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A review by asterope
Babel by R.F. Kuang
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
Where to start with this one? This is another long review, because I have so many different feelings. This book starts off with one of my favourite themes: dark academia. The feeling of discovery, new friends and the devouring of knowledge. I usually read two books at once, but I had to pause the other one. Babel demanded all of my attention.
I’ll start with what I loved, as this was the first half of the book. While I totally get why another reader would find it too slow, I loved the pace. The atmosphere of Oxford and life as a student was given great attention to detail. The book captured the same vibe of academic discovery that I've loved from my favourites, like The Secret History and Harry Potter. The main character, Robin, even reminded me a lot of Harry in the beginning. I liked him a lot as a protagonist.
There are a lot of notes in this book. Some of the notes verge on preachy. Some are funny, some are insightful. I particularly loved the note that mentioned the legendary Gropecunt Lane. But by the end, I was skipping them because I got tired of them. The information in the notes should have just been part of the actual text. But I’ll come back to that later.
The writing is poetic, rich and enthralling. So much research was put into this. I found Babel did better at incorporating real world history than The Poppy War. However, a similarity with TPW was that the dialogue is too modern and jarring. Sometimes the characters talk about racism as if it's 2022.
I loved that the four students immediately bond over their shared experiences with being excluded and attacked over their identities in 19th century Britain. At the start, I wrote myself a note to say that I'll be sad if they end up becoming enemies and being divided. They were just so happy at finding friends they can relate to!
The magic of silver-working was really well embedded. I guess it helps that the rest of the worldbuilding is so close to our own, so it seems very realistic. The ideas behind match-pairs were so clever. I devoured all the lore about how the pairs were created using translations.
At about halfway through, things take a turn. Death and rebellion mean the characters now have a chance to take down the empire. From this point onwards, I felt it lacked nuance. It was missing the complexity that made me love another series about taking down an empire, The Masquerade (The Traitor Baru Cormorant). It made for a strange reading experience, because I love the ideas in the book - the relationships between language, colonialism and empire. And the 1830s Britain Kuang portrays is very realistic, even with silver-working. It's barely fantasy. But the writing has barely any of the corresponding nuance that real life has.
I wish we could have seen more from the other characters’ POVs. We got glimpses, but nothing substantial. Especially for Victoire and Letty. I know Robin is the main character, but this disappointed me, because they were introduced as being this tight unit of BFFs. I know multiple POVs are so common these days, but I really think this book would have been enhanced by some variety.The others were so one note. Letty was particularly reduced down to Evil White Woman. And we didn't even get to see why Victoire found their friendship abusive, because there was no input from Victoire herself until the epilogue. The book just tells us after the betrayal that apparently Letty sucked all along. For being the one surviving 'good guy' character, I was disappointed that Victoire barely got any screentime. The importance of the kinship she found in Anthony seemed to be added into the epilogue as an afterthought, because we never saw it in the rest of the book.
The intersectionality aspect of how Victoire and Letty experience 1830s Britain as women was really downplayed. At the beginning they got to explain how they have to dress as men to access the libraries and such, but it really fell off the map as the book progressed. There's one Letty interlude near the end, but it's so weighted against her. So I really couldn't buy the four of them as best friends because of how thin the characterisation was for Ramy, Victoire and Letty.
Because the relationships of the cohort lacked depth, I didn't feel the sense of tragedy and impending doom that was hinted at in the beginning. Babel describes itself as a response to The Secret History (along with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I haven’t read), so naturally I compared the characters here with those of Hampden College. Fascinating characters are one of the features I look for in a good book. But Babel really fell short with this.
The last quarter of the book became very dramatic and fast-paced.Finding out the tragedy of Griffin’s cohort and how those events shaped him as a character through a note was ridiculous. This should have been part of the actual book - his actual characterisation. After his contrived death and discovering his backstory through a note, along with Ramy’s unnecessary death too, I lost much of my motivation to finish the book. It annoyed me that the writing even acknowledged how silly it was to find this out through a note. Griffin’s cohort could have been such a great introduction to Babel. Maybe even a first book, with Robin’s cohort following in a sequel.
The occupation of the tower felt contrived. The narrative deftly removed any real resistance from the minor characters to Robin and Victoire’s plan. And then the idea of bringing down the tower…it was just not well written enough to convince me that the others were happy to die for this. We barely knew the other scholars. At this point, the plot was so contrived in order to elicit certain emotions from the reader, I couldn't buy it.
In the second half of the book, I was really trying hard to maintain my love for this book. It started off so well! But the Griffin note thing tipped me over the edge into realising this book really isn't as good as I was hoping. I’m not saying it was bad, but after all the hype, it certainly turned out more meh than I expected.
3.75 stars. The fascinating linguistic analysis and creativity with the silver-working was excellent. But I can’t give it a 4, because when you look past these, the book is missing a lot of what would have made it brilliant: nuance, complexity and character depth.
I’ll start with what I loved, as this was the first half of the book. While I totally get why another reader would find it too slow, I loved the pace. The atmosphere of Oxford and life as a student was given great attention to detail. The book captured the same vibe of academic discovery that I've loved from my favourites, like The Secret History and Harry Potter. The main character, Robin, even reminded me a lot of Harry in the beginning. I liked him a lot as a protagonist.
There are a lot of notes in this book. Some of the notes verge on preachy. Some are funny, some are insightful. I particularly loved the note that mentioned the legendary Gropecunt Lane. But by the end, I was skipping them because I got tired of them. The information in the notes should have just been part of the actual text. But I’ll come back to that later.
The writing is poetic, rich and enthralling. So much research was put into this. I found Babel did better at incorporating real world history than The Poppy War. However, a similarity with TPW was that the dialogue is too modern and jarring. Sometimes the characters talk about racism as if it's 2022.
I loved that the four students immediately bond over their shared experiences with being excluded and attacked over their identities in 19th century Britain. At the start, I wrote myself a note to say that I'll be sad if they end up becoming enemies and being divided. They were just so happy at finding friends they can relate to!
The magic of silver-working was really well embedded. I guess it helps that the rest of the worldbuilding is so close to our own, so it seems very realistic. The ideas behind match-pairs were so clever. I devoured all the lore about how the pairs were created using translations.
At about halfway through, things take a turn. Death and rebellion mean the characters now have a chance to take down the empire. From this point onwards, I felt it lacked nuance. It was missing the complexity that made me love another series about taking down an empire, The Masquerade (The Traitor Baru Cormorant). It made for a strange reading experience, because I love the ideas in the book - the relationships between language, colonialism and empire. And the 1830s Britain Kuang portrays is very realistic, even with silver-working. It's barely fantasy. But the writing has barely any of the corresponding nuance that real life has.
I wish we could have seen more from the other characters’ POVs. We got glimpses, but nothing substantial. Especially for Victoire and Letty. I know Robin is the main character, but this disappointed me, because they were introduced as being this tight unit of BFFs. I know multiple POVs are so common these days, but I really think this book would have been enhanced by some variety.
The intersectionality aspect of how Victoire and Letty experience 1830s Britain as women was really downplayed. At the beginning they got to explain how they have to dress as men to access the libraries and such, but it really fell off the map as the book progressed. There's one Letty interlude near the end, but it's so weighted against her. So I really couldn't buy the four of them as best friends because of how thin the characterisation was for Ramy, Victoire and Letty.
Because the relationships of the cohort lacked depth, I didn't feel the sense of tragedy and impending doom that was hinted at in the beginning. Babel describes itself as a response to The Secret History (along with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I haven’t read), so naturally I compared the characters here with those of Hampden College. Fascinating characters are one of the features I look for in a good book. But Babel really fell short with this.
The last quarter of the book became very dramatic and fast-paced.
The occupation of the tower felt contrived. The narrative deftly removed any real resistance from the minor characters to Robin and Victoire’s plan. And then the idea of bringing down the tower…it was just not well written enough to convince me that the others were happy to die for this. We barely knew the other scholars. At this point, the plot was so contrived in order to elicit certain emotions from the reader, I couldn't buy it.
In the second half of the book, I was really trying hard to maintain my love for this book. It started off so well! But the Griffin note thing tipped me over the edge into realising this book really isn't as good as I was hoping. I’m not saying it was bad, but after all the hype, it certainly turned out more meh than I expected.
3.75 stars. The fascinating linguistic analysis and creativity with the silver-working was excellent. But I can’t give it a 4, because when you look past these, the book is missing a lot of what would have made it brilliant: nuance, complexity and character depth.