4.5 stars

Dark academia. Historical fantasy. A critique of western colonialism and racism. If any of these things appeal to you, I highly suggest giving Babel a try. This is a very intelligent, ambitious, and well-researched novel that slowly builds steam to a second act that pulls no punches.

In an alternate 1800s Britain, a Chinese boy, swept away from his cholera-ridden home and dead mother, studies languages under the direction of an Oxford professor. Robin Swift—his new, English name—is training for admittance into Oxford’s prestigious institute of translation, known as Babel, which specializes in the magic of silver working. The magic system here is clever and unique. By engraving words on silver bars, scholars who have accumulated a great knowledge of languages can harness the power of translation. Whatever meaning is lost in the translation between two words becomes physically manifest.

Thanks to silver work, Britain is the most powerful empire in the world. But as Robin makes new friends and builds a life at Oxford, he begins to realize that this empire is built on the backs of other peoples and countries, including his homeland. Eventually Robin will have to decide: can he remain in the new life he has created, or must he tear it all down in defense of his own people and all those who are exploited and marginalized?

I enjoyed the writing, the characters, the concept—it was all well done. I did feel the first half of this book was a little slow (though I feel this was necessary for building up to later events) while the second half was sometimes a touch heavy-handed in its message. But overall this was an excellent book, well worth the read.

Also, I loved the footnotes.

This book comes out next week! Thanks so much to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the advanced reader copy.

I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang from NetGalley, so thank you to Harper Voyager for the opportunity to read it and write this review!

Babel is about Robin Swift, a young man who travels to London from China as a child after being orphaned by cholera. His new guardian, Professor Lovell, trains Robin in various languages in anticipation of sending him to Oxford, where he teaches. There, Robin will join Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation—Babel.

Babel specializes in helping the Empire thrive via silver-working, a form of magic using language and translation. However, silver-working caters to the rich and very rarely helps the needy. As much as Robin enjoys learning at Oxford, when a stranger introduces him to the mysterious Hermes Society, he has second thoughts about serving Babel.

When Britain threatens war against China, Robin realizes how much he is helping his country to hurt his motherland and must decide whether he's willing to sacrifice the comforts of Oxford or his homeland.

I want to start off by saying that I highly anticipated this book's release. One of my favorite bookish YouTubers, A Frolic Through Fiction, raved about this book, which made me even more excited. When I requested Babel on NetGalley, I thought I'd never get my hands on an advanced copy since it's pretty hyped right now; I know many people are very excited about this book! It made my whole week when I got an email that I'd received an advanced copy.

But...

This book wasn't for me.

Of course, there are many things I enjoyed about Babel! First off, the vibes are impeccable. This book is set at Oxford and has the dark academia vibes everyone loves right now. It's a great read for the fall for that reason, and reading it put me into the autumn mood! The whole atmosphere of the book is quite dark and centered on language. It was consistent throughout, and I loved that part of the book.

Babel revolves around four main characters: Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. Each character kind of has one defining trait that makes them easy to remember. I think with dense books like this, it's helpful to have characters with one trait or feature which makes them easy to remember. However, at some point, I realized they never grew beyond their one trait. Consequently, they just seemed flat.

Furthermore, when characters acted in opposition to their one defining trait, their actions seemed... out of nowhere and really, really confusing. Two characters, in particular, seemed to do a complete 180 toward the end of the book, destroying everything I had learned about them already. It took me out of the book a bit, because they seemed so unlike the characters I'd been with for the majority of the story.

Overall, I enjoyed how Kuang wrote this book. I felt as though I was reading a textbook at times, but I enjoyed the footnotes. The author included so many little details via footnotes that added a lot to the world and the story. These footnotes provided a rich backstory.

But occasionally, the events of the book came to a standstill. The plot suffered a lot for this reason; actually, the plot was quite unclear. At times, several pages in a row described only the political atmosphere and nothing happened. While that contributed to the story, it felt like an information dump. I skimmed through them, hoping to get back to the action.

I loved the political and racial commentary (which I’ll get to in a bit), but... It appeared the book was about that, and the actual plot was irrelevant. Very little happened, and I occasionally forgot this was a fantasy novel and not a historical fiction discussing the politics of the time.

I wanted more of the fantasy element of the book. The idea of silver-working and the way language played a part in this magic system fascinated me. Kuang came up with this amazing magic system that's so unique (which is hard to do these days!) and didn't allow the reader to see enough of it. I'll admit the book focused on silver-working a great deal, but I wanted more.

The ending confused me. I'm not sure if this will be a series, but the ending felt incomplete. I don't understand what happened toward the end or what is going to happen next. Again, I feel like this needs a sequel, because it did not wrap up in a satisfying way.

My last critique is not with R.F. Kuang, her publishers, or her publicity team, but other readers who have received advanced copies of this. I've seen so, so many glowing reviews of this book on websites like TikTok and Goodreads, and I even found some mood boards based on Babel on Pinterest, which is wonderful! However, many of these market this book as having a queer romance. This book focuses very little on romance and sexuality, so I think calling Babel a queer dark academia/fantasy novel takes away from books that do focus on LGBTQIA+ issues. I am not saying that Babel does not include hints of non-heterosexual relationships, because it does; yet this is not the focus of the novel and is never discussed in-depth.

My absolute favorite part of this book was the political commentary and the discussion of racism and privilege. The book pointed out how people use minorities for their differences while also shaming them for those same differences. Robin is a perfect example of this; the same people who throw racist, stereotypical insults at him are the ones using him for his grasp of Chinese dialects.

There was a fascinating discussion of privilege within the group of the four main characters. All four of them are minorities within Oxford, but only one of them is white. It was interesting to see how her inability to grasp racial differences impacted the overall group dynamic.

I am so happy to see that so many people loved this book, because the discussion of racism, privilege, and politics is so captivating. However, I think I just wanted to see so much more of this fascinating magic system. I was very excited about the possibility of a dark academia and fantasy novel, as that sounds right up my alley! This just was not it for me, but I'm so pleased to see that I'm in the minority and other people are loving it.

Simply masterful. This book explores colonialism, race, sex, oppression, and so much more in a slightly fantasy oriented alternate history setting. It’s a slow burn, with characters that demand your emotional investment. Beautifully written and thought provoking.

This book is the epitome of “the length of time it takes you to read a book does not signify the quality of your reading experience”. It took me over a month to finish simply because, like The Poppy War, SO MUCH happens that it feels like I read a 3 book series. Babel is an incredible feat of writing - the depths of knowledge of translation theory, linguistics, etymology are astounding. It’s one of the most unique books I’ve ever read and there’s really no way to prepare for this captivating, heartbreaking, and thought provoking novel. No matter what your expectations are going in, Babel will keep you on your toes.

This book is incredible. I'm always hungry for more magic system explanation and I got that in spades, but written in a way I can only describe as propulsive. The "rose-colored glasses" part of me perhaps didn't want the plot of the book to turn out the way it did, but it couldn't have gone any other way.

I was granted complimentary eARC access to Babel by R. F. Kuang through participation in the HarperCollins Canada Influencer program following attendance of the #FrenzyPresents summer catalogue preview. Thank you to the team at HCC for arranging these ARC opportunities for us! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Babel is a brilliant, unique dark academia novel of magical realism and historical fantasy flavouring. 19th Century Oxford, and England around it, runs on silver magic unlocked by the work of translators. Who are these translators? Students plucked from their homelands around the world at a young age, re-educated in English society with their British caretakers or owners, and sent to college to learn their trade. The magic works best when connections are made by native speakers of the various languages, you see. All of that is fine and dandy, but as many such students studying in the tower soon come to realize and unpack, they're working to produce magic that only benefits the wealthy White gentry who stole them and refuse to help their family and neighbours in their homelands. Can you say revolution? It's not going to be pretty!

I love pretty much everything about this book. The idea of magic that can only be wielded by multilingual masters of both living and historic languages is fascinating! If I were a young scholar in this version of the 19th century, I would have been doing everything in my power to get into that program! Fortunately for me, and also something I absolutely loved in this book, was the "open secret" of female attendance at the college. There is a surprising number of female characters for a book set at a British school in the 19th century, and that's just plain awesome.

More importantly than those things that are simply cool, this book has a lot to say, to speculate on, and to dismantle about racism, colonialism, slavery, and sexism. This is the story of abducted, enslaved, and abused students of ethnic minorities, mixed race, and the female persuasion rising up to burn everything down around them because there's nothing worth saving about the system that oppresses them and uses their work to benefit only those who have held them in this state of oppression.

One little "nit-pick" of sorts surrounds an off-hand remark between two of the students while they're figuring out what to do next after the cogs of revolution start turning. One suggests fleeing to Canada and the other notes that "none of us speak French." This book starts off in 1828 as young Robin is whisked off to England, and the bulk of the book is no more than a decade later. "Canada" is still a collection of colonies with the semi-autonomous rule at this point and only the portion known as Lower Canada (now today's Quebec) was officially Francophone. Had they gone with this plan they could have gone to Upper Canada (Ontario) or any of the Atlantic colonies that were in talks to join "Canada" at this point and got along just fine speaking English. Source: I'm Canadian and I spent the late 2000s studying for a BA in History, Canadian & British focus.

I'll admit that while it's been on my TBR for quite some time, I haven't read The Poppy War series yet. I was so excited to hear that Kuang was releasing a new stand-alone because that meant I could finally jump in on this popular author without needing the time to commit to an entire series. Having read Babel, I'll definitely be bumping The Poppy War much higher up the TBR list!

Reviews Posted: August 19, 2022
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I’m going to need at least 2 to 3 months to recover from this book, if not more. This book evoked so many emotions about historical events that I didn’t realize I had. From the first page, I was drawn into the story and world. I loved getting to know all the characters, and in a way, I understood them all.

The writing was absolutely spectacular. I mean, even in the longer sentences and passages, I was fully paying attention. There was just something about the way everything was strange together that kept me fully invested at all times. For the most part, this book is told through the lens of Robin, but sprinkled throughout were perspectives from other characters, and it provided the understanding that I craved from each character. Also, everywhere this book took me, I felt like I was really there and experiencing it all myself.

As a history major, there were a lot of actual historical events that happened or were referenced throughout the book. And while I have studied most of them, I didn’t realize just how emotionally invested I was in them. At times I had to set the book down because I was reminded of how much my ancestors were affected by colonialism and how we often still feel its effects in academia today. Throughout a lot of this book, I saw glimpses of my own experience that was sometimes hard to come to terms with.

The story itself was also beautifully crafted, and I enjoyed watching all of the characters' journeys even though I was utterly heartbroken by the end. This is defiantly a character-driven book, but through his self-discovery, we see the political upheaval that was the British Empire and at what cost that all came at.

Each character had their own very unique and exciting identity. While I did not always like every character, I grew to understand their motivations. It was a weird feeling despising a character yet understanding why they did what they did.

Overall I think this is one of the best reads of the year. It is a dark academia that sweeps you into a world of politics, colonialism, and capitalism and forces you to confront not only the past but the present as well.

We are officially four days away from Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution’s debut into the world and friends, I say this with certainty: this book has solidified R.F. Kuang as one of the greats. At least for me. I love reading a book and saying to myself, I haven’t read anything like this.

How?

How was someone able to come up with this plot, these characters, this world, and bring it all together in a way that amazed me with each turn of the page? The depth in which we explored Robin. Grew with him and learned with him and hurt with him. Hello??? There was not a scene, a conversation, an exploration of character, setting, term, phrase, or moment wasted. Everything had a purpose and it all built and built and built upon itself, laying a foundation of brilliance that held up from beginning to end.

What?? WHAT??? The last time I had my mind picked apart by a narrative like this was The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, so clearly, I’m being very serious. I can’t even pick a quote to focus on because then I’d just quote 3/4ths of the damn book like do you see how many tabs are on my copy??? This is the type of book that shows me that sometimes being a writer is someone’s destiny. Actually written in the stars.

Okay I’m going in but I have so much love for the risks this book took and the way Kuang forced both readers and characters to witness all the ways the world was built to destroy those deemed lesser. There is no separating yourself from it, no matter how much you try. But there is power in knowledge and words. There is always something you can do to fight back against it, no matter how small, or hopeless.

My body, mind, and soul are at war trying to get my thoughts together. Basically, I loved this book, and this cast will remain dear to my heart for a long, long time. Even the few things that gave me pause, and by few I mean like FEW, I still had a blast. Wow. What a joy it was to be left in shambles.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a dark academia novel that doesn’t simply use academia as a setting, but forces you to actually confront the realities of the way it has been weaponized against the world…this one’s for you.
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CW: racism, racial slurs, violence, violent imperialism, drug addiction, child abuse, suicidal ideation, suicide, illness

This book is incredible! It truly is a masterpiece of fantasy fiction. Kuang has crafted a book for adults who grew up wanting to be a part of a magical school and shows us all the good and evil parts of that experience. At first, I felt it was moving along too slowly and was anxious for the real action to begin. But then once the action began, I had a true moment of Ah! That was why we had to see them all develop this incredibly close and fond friendship that made them a family. We are shown all the ways they hurt through overt racism and discrimination, as well as the microaggressions they have to endure by those closest to them. We watch them go from innocent, people-pleasing children to brilliant and disillusioned adults who know that world cannot continue forever as it is. Babel is a glorious mix of dark academia, found family, magical realism, and historical fiction. Kuang has created a brilliant world and I cannot wait to see what comes next.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins publisher for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Babel by R.F Kuang is the best book I’ve read all year. I was definitely intimidated and anxious to read it but the author’s writing style is what really made it a 5 star read.

This book is the perfect mix of historical fiction, dark academia and magical realism. Right away I was invested in Robin’s story. He was plucked out of a plague riddled Canton, China by a Professor Lovell and taken to London. There he is brought up to be a translator, not only in Cantonese but in Latin and Greek as well. He is then enrolled into Oxford University’s Royal institute of translation also known as Babel. With the help of the Hermes society he finds there’s more beneath the surface of Babel and the town of Oxford.

This book was very well researched and written. It was apparent that the author has a background in language. Even with such a heavy information load it wasn’t daunting. I enjoyed reading the history of words. The way R.F. writes is very smooth and really sucks you into the world. I found myself very invested into Robin’s and his friend’s journey. I felt their kinship, love, heartbreak and more. It was really interesting how the magic system in this world relies on the translator’s match-pairing on silver bars. They are used all over the country in everyday housework to even the workings of a tower.

This book is a great depiction of the privilege, power, racism, colonialism that went on in the 1830s.

I highly recommend this book!

4.75/5⭐️

Thank you for the e-arc of this book🤍

Listen this book was just one of the most stunning things I’ve read all year. Rebecca is just stupidly talented. You can tell she’s an academic in this book but what I adore is it never goes too far. Her writing is eloquent without becoming too arrogant and preachy. However I felt that the actual plot itself wasn’t up my alley. I found it bit boring and underwhelming, and the most exciting stuff happened in the last 20% of the book. For it being so long I felt the pacing was off and it wasn’t as epic as I kept hearing it would be. However her writing was so stunning, that’s what kept me going. I think this is a book everyone needs to read in schools, especially with the talks of colonialism and racism. She did a fantastic job highlighting these issues and really breaking them down. Overall I would recommend this and am still going to go get a physical copy or 2 of this!!

I think my mixed feelings are going to come out so I’ll say up front that this is way outside of what I usually read, and while I appreciated that it is a very good book, I often didn’t enjoy reading it. I appreciate it more than I love it. But, I think it’s a worthwhile read. Maybe don’t pick it up right after you put down a book that owns your whole heart. This book is also in conversation with The Secret History and Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell, two books I’ve never read.

You should read this book if you want to be angry and burn it all down while also thinking thoughts about words and the power of language. Kuang is explicitly confronting the violence and horror of colonialism and the framework of racism necessary to justify empire.

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is set in an alternate universe. The history, especially the history of conquest and colonialism, isn’t that different, except that there is magic, which is based in language and translation.

As cholera sweeps through Canton, a boy lays dying next to his mother. Professor Lovell arrives, cures him and carries him away. Professor Lovell is an awful person, and you will quickly come to hate him. The Professor makes himself the boy’s guardian and has him give himself an English name. He names himself Robin Swift. Professor Lovell intends for him (and has intended since his birth, yeah it’s gross) to attend Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation, informally known as Babel. Initially, Robin loves it there. He meets Ramiz, his first friend. The moment in paradise is brief.

Babel is an engrossing read layered with details that become important later. It’s a chonker of a book and not an easy read, and yet, it is. It is hard to put down. It has characters who will absolutely break your heart. And characters who are hateful and terribly familiar.

Babel is a tragedy, but not the kind of tear-jerker that makes the suffering of others cathartic entertainment that lets the reader feel good about how much they care. It’s the kind of tragedy that leaves you feeling like you’ll never stop bleeding. Part of me thinks the ending is perfect and part of me wanted to see the aftermath. Was it worth it?

‘I don’t know,’ said Victoire. "At least, we say it when we don’t know the answer, or don’t care to share the answer.”

CW: Child abuse on page, death of parent, racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-blackness, violence, gun violence, murder, slavery, colonization, classism, sexism, death by suicide, grief, hate crime, murder, and microaggressions.

I received this as an advance reader copy from Harper Voyager and NetGalley. My opinions are my own and freely given.

Commentary on colonialism told through a lens of dark academia and magic? Sign. Me. Up.

Reading Babel was such an awesome experience that I struggle to describe it. The book was plot heavy, but I did find the characters intriguing and deeply worth the emotional investment I put into them. Every word is imbued with meaning in way that feels both intellectual and beautiful.

Recommended for fans of language and linguistics, dark academia, and historical fiction that dabbles in magical realism. This is my favorite book of 2022 so far and I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

Thank you Harper Collins and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It’s official, Babel will live in my brain rent-free forever. Everyone needs to read this book. Everyone. R.F. Kuang has once again delivered a masterpiece of a story, one that has been painstakingly researched and rewoven into a historical fantasy heavily steeped in truth.
The author mentioned that this is her most ambitious novel yet, and she is not wrong. However, her book absolutely delivers on that ambition. It is powerful, brutal, and deeply thoughtful in its exploration of racism, classism, colonialism, love, family, and betrayal — all presented and examined in ways that leave you breathless. I’ve already purchased two signed copies for my own collection and will be pushing this book onto everyone’s radar for years to come.

Babel was absolutely stunning. I know this book is likely a standalone, but I would read a hundred more books set in this world.
Robin Swift is living in Canton when tragedy strikes and his mother dies. Not long after, a professor appears who is going to take Robin to England and teach him various languages. He eventually learns that this has all been a plan for him to go to Oxford and join Babel, a group of students studying translation and in turn endowing silver with magic.
This book is the epitome of dark academia with a steampunk edge. I loved the characters. I loved the setting. I loved the writing. I cannot say enough good things about this book. R F Kuang has created a masterpiece.

From the writing style and the pacing to the characters, Babel was an absolute delight to read! While not having read Kuang’s previous trilogy, she has cemented herself in my mind as one of the great writers of the 21st century.

Babel takes us a journey with Robin Swift, a Cantonese boy brought over to England in his adolescence because of his knack for languages. Professor Lovell is essentially grooming Robin to work in the translation department of Babel at Oxford.

Once Robin comes of age and joins Oxford, he finds camaraderie for the first time in his life. But things are not as they seem when an eerily familiar face seeks out Robin and asks for his help.

As a lifelong reader, I found the information about translation and languages fascinating. It’s so rare to find a well-rounded standalone book these days, especially one that doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. This is a book I will come back to year after year.

- How on earth does one review a masterpiece like BABEL? Kuang has written a book that is both a page turner and a burn it all down, salt the earth indictment of academia, colonization, patriarchy and more.
- The magic system in BABEL is brilliant, and a perfect parallel to the mechanics of British colonization. The translations, the footnotes, all of it occasionally makes you forget that this is a novel.
- As a white reviewer, I can't even begin to touch on Robin's internal struggles of choosing what path to take as a person of color thrown into the upper levels of whiteness at Babel. The pain and rage of it is laid so bare on the page. And I know I have been the Letty in conversations before. Kuang softens none of it.
- I know I'm not doing this justice. Please seek out reviews by people of color on this book, there is already a deep discourse around it and I'm sure that will continue for a long time.

In 1828, young Robin Swift, orphaned by a cholera epidemic, is taken away from his homeland of China and spirited off to England where he is given a home, an education, and eventually a place at Oxford University’s most prestigious college: The Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel, the storied tower wherein scholars learn the finer points of translation and use this knowledge to inscribe silver bars with words of magic that help to run Britain and further its drive towards empire. But behind this facade of academic prestige and imperial power lies a nest of corruption and bigotry, as the wealthy white men who hold power have no desire to share it with those they find inferior. As a Chinese man living in England, Robin faces his share of bigotry, and he and his misfit friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with the system that has given them power, or with their homelands that are slowly being crushed by Britain’s insatiable appetite for money and power.

With her fourth novel, R.F. Kuang, author of the Poppy War trilogy, declared that she had written a story that was a “thematic response to The Secret History [by Donna Tartt] and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell [by Susanna Clarke]”. As both The Secret History and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are considered masterpieces of their respective genres, this is a bold claim, but not one without merit given what Babel sets out to do. It is, on its surface, a dark academia fantasy wherein a group of like-minded friends meet at university, where- as in The Secret History- the academic goals and desires they nurtured in childhood collide with the demands of adult life– often with disastrous results. Babel is also a story where, like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the magic that Britain has (or had in the past) affects the rest of the world in unexpected ways, and much is made of who is allowed access to it. This is the point where the books part ways, though. The Secret History depicts a college clique as it crumbles when the students’ desire for an aesthetic life becomes incompatible with reality and results in a death. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell gives us a fantastical English past where two magicians strive for similar goals, but with radically different notions of how to do it while the narrator mocks the society at nearly every turn in a Dickensian fashion.

Babel is an outsider’s story that borrows elements from the other two books, then heads down a very different road. Thanks to their skin color, gender, or homeland, the students at the heart of the story, Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty, are all subject to the systemic bigotry that helped turn Britain (whether in reality or in this fantasy) into an empire. This Britain desperately needs their skills to fuel the magic that literally keeps the country together, but those on top are unwilling to give them even the basic respect due to them as human beings.

At first, Robin doesn’t notice this, or if it does he doesn’t let himself think about it. He already has so much to do with his studies that he can let himself forget the problems. But after a fateful encounter forces him to look at the racism and misogyny inherent in the system, Robin must think about the nature of his studies and his contributions to British magic. Will his contributions truly help other people, or is he betraying his own heritage by aiding a culture that intends to exploit everything it can? This question becomes more than just rhetorical when Robin hears that England intends to engage in an unjust war against China, and he must decide what lengths he is willing to go to in the name of justice.

Though it is far from a perfect book, the topics that Babel delves into combined with Kuang’s ability to skillfully weave them into the narrative without beating the reader over the head with them makes this book one of the most thought-provoking fantasy novels of the year.

An incredibly cohesive book... I thought with the length it has that it would wander and drag a bit, but that was not the case at all. Every single page, paragraph, and sentence is filled with purpose – and it keeps you hooked all the way through. An absolute page-turner.

Only taking away one star because at first I had a hard time connecting with the bond Robin had formed with his friends. It took a while for it to click the way I felt that the story wanted me to. But it happened eventually!

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book!
I can’t even begin to describe the emotions I felt while reading this book - everything about it was brilliant and so complex and now I feel empty after finishing it. As soon as this book comes out I will buy and read it again to hopefully mimic what I experienced while reading this book for the first time. I am now a firm R.F. Kuang enthusiast and will purchase the Poppy War trilogy immediately.