A review by hflh
Babel by R.F. Kuang

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

 So good, but some disappointments. 
 
Reasons not to pick up: 
This reads like a detached historical account of events that happen over 4 years, honed in on the perspective of Robin. If you want to spend a lot of time seeing vs. being told about character development and relationships, this won’t be it.  Kuang also leans hard into the language nerd and school aspect so you might not enjoy if you’re not here for class lectures and lots of tangents on the meaning of language. Also lots of footnotes that provide historical and narrative context if you tend to not like that. Feels a bit pretentious at times. 
 
What’s great: 
If you are a nerd for language and breaking down the meaning of words, this will be really exciting. Kuang does the academia setting so well.  The footnotes are great - providing very dry, meta commentary from the narrator that was often very funny. The characters are great. And the magic system is very very cool (but soft if you don’t like that). 
 
There are lots of strong and very relevant critiques surrounding colonization, including ideas on translation as a colonial tool and whether you can fight the system from within. However, I was a bit surprised some of these ideas weren’t explored in more depth. The book primarily makes a few high-level points repetitively and can lack subtlety. But, it's still great sitting with the characters and being angry with them about everything unjust and wanting to take action. 
 
What might disappoint: 
The pacing is very uneven. I found the beginning incredibly boring, but it picked up for me once Robin went to school. The middle is slower which I didn’t mind. Then the end is breakneck fast which was amazing but it felt like it escalated way too quickly. I would have liked more time developing things leading up to the climax. 
 
There isn’t much time with the main characters outside Robin which costs later when you have to trust the narrator/character dialogue to tell you about the key character traits that are behind conflicts and motivations. 
 
Most of these disappointments I didn’t mind too much but my gosh was the heavy-handed foreshadowing so annoying. Not even just obvious offhand foreshadowing - like if I ever hear some variation of “Everything was great…They had no idea it was all going to fall apart.” one more time…. !!! 

Major TW:
The content of this book is very heavy and very real. Some more specific TW than what the SG feature has:
Literally anything you'd expect related to racism - microaggressions, macroagressions including physical violence and stereotypes, white fragility and ignorance, tokenism. Anything you'd expect with colonization, cultural appropriation, and capitalism - exploitation, paternalism, active and sinister efforts to exert force and control, awful treatment of the working class, neglect of those impoverished. Some other things related to growing up as a marginalized immigrant in a white supremacist society - grief over loss of language and culture, complicated desire to fit in. Also just exhaustion, hurt, anger, etc. from living in a horrible system that is so hard to change.
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