Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

351 reviews

fizzieee's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Intelligent and clear in its intentions.  Insightful and self-aware in a way I’ve never read before. The magic system is extremely unique and the structure of the novel leans heavily into its academic themes. R.F. Kuang seems to struggle with pacing in their novels, which is why I won’t give this the full 5 stars, but that “weakness” doesn’t prevent me from gobbling up the characters/subject matter of their novels. I’ll be thinking about this one for weeks (maybe years).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Suicide, Toxic friendship, Violence, Gun violence, Islamophobia, Vomit, War, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Racial slurs, Blood, Child abuse, Classism, Death, and Murder

Minor: Bullying, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

kai_okay's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Racism, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Sexual harassment, Violence, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Colonisation, Slavery, and Domestic abuse

supermoon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

chiwirite's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, Suicide, Racism, Classism, Death, and Drug use

Moderate: Alcoholism, Racial slurs, War, Pandemic/Epidemic, Blood, Bullying, Xenophobia, Violence, Drug abuse, Child abuse, Murder, Gun violence, Grief, Deportation, Addiction, Slavery, and Sexism

aisclaradm's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I don’t say this lightly, but this is the best book I have ever read. A fascinating ode to languages, that  both discusses its exploitation by colonisers and uses it as a metaphor of sorts for the cruelty, evil and injustice of imperialism and capitalism. Beautiful story and a painfully relevant tale. Incredible. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Murder, Toxic friendship, Racism, Violence, Child abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Classism, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Emotional abuse, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Torture

Moderate: Drug abuse, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Injury/Injury detail, Islamophobia, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, Slavery, Trafficking, War, Drug use, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Cultural appropriation and Alcohol

rnbhargava's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is amazing. It feels classic, riffing on so many known qualities of well known books yet it still does its own thing. The history and ideas are implemented so intelligently that this fantasy feels more historic fiction than anything. The fantasy is really more for quickly explaining action and technology. The magic is in the language, the languages help define the characters and their dynamics with each other, it’s thrilling and heartbreaking at the same time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Police brutality, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Slavery, Xenophobia, Car accident, Cursing, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Alcoholism, Blood, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Islamophobia, Medical trauma, Trafficking, Violence, Body shaming, Cultural appropriation, Stalking, War, Classism, Death of parent, Drug use, Confinement, Death, Colonisation, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Murder, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Rape, Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic friendship

All the themes said to be triggers are present, particularly the race and religion ones. There’s a scene where it appears that female characters could hypothetically be assaulted. The racism and discrimination on religion angles are throughout the book. The major theme of the book is reconciling existing within educational institutions in the west while the same people you’re learning from are harming your original homelands, whether you remember them or not, and the moral plus political repercussions of that.

nartana's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, and Murder

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Slavery

goose's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I really had fun with this book. It hurt though! Just finished it and I gotta sit with it for a while. It's very heavy at times and like others have stated may have benefited from being divided into 2-3 books instead of one large tome. I feel like then the pacing could have felt unified in separate volumes instead of contrasting with itself as the book goes on. The use of footnotes might be cumbersome for people, for me it was okay. It wasn't handled very well in the digital edition I read on Libby (the asterisk to click on to send you to the footnote at the end of the book was small and hard to press, meaning I'd have to sit and try many times before it worked.) Of course a physical edition wouldn't have this problem. Also have a  dictionary on standby, I came across many words I didn't know (in this case the ebook gets a point in favor because it's easy to highlight something to look it up.) All in all despite minor faults here and there (really wish we got to see more of the other characters) this book kept me rapt and I really couldn't put it down once the stakes got high. I also felt like it somehow managed to juggle a lot of ideas and once and knit them together into a great story, which is a feat in it of itself. Wholly recommend it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Colonisation, Death, Gore, Murder, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Child death, Suicide, Violence, and Torture

Moderate: Classism, Sexism, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Physical abuse, War, Islamophobia, Gun violence, Slavery, and Vomit

Other tags that Storygraph doesn't have:

Spoiler

main character death, main character murder

catapocalypse's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was quite a book! Some will probably find this too slow or dense with information for their tastes. There are a lot of ways it was extremely my thing, and some ways it could have done a little better. I loved the academic feel, the loads of etymological information included, the criticisms of empire. This is my first read from Kuang, and I enjoyed her writing. 

Most of the flaws could have been addressed by the story being a duology or even a trilogy instead of one tome, however. While the main character, Robin Swift, is very well explored and realized, the other characters and their relationships are not fleshed out nearly enough. Ramy comes perhaps closest, but after the initial meeting and his interlude, it drops off mostly. The pacing also shifts dramatically from the slow buildup of Robin's life and education up through the first couple years at Babel, into the breakneck pacing of events about 300 pages in.

The other qualm is best explained by this video from Lou Reading Things on YouTube (https://youtu.be/nZN5YjHshJE?si=LLBpm01g3DEQzHUc), which basically comes down to the way the book's worldview skirts over the source of the silver used in the empire's magic to being with. Though her commentary only covers up to Book II within Babel, it holds true for the remainder; the focus is on the imbalance between who has the silver now and only mentions the blood cost of its origins in the Americas once.

For any interested in some nonfiction reads that I feel make good companions to some of the ideas explored, I recommend Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America (which will fill in the aforementioned blank) and Kris Manjapra's Black Ghost of Empire (which I read alongside Babel by happenstance, and actually adds a lot of info and context about Britain's colonization, slavery practices, and abolition movements).

Still, I had a good time with Babel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, Death, Murder, and Torture

Moderate: Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Child abuse

raquel_rqlh's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Slavery, Blood, Classism, Death of parent, Murder, Misogyny, Colonisation, Death, Racism, War, Xenophobia, and Violence

Moderate: Grief, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Physical abuse, and Addiction

Minor: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Sexual harassment