not also been swamped with school as I read this. It seriously would have been a 10 to 14 day read had I not had (literallly) 900-1,000 pages of assigned school readings for the quarter. Still, Babel takes place over several years at Oxford University, so having it be an intermittent and prolonged delight had its own charms, in a way.

I loved this book. It was my by first R. F. Kuang, and it was so atmospheric and immersive (again, maybe it helped that I was also in school, lol). I loved the chapters watching Robin grow up and question his relationship with his guardian and with Britain as a whole. My Race and American history course happened to touch on the Opium Wars between Britain and China as I was reading this, and we talked a lot about colonialism in general too, so lots of crossover haha.

As someone who has learned a second language, I was soo intrigued by the translation-based magic system, and I loved all the notes and explanations of different translations and lost meanings. It was all such a clever concept. 

Absolutely adored Robin's relationship with Ramy, Victoire, and Letty, his cohort at Oxford. Beyond the academia portion of the novel, it explored some heavy concepts about imperialism, race, rebellion, and power. The ending surprised me, and left me with powerful things go consider. Even though the story takes place in the mid 1800s, many of the moral quandaries remain as relevant today as they did back then.

Again, I wish I could have absorbed the story more regularly, but I really have no gripes about the book. It was a 5/5, and was would be a special treat for anyone who speaks two languages, is an immigrant, or a POC. Which reminds me, knowing the author is Chinese American, it added another level of depth to Robin, since I assume R. F. Kuang poured many of her own experiences into Robin's story. Great stuff :))

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide, Torture, and Death of parent

Minor: Bullying, Racial slurs, Racism, and Blood

annakh16's review against another edition

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

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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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racial slurs, and Racism

Moderate: Child abuse, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Xenophobia, Car accident, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Minor: Drug use