Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Babel

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

546 reviews

pvid's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative inspiring sad tense fast-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

There is so much to love about this book. The magic system -- powered by the meaning lost when translating words from one language to another -- is really interesting, and the political theory questions driving the book are compelling. You can definitely tell this book is written by a scholar, as there are many references to academic texts from political theory and linguistics, and many of the questions raised are extremely relevant to modern life: Who benefits and who loses from technological advancement? Is there a moral way to engage with an immoral system? Is a 'revolution of ideas' really possible, or is violence the answer?

Although the book is loosely structured around life at a magic school, these political debates drive the plot as well as the characterization. It's kind of like Harry Potter, except Voldemort is the British Empire. This means that many of the characters are stand-ins for certain political ideologies or viewpoints. The main character, Robin, is definitely the most developed, but his actions and interactions are all analogies for those political debates. His interactions with, for example, his guardian, the Oxford professor Richard Lovell, are always primarily symbolic of how colonizers interact with the colonized.

I'm really interested in these debates, so I loved the book, and the plot moved quickly and was engaging, so I was hooked, and read it a lot faster than I would have expected given its length. That's why I gave it 5 stars -- I just really enjoyed it.

That being said, I really wish some of the characters were more complex and that their stories were integrated more as the story was unfolding. Because Kuang needed to cover so much plot so quickly, character and relationship development really took a back seat.

For instance, she tells us many times that Robin and his friends loved each other. I wish we could have seen those relationships develop, so that we could love the characters, too. There are also a couple of chapters that switch POV and just summarize the backstories of important characters. In another case, there is a dramatic confrontation between two characters, but the readers and Robin both have no context for why the confrontation is so dramatic -- Kuang explains the backstory in a short footnote.

The upshot is that these characters felt more like archetypes than real people, and that some of the more emotional moments are blunted. There were so many missed opportunities, and it really makes me wish Kuang wrote this story as a series, instead. (A TV adaptation could be a great opportunity to explore these characters -- but on the other hand, I don't think any corporate project would go hard enough on the politics.)

I still gave it 5 stars though, because I could tell Kuang made these choices in service of the political ideas she wanted to explore. It's a book that I really want to discuss with other people. It'd be great for a progressive book club.

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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

laffi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative 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

4.5

Great work, but I saw about every plot twist coming miles ago

I predicted that

Ramy would die

at the start of the book, I saw the

Griffin/Anthony/Evie/Sterling history

Lovell being Robins father

Babel being destroyed by the translate-silver-work

, and many more.

Great book nevertheless

Content Warnings

teawitchontravel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative 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

4.75

Content Warnings

bedtimesnack's review

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inspiring mysterious 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

4.25

If you were a fan of Harry Potter as a kid, reading Babel might scratch the itch for some magic/dark academia vibes. I was engaged with the plot the whole time, and the magic system was unique and well thought through. I would say the book's biggest fault is that it serves answers and interpretation a bit too readily. Themes of colonialism and racism are handled more openly as part of the plot and dialogue, so there's not a whole lot of poetic subtly going on. If you like to decipher meaning and plot yourself, you might not find what you're looking for with this book.

That being said, R.F. Kuang does handle the themes well, and portrays several viewpoints on assimilation, resistance, microaggressions, and class consciousness from multiple characters of color.

Content Warnings