A review by mcmah303
Babel by R.F. Kuang

3.0

The magic wasn't quite as magical as I expected; all of the events that silver was blamed for in the book actually happened in real life without the magic during the industrial revolution. Additionally, while I think the premise of this story was very interesting, as an exploration of the experience of foreigners in 1830s London it fell a little flat for me because the author skips over the formative childhood experiences of the characters after they are taken from their homelands; this makes it difficult to understand their mindsets and motivations throughout the book. I have now read two books by the author, this one and Yellowface, and my impression is that she wants to say something about race relations, but often misses the important intersections with class in the interactions her foreign/ethnic minority characters, who are in positions of social and economic privilege, have with the white people they interact with. This makes the main characters seem very holier-than-thou and naive to the struggles that marginalized people, either of an ethnic minority or of lower socioeconomic status face. In fact, none of the main characters ever have a meaningful interaction with a non-member of either Oxford specifically or a governing official on the page. Overall, this was an interesting premise but I think it failed to explore its own themes deeply enough to be compelling. I was very excited to finally get a chance to read this one, but was disappointed in the execution.