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challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ok so, I genuinely really enjoyed this book and found myself devouring hundred-page chunks at a time. But, I have some gripes with fundamental aspects of it, which is why it resides in the 3.5-star section of my brain.
Let’s start with the good, of which there was a lot. Firstly, excellent, engaging premise and plot. The story follows young translator Robin Swift as he is taken from his motherland of China as a child to live with translation professor Richard Lovell in England, where he is extensively tutored in language and translation, with the intention of joining the Oxford Institute of Translation - Babel. He makes it to Babel and is enraptured by and enveloped in academia, the beauty of language, and his cohort. Not only is translation a crucial literary and legal tool, but it is also a magic tool. Silver-working is a magic system based on translation and the inevitable loss when things are translated. The magic and beauty of Babel blind Robin to the injustices of Oxford’s colonial mission, but eventually, he can no longer turn a blind eye, and we dive into politicking, betrayal, war and sacrifice - good, solid plot.
‘We use the languages of other countries to enrich this one … we take so much knowledge that isn’t ours.’
Another thing I adored was the characters. As I have said many a time, I love a found family. Robin’s cohort was complex and intoxicating and toxic and beautiful, and I loved them. I love an overwhelming, co-dependent, and disillusioned friend group (see The Secret History on my favourites shelf). The teachers and other Babel students were also solid characters, if a little tropey. This whole book was kind of tropey, or it was predictable where each character would go and who they would turn out to be.
Ramy, Victorie, and Letty - they became the colours of Robin’s life, the only regular contact he had with the world outside his coursework. They needed each other because they had no one else.
Finally, this book is thoroughly researched, and you can see Kuang’s knowledge of and love for languages shine through the lectures, lessons, and characters. Robin’s looking to Chinese when he needed to explain an emotion was so lovely, and the lectures from the professors were genuinely endlessly fascinating. I loved the concept of silver-working, although it sometimes felt like a mildly lazy metaphor for power and industry. The themes were a bit on the nose for me, but I understand the necessity of this explicitness, especially when publishing in 2022. Sometimes we need “colonialism bad” literally spelt out for us. I liked the moral quandaries of peaceful lobbying vs violence and the ending.
‘How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?’
Now, onto the less good. To start, this was almost overwhelmingly 2022. The conceptualisations of race and ethnicity, religion and identity were so modern. I understand it is very difficult to understand past (and some contemporary) understandings of race and identity, but at least give it a shot. Also, some of the racism spouted by Professor Lovell felt like it was copied and pasted from The Poppy War series. Sure, there was a particular image of Chinese people in the past, but at least try to differentiate English academics in the 1830s from Hesperian scientists and missionaries from the fantasy 1930s. Also (again), the final part dragged on, the pacing was overall very good, but that last book was a bit of a slog of repeated conversions and facts about strikes and sieges.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
Finally, my biggest issue with this book was the goddamn footnotes. They took me out of the book every time I had to read one. Some of them could have just been slightly altered and placed in the text (pp. 186, 316, 480), and others had literally no place anywhere in the book at all. It was either Kuang trying to be witty and funny (pp. 49, 247) or explicitly explaining a theme to her readers (pp. 16, 139). If you think your readers need to be handheld and guided so carefully through extremely obvious ideas of racism, maybe alter the writing. We got the point, I promise. If this book had been written as a history, the footnotes would have made sense, but it was written from Robin's subjective (third-person limited) POV. We were privy to his feelings, so it did not make sense for random historical facts to be thrown in the book. The footnotes translating words were good and necessary, but half a page of a tangent about historical racism (p. 156, 174, 491) completely ruined my suspension of disbelief, and a short tidbit about Robin’s hijinks and opinions could have been in the text itself (p. 147).
Overall, I did enjoy this book a lot, and I loved scribbling in the margins and frantically texting my reading buddy when something exciting happened. Pretty beautifully written, well-researched and evocative, with a morally grey protagonist, which I now feel are staples of Kaung's work.
Let’s start with the good, of which there was a lot. Firstly, excellent, engaging premise and plot. The story follows young translator Robin Swift as he is taken from his motherland of China as a child to live with translation professor Richard Lovell in England, where he is extensively tutored in language and translation, with the intention of joining the Oxford Institute of Translation - Babel. He makes it to Babel and is enraptured by and enveloped in academia, the beauty of language, and his cohort. Not only is translation a crucial literary and legal tool, but it is also a magic tool. Silver-working is a magic system based on translation and the inevitable loss when things are translated. The magic and beauty of Babel blind Robin to the injustices of Oxford’s colonial mission, but eventually, he can no longer turn a blind eye, and we dive into politicking, betrayal, war and sacrifice - good, solid plot.
‘We use the languages of other countries to enrich this one … we take so much knowledge that isn’t ours.’
Another thing I adored was the characters. As I have said many a time, I love a found family. Robin’s cohort was complex and intoxicating and toxic and beautiful, and I loved them. I love an overwhelming, co-dependent, and disillusioned friend group (see The Secret History on my favourites shelf). The teachers and other Babel students were also solid characters, if a little tropey. This whole book was kind of tropey, or it was predictable where each character would go and who they would turn out to be.
Ramy, Victorie, and Letty - they became the colours of Robin’s life, the only regular contact he had with the world outside his coursework. They needed each other because they had no one else.
Finally, this book is thoroughly researched, and you can see Kuang’s knowledge of and love for languages shine through the lectures, lessons, and characters. Robin’s looking to Chinese when he needed to explain an emotion was so lovely, and the lectures from the professors were genuinely endlessly fascinating. I loved the concept of silver-working, although it sometimes felt like a mildly lazy metaphor for power and industry. The themes were a bit on the nose for me, but I understand the necessity of this explicitness, especially when publishing in 2022. Sometimes we need “colonialism bad” literally spelt out for us. I liked the moral quandaries of peaceful lobbying vs violence and the ending.
‘How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?’
Now, onto the less good. To start, this was almost overwhelmingly 2022. The conceptualisations of race and ethnicity, religion and identity were so modern. I understand it is very difficult to understand past (and some contemporary) understandings of race and identity, but at least give it a shot. Also, some of the racism spouted by Professor Lovell felt like it was copied and pasted from The Poppy War series. Sure, there was a particular image of Chinese people in the past, but at least try to differentiate English academics in the 1830s from Hesperian scientists and missionaries from the fantasy 1930s. Also (again), the final part dragged on, the pacing was overall very good, but that last book was a bit of a slog of repeated conversions and facts about strikes and sieges.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
Finally, my biggest issue with this book was the goddamn footnotes. They took me out of the book every time I had to read one. Some of them could have just been slightly altered and placed in the text (pp. 186, 316, 480), and others had literally no place anywhere in the book at all. It was either Kuang trying to be witty and funny (pp. 49, 247) or explicitly explaining a theme to her readers (pp. 16, 139). If you think your readers need to be handheld and guided so carefully through extremely obvious ideas of racism, maybe alter the writing. We got the point, I promise. If this book had been written as a history, the footnotes would have made sense, but it was written from Robin's subjective (third-person limited) POV. We were privy to his feelings, so it did not make sense for random historical facts to be thrown in the book. The footnotes translating words were good and necessary, but half a page of a tangent about historical racism (p. 156, 174, 491) completely ruined my suspension of disbelief, and a short tidbit about Robin’s hijinks and opinions could have been in the text itself (p. 147).
Overall, I did enjoy this book a lot, and I loved scribbling in the margins and frantically texting my reading buddy when something exciting happened. Pretty beautifully written, well-researched and evocative, with a morally grey protagonist, which I now feel are staples of Kaung's work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Death, Sexism, Murder