A review by wardenred
Babel by R.F. Kuang

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

4.75

You’re an asset to them, but that’s all you are. A translation machine. And once you fail them, you’re out.

Wow. I can tell this story is going to haunt me for a very long time. Somehow, I didn’t expect to cry actual ugly tears over it, and yet here we are.

The first half of the story hooked me so easily. It had everything I wanted the book to be: the thick as hell dark academia vibes, the forming of a dysfunctional found family, the absolutely excellent magic system that might be my favorite ever, and all those hard, impossible choices no one should ever make. What do you do when you love something that wants to destroy your origins? How do you reconcile the good your getting out of your relationship with your colonizer with the rest of it all? Can you pay the cost of fighting against the oppression? Can you justify not joining the fight?

And then the second half came, and damn, it pulled no punches, turning the already painful story into something that made me want to throw my nook into the wall, but also made it impossible not to keep reading. Especially after that one death—damn, that character tricked me with his entire personality into believing he was invincible, and then this, and it somehow wasn’t even the most painful part of the story???

It is scary how viscerally and relatably the story paints the evil of empires. All those powerful men who make entire countries their playground, dehumanizing those countries’ people because it suits their designs; who would sacrifice everyone before they let go of their pride. All those big, insurmountable forces that won’t cave no matter how much weight you throw against them—but maybe it’s worth it to keep fighting just because someone needs to oppose it. Because if you’re not fighting it, that means you’re supporting it, whether you want to or not.

I’m a little frustrated with the openness of the ending; a part of me wants to know whether that one big thing worked. Whether it paid off. But I think it suits the story best not to know. The worth of the act, sometimes, isn’t determined by whether it rendered the desired results or not. Sometimes, it’s just about doing the right thing—and sometimes, doing the terrible thing means doing something terrible. The book does have some flaws, such as the occasional tangents the author seems to go on merely to show off more worldbuilding and research, but the ending isn’t one of them.

Anyway, I should go get another tissue.
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