lashawnwiltz 's review for:

Babel by R.F. Kuang

3.0

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Ok, so confession: I wasn't going to read this book, but I kept hearing the buzz surrounding it and decided to give it a try.

To recap, Robin Swift, who is orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by Professor Lovel where he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

So this is dark academia. Normally not my wheelhouse. I expected the book to be dense. And I was right. But the gift of the author is that it didn't feel like it was dragging.

Except a few places midway that drag a bit for those of us who are not scholars of linguistics, but it lays the groundwork for the rest of the book.

But even though much of the linguistics and etymology in Babel was above my head, it still managed to be interesting to me.

All this to say that this feels more like academic fiction rather than fantasy. It was well written, well researched and I actually cared about what happened.

But it wasn't my cup of tea.

Thanks for the Arc NetGalley. All opinions are my own.