Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Babel: An Arcane History

R. F. Kuang, you have such a way with words. Ba Dum Tss.

But in all honesty, this is a masterpiece. It is absurd that it works so well on so many levels—but in 2024, it’s anti-colonial call to arms rings the most topical. I was utterly enthralled by this book, and I am glad it is as popular as it is—though I won’t rest until there’s a copy on every shelf!

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findleydunn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-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

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pey333's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective 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? Yes

5.0

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liesvdm's review against another edition

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dark informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

This felt very YA to me. I don't understand the hype this book got :-(
The start of the book did pull me in: the boy being "chosen" to get a special, kind of magic education. And when Robin arrives at Babel I really enjoyed the part where he and Ramy become friends.
But things were extremely and repeatedly spelled out. I think the message of this book would have been a lot more powerful if it wasn't so... preachy.
Colonialism had/has horrible consequences and I do love how the author used the translation-based magic to condense a lot of these issues - exploitation and abuse of power and racism etc.
But unfortunately she then deemed this too subtle and decided to hammer her point home. Is this book meant for people who didn't know yet that colonialism was erm... not great?? In any case, those people might not be the people who pick up this book anyway...

The characters were also very one dimensional.

Robin, Ramy, Victoire, Anthony, basically all POC = GOOD
Letty and all whities = BAD . I guess she had 1 (one) non-totally-evil white person in there? The professor who stayed with them in the tower. Letty was, from the start, clearly going to betray all of them and it felt incredibly silly that they didn't see that coming. They excluded her anyway and didn't like her from the start. It was actually caricatural how she was portrayed - killing Ramy because he rejected her? And "she would hunt Victoire to the ends of the earth". Really though? That doesn't even fit in the white supremacy portrayel of Letty - she doesn't care enough to do that, she'll just stay in her cushy life. And I guess that caricatural nature was a conscious choice the author made in this book - to go to that extreme as a way of - again - hammering her point and showing how damaging it is to see an entire group of people in a reductive, negative light. I get what she was going for (I think) but it didn't work for me.

I unfortunately also *hated* all the footnotes. They were used for such different purposes: showing the Chinese characters, adding some random examples of evil deeds by the British Empire, or examples of etymology, but also sometimes adding relevant info that should 100% just have been in the main text!
Example:

When they have hijacked the Babel building, Robin opens the door for someone but as he is an intruder now, that shouldn't be possible anymore because of the wards. So, the author added a footnote to explain they had replaced their vials of blood when they took over the tower. WHY did she not just put this in the text, it would have made so much more sense. There are descriptions of their circumstances in the tower - sleeping arrangments, food etc - why leave this important fact for the footnotes?

This book was also WAY too long IMO. A short novella with the same central idea (the language-based magic as a way of showing how colonialism used other cultures to their gain) could have been a striking story. Instead, we got a lot of *description* comma *different description* comma *another description* etc and a lot of repetition and spelling out of things that dragged on and unfortunately often started to annoy me.

I love language, I love academia and some of this book was enjoyable. But overall it wasn't my thing.
I also read Yellowface by Kuang and she is a great writer. In Yellowface, her message is a lot more subtle but because of that, a lot more powerful (for me anyway).

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