A review by mousewitched
Babel by R.F. Kuang

2.0

dnfed at 11%. the audiobook is BAD; the constant footnote interruptions kill what little flow the story has. this is especially cumbersome because the footnotes don’t add anything other than over explanations of the actual text. it’s pretty insulting to your readers to remind them every other page that imperialism is bad and England is racist, pretty common thoughts in 2022/2023 - the scene that made me quit really hit us over the head with that and i just! i dont think someone needs to be explicitly told that how 1800s england portrayed slavery to the general public and how slavery actually was are two very different things? it’s so frustrating because the premise for this is so cool and i wanted to love this so badly but the writing is just not good.