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A review by cody_crumley
Babel by R.F. Kuang
5.0
“But that’s precisely the devil’s trick” Robin insisted. “This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it”
Babel: An Arcane History is like no other book I have ever read. It reads like a fantasy academic textbook with a retelling England’s empire history. What if evolves into is a story that R.F Kuang highlights the racial politics of the British empire in the early 1800’s, the treatment of people who they thought was less of them and the lengths people in power would go to keep their power on their side
The growth of the characters, especially the main cast of four (Robin, Ramy, Victorie, and Letty) The way their dynamics change and mold over the length of the book is one of the most organic character arcs I have seen in a novel.
There were so many moments in this book where the anxiety of the situation kept ratcheting up, with me fully expecting it to calm itself, instead the pressure kept going up and up till the inevitable happens in Book V
I don’t think you can read this book and not come away with wanting more change to happen in our society, in our politics. Even with the time periods being different, there are many modern equivalents that can be drawn from, like the performance of strikes against the government as one example.
There are two more quotes that I think describe this book and what it becomes:
“The world turned upside down. Britain was spilling its own blood, Britain was gouging out its own flesh, and nothing after this could go back to the way it had been before”
“Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right”
I know the length, the style of book this is, could be very off putting or daunting, but I can not recommend this book enough to at least give it a shot. Because once it starts on its journey, Babel is a history that is going to be hard to put down.
Babel: An Arcane History is like no other book I have ever read. It reads like a fantasy academic textbook with a retelling England’s empire history. What if evolves into is a story that R.F Kuang highlights the racial politics of the British empire in the early 1800’s, the treatment of people who they thought was less of them and the lengths people in power would go to keep their power on their side
The growth of the characters, especially the main cast of four (Robin, Ramy, Victorie, and Letty) The way their dynamics change and mold over the length of the book is one of the most organic character arcs I have seen in a novel.
There were so many moments in this book where the anxiety of the situation kept ratcheting up, with me fully expecting it to calm itself, instead the pressure kept going up and up till the inevitable happens in Book V
I don’t think you can read this book and not come away with wanting more change to happen in our society, in our politics. Even with the time periods being different, there are many modern equivalents that can be drawn from, like the performance of strikes against the government as one example.
There are two more quotes that I think describe this book and what it becomes:
“The world turned upside down. Britain was spilling its own blood, Britain was gouging out its own flesh, and nothing after this could go back to the way it had been before”
“Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right”
I know the length, the style of book this is, could be very off putting or daunting, but I can not recommend this book enough to at least give it a shot. Because once it starts on its journey, Babel is a history that is going to be hard to put down.