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nataliareadsalot 's review for:
Babel
by R.F. Kuang
4.5 I can't in good faith give this book a perfect 5 stars because I GET all the issues people have with it. Hey, I have those same issues too. It's incredibly heavy handed and Kuang spoon feeds us, no, force feeds us the point. She quite literally spells things out for us. You can argue that it's because she doesn't trust her readers, but being a book about how things can easily be lost in translation, I'm inclined to think this was purposeful and I don't hate it. I think she wanted to get her point across with little to no room for any misinterpretations and I think a story about the harmful impacts of colonization, to the individual as well as to whole entire nations, requires clear succint points.
Despite feeling the hammer getting hit over my head with the point, I found myself still engaged and enthralled with the story. It was predictiable and long winded, but I was never bored (okay maybe I was bored for like a quarter of a chapter towards the end), but evenso....it was compelling and clever. I dont mind the grievances about the above, because Im just here for a good story and a wild ride. And this book delivered that for me. I feel like this book was Kuang's love letter to language and I ate it up.
Despite feeling the hammer getting hit over my head with the point, I found myself still engaged and enthralled with the story. It was predictiable and long winded, but I was never bored (okay maybe I was bored for like a quarter of a chapter towards the end), but evenso....it was compelling and clever. I dont mind the grievances about the above, because Im just here for a good story and a wild ride. And this book delivered that for me. I feel like this book was Kuang's love letter to language and I ate it up.