Well, this is just stunningly powerful.

I will be honest. For the first half of the book, I was not certain I was going to find it so. I found it compelling, but not overawing. It *is* a slow build -- and while I often like that, the first half of the book is definitely quite subtle and, I suspect some readers will find, dense. It often feels like being lectured at, in two distinct ways. One is overt: the etymology and linguistics essential to the silver magic that drives the plot. These lectures, I adored. There's a particularly wonderful one about the matter of authenticity and accuracy in translation. I also enjoyed the footnotes, even if many were things I already knew. I find it fun to encounter historical facts I know but haven't thought of in a while -- like seeing an old friend. The other sort of lecturing is essentially a crash course in postcolonial theory. I suspect this is where Kuang will lose a lot of readers who are uncomfortable having their worldview challenged. For me, personally, it became a bit tedious only because I'm familiar with the material. I didn't need to have it pointed at quite so heavily -- but I suspect some readers might.

It also all becomes essential as the story builds. It's *not* just being spotlighted as a polemic; Kuang *isn't* just lecturing the reader. It all forms a base for the truly dazzling character work that both blossoms and explodes in the second half. The emotional payoffs (and pain) wouldn't be as acute and brilliant there without the underpinnings you get in the first half.

The system of magic in this book is wonderfully fascinating -- and seductive. How *easy* it would have been for Kuang to have let us dwell there, exploring it quite peaceably! But that she will not allow the reader that comfort is precisely the point. The system does one of the things I like best about the potential of fantasy literature: the ability to literalize powerful forces in the world -- here, the power of language itself. Matched with the resource of silver, Kuang makes an incisive commentary on the thorny, tangled, painful web of privilege and abuse created by so many technologies and resources throughout human history.

This book will require a reader's patience. For white readers, it will be uncomfortable, as it should be. It is *not* as gory as The Poppy War; the violence is occasionally literal but far more often verbal, emotional, psychological. But it is well, well worth the effort and investment. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

Babel is, at it's heart, about colonialism, racism, and privilege. This story was beautiful and heartbreaking, and while at times fun to read it was also quite sad. This is not a love story or a fairytale; the magical realism is inherent in the book but is merely a tool to show the difference in how the world is run.

Unusual and magical- this did remind me a little of The Magicians mixed with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I do love a book that combines true history with a touch of fantasy.

Thanks to Harper Voyager and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Babel is the latest magical adventure from R. F. Kuang, who many know from her first trilogy, The Poppy War. It entices with the lure of pure knowledge, like those questions that absorb you through hours of research. It is a tale of friendship and life as an outsider, a reminder of the lure of the quest for knowledge. Each of the four main characters is distinct and compelling.

Set in Oxford in the 1830s, the book is bursting with etymology and linguistics. The lessons never felt out of place or boring. The silver magic requires a deep understanding of languages, making language a natural part of the story. The plot moves quickly despite being primarily historical fiction, and Kuang gives the world energy through engaging writing.

Though I planned to take my time reading the lengthy book, I couldn't put it down, and I devoured the last quarter. Babel is sure to be on my top 10 list for the year and one that you won't want to miss when it releases in August. Babel is a scathing critique of the British Empire told through the story of four friends, and it will set the standard for dark academia for years to come.

I read Babel after finishing The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, a Professor of Global History at Oxford. Much of the domination of India and China by the British Empire explored in Babel is based on history. Sadly the version I learned in elementary school barely touched the surface of reality. If you finish Babel and want to explore history more deeply, you should pick up The Silk Roads. The audiobook is excellent and engaging.

Okay, my first thoughts on this book are WOW. Just STUNNING. Kuang accomplished pretty much everything I've ever wanted to read in a book. It is gorgeously full of intense and deep questioning around colonization, language, academia, racism, and immigration -- she weaves them into a stunningly complex and purposefully-wrought tale, taking a lot of the ideas and questions I've been dwelling on the past few years, and offering a bitingly captivating fantasy that interrogates and attacks. As I read this, multiple times I had to close my e-reader and just stop and THINK (or scream internally). It's just a wildly, wildly brilliant book. I don't know how to better say it than that. Go pre-order a copy; I certainly will be.

Babel – Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution is and still continues to be my most anticipated read of the entire year…..even after reading it!

The story of Babel begins with Robin Swift. Robin lives in Canton where a Cholera plague has ravaged his city and his family. With nowhere else to go, he agrees to head to England with Professor Lovell to study and eventually gain entry to Oxford.

At Oxford, Robin finds more than just friendship, a calling to translation, and a home…He finds a secret society bent on bringing Oxford and England…to its knees.

“It would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort” THIS QUOTE AND SCENE WILL STICK WITH ME FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND I NEED EVERYONE TO READ THIS BOOK.

My opinions:
Babel and the things it does well:
• R. F. Kuang’s ability to convey the deeply rooted love and history of language(s) to the audience is clear from the lectures given during class to the way that Robin views his languages as well
• R.F. Kuang’s stunning grasp of the knowledge needed to talk about languages in a way that the readers who might not be familiar with language or language learning, can sufficiently understand is unbelievable. As someone who is a language learner, I found myself relating so heavily to the lectures and the struggles that the students found themselves in.
• Robin….that’s it. Just him in his entirety.
• The sense of home and love that is found at Oxford, but also the sense that they do not belong because of their differences is so well woven throughout the book that you often think just like Robin does, in the up and downs of love and hate for this place he calls home.
• The dark academic setting and the plot behind the secret society. It is so much more than anyone could have guessed from the start and it only continues to go deeper and deeper the more you read.
• The entire conversation involving race and the discrimination between people. I think she crafts this so well into her story that you can truly start to see how people rationalize their thinking and how it can become dangerous in both cases but how it can also create love and understanding.

Babel and the things I want to see in the future:
• The beginning is slow and although this is my most anticipated read of the whole year, took me 3 or 4 chapters to get into the flow of the book, but oh boy once I did…It was all worth it! I also want to make a statement that in her other fantasy series The Poppy War, the beginning is also slower, but both do an excellent job of setting the pace for the remainder of the books, but maybe a stronger opening to help pull readers in might be helpful.
• The magic system could have been a bit more flushed but this is honestly nitpicking and something that I tend to be hyper-aware of since I do a lot of fantasy reading. I think she used really great examples to show us how it worked but maybe adding more times than just once to go over how it works would have been really helpful. Or even having the students practice doing it on their own (I know this doesn’t necessarily work based on the story but still) would have solidified it a bit more in everyone’s head as to how and why it worked the way it did.

At no point, while reading this novel did I know where the story was going or what was going to happen in the end, but I can promise that if you thought that The Poppy War Trilogy made you cry…..you are in for a ride my friend.

I adore RF Kuang's attention to detail and epic world-building. While this is evident in the Poppy War books, it is masterfully accomplished here.

I felt like I was in an immersive RPG game from the outset. I feel for the boy, alone, with his books the only comfort, the only thing of value left to him, surrounded only by death. I found it strangely reminiscent of Great Expectations, and my adoration of Pip of course influenced my love of Robin.

The magic, the dark political machinations, the powerful secrets rumbling through Kuang's world kept me burrowing deeper. So many times I feared for Robin, and yet kept reading, drawn into the web just like the characters.

Epic fantasy is definitely my thing, and this book did not disappoint. And of course, the politics of corruption make it a timely read as well. The nod to Gulliver's Travels and Les Mis is certainly apt.

Of course, none of this magical story is possible without Kuang's own magic with words. The world, its characters, and the powerful story: none of that would be possible without RF Kuang's personal brand of prosaic artifice.

And that nod to gaming? Think about what life is like for game designers & developers. Maybe programmers think in babble.

This was amazing.

It is a slow burn, but reminds me a little bit of The Traitor Baru Comorant, which I absolutely loved. However, this is so rich in language and cultures that it is in a class all its own.

I loved everything about it, to its characters, to their relationships, and the commentary on society that is so relevant today despite it being set in Britain in the past. I will be thinking about it for weeks to come.

Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Language is power, and translation is a weapon. R.F. Kuang’s Babel (affectionately Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution) is a searing, didactic, and honest deconstruction of prestigious academic institutions and their role in upholding and perpetuating imperialism and colonialism, at the detriment of the very cultures they study. It masterfully asks the question: what are you willing to ignore for your own comfort and illusion of belonging, and how do you determine the limits you are willing to breach for revolution?

This novel is my most anticipated release for this year, and I am so honored and thankful to have been able to read an early copy. Even weeks after finishing, I’m still not quite sure I’m capable of adequately capturing my thoughts into words, and that is how I believe you can tell Babel worked in its purpose. Here, Kuang is in her element, both novelist and lecturer, at once crafting a narrative and exposing the facts of history so often relegated to the footnotes (and in turn, are expanded on only in the footnotes of Kuang’s own novel). This is a far departure from her previous work, The Poppy War trilogy, and I can see this dark academia novel not necessarily appealing to the audience of her second-world high fantasy series. But the progression from Rin’s story to Robin’s is clear, and Kuang grapples and espouses many of the same ideas she originally broached in The Poppy War — the circularity and inevitability of history, the detrimental effects of colonialism and western imperialism, the severity of reality and lack of clear cut answers, the necessity of violence.

I’ll be the first to admit that dark academia is not a genre I have much, if any, exposure to. I’ve never read The Secret History or Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which this novel is respectively thematically and tonally in response to. I have no experience in linguistics, am horrible at learning languages, and currently have no desire to return to school for additional higher education purposes. Babel is drowning in intellectual curiosity, in the idyllic campus life, the torment and despair of examination prep, the rush of seeking knowledge for power and power for knowledge. Kuang’s academic background bleeds off the page, and at times it feels like sitting in a lecture hall learning about translation theory and British colonial history. And in Kuang’s deft hands, every bit is interesting, the plot and background information beautifully balanced, and the vivid and piercing translation magic elevating the entire novel to the next level.

Robin and his cohort burrow into your chest and take up residency there. In one book, we learn the intricacies of not just Robin but also Ramy, Victoire, and Letty, the three people closest and dearest to his heart. My one caveat with this book is simultaneously something I’ve taken to be one of its strengths — some of the plot development is obvious and the characters arcs predictable, but there is something powerful in the inevitable, in the slow moving arm of history that cannot be stopped. It would be way too spoiler-filled to explore that sentiment further, so I’ll just leave it at that.

I typically don’t reread books I get an early copy of upon release, but I can’t wait to pick Babel up again in August and experience it all over for a second time. This book is smart, and piercing, and unforgiving in all the best ways. It’s the type of book you can’t digest all at once. It’s the type of book you ruminate on, and are grateful to be on a journey with.

Babel was one of the most ambitious and enjoyable dark academia books I have ever read to date.

Having read the author's previous works, I was really excited for what Babel had to offer. Admittedly, I had very high expectations for this book, and it's safe to say that it delivered. I'm not a very big fan of dark academia--a genre I haven't explored yet--but there was something about Babel that captures its readers attention, forcing them to listen to what it has to say.

The book was definitely a page-turner, and if I didn't have a lot of things to do, I swear I would have finished it all in one sitting. But in all honesty, I may have purposely stalled because I didn't want the experience to end yet, especially when I reached the second half of the book. The author did such an amazing job; making us fall in love with Babel and everything it has to offer, the process of silver-work, the academic aspect, and most importantly, the characters. I don't think I've ever read anything that made learning sound so much fun--especially something as complicated as translation. And much like RFK's other books, I wish I had the opportunity to read this one for the first time again.

Set in Victorian England, Robin Swift is taken from his home in Canton to England and drilled in languages so he might one day matriculate into the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford - colloquially called Babel - and use his skills to make the magical silver bars upon which England's industry and domination on the international stage rely. Initially enchanted by student life at Oxford, a chance encounter with his anarchist half-brother, Griffin, opens his eyes to the damage Britain's exploitative colonial practices do to other countries around the world.

Kuang's stunning novel, at once joyful, tragic, adventurous, and ruminative, is a masterpiece. She doesn't shy away from the complications of dismantling a powerful system: "Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured," she writes pointedly, invoking one of the great difficulties of correcting injustices. But she is not chastising, and she does not pretend to have all of the answers to solving society's myriad of problems. Robin's journey from a privileged benefactor of Britain's greed to enlightened rebel is painful, involving years of torn loyalties and cognitive dissonance, and ends both bleakly and hopefully.

Give this to readers of historical fiction, literary fiction, and cerebral fantasy. I would be flummoxed if "Babel" did not become a best seller and enter the canon of classic speculative fiction. Fans of Kuang's The Poppy War trilogy will be met with a more mature, thoughtful novel that is no less impressive and heartbreaking.

(Warning: "The Necessity of Violence" is entirely accurate and not the least bit an exaggeration. There is quite a lot of violence, but it is very necessary to the story.)

Babel is a work of speculative fantasy set in an alternate reality version of Oxford University circa 1880, centering around the friendship of four students who study at the Royal Institute of Translation. Writer R.F. Kuang’s magic system is so fascinating here and remains the highlight for me: the characters engage in silver work, “the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect.” If it sounds a bit complex, that’s because it sort of is, but the concept was explained well in the book. As someone who has always been interested in linguistics and the concept of “untranslatable” words and phrases between languages, I loved this idea.

The protagonist, Robin, born in China before he’s taken away and raised in England to train in various languages. While at Oxford, he slowly begins to feel tension between his love for academia and the problem silver working poses, since it allows Britain to further its colonial goals and profit from the languages of other people groups, to the detriment of other countries who don’t have access to the same research or education/schooling that enables silver working to advance.

As such, the story is ultimately a metaphor for colonialism, with a slight fantasy backdrop. Kuang explores the presence of classicism and racism in academic settings, and the book does a good job of exposing these problems, though this can feel a bit heavy-handed at times. While I liked Kuang’s prose style in particular, which pulls you in with its poeticism and sharpness, I wish there had perhaps been a better balance between discussing these subjects and exploring the characters’ motivations and backgrounds more deeply, since it felt like this was sacrificed in the process. During the book’s last act, I felt the plot begin to drag, unfortunately. Perhaps this was necessary, given the choices the characters begin to make.

While these are reservations I do have, this will always be a memorable read for me! I was approved for the arc shortly before my recent trip to London (thanks to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager, in exchange for an honest review!), so I began reading Babel on my train ride to the actual Oxford University and it was fun to recognize the names of various buildings on campus.

Um. Wow. Okay.

Right from the get go, I was in love with this book. I had high expectations from R.F. Kuang, who I adored from The Poppy Wars trilogy.

Following her twitter, and her journey through writing this book gave me an intrinsic love and understanding for this book & where it came from (a bit parasocial, I know).

As someone who loved the small "dark academia" we saw from The Poppy War (the first book), I was excited to see a full deep dive nto dark academia from R.F. Kuang, and let me tell you: it does not disappoint.

R.F. Kuang has such a complex and deep understanding of history, and it's effects on people. It truly feels like being seen as a bipoc student, in a distant way. It's refreshing to read something that explores the true grit and struggle that people face in the world. Paired with the fact that Kuang is a genius in prose, plot, and writing as a whole... this book is *chef's kiss*.

BABEL, set in 1830s Oxford. It’s a ambitious, Rich, Vivid and beautifully crafted. I will read anything R. F. Kuang writes .. FOR LIFE.

I’ve sit on this review for a week, because I needed it 5-7 business days to process my feelings on this story.

I was drawn in the story from the first chapter and it keep sinking me in the more I read, there’s very few books that are able to do that to me. This one just hits all too close to home. It’s a historical dark academia like no other.

I finished this book and felt that I’ve learned so much of the scholar life and history itself. The way she handle the beginning , plots and ending is absolutely brilliant. You have to read this one. I don’t like to give much away on my reviews but this is a MUST read. Trust me.

Thank you Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for an ARC of this book.

This was a very interesting text with a great deal of political and post-colonial themes. The magic system is incredibly well developed and enhanced, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed the character development. Robin especially has a fantastic character arc that developed well over the events in the story. That being said, it is a pretty slow build with a lot of underlying themes, and I found my attention drifting from time to time, simply by nature of the fact that this book does ask a lot of readers. It should probably be the only book you're reading, and it requires a lot of attention to detail. It certainly is not a light beach read.

I enjoyed it quite a lot, despite the rather slow build, and would recommend it to anyone into dark fantasy / dark academia texts with underlying political tones and that are character-driven rather than plot-driven.

5/5

Powerful, gritty, and compelling, BABEL is a critical examination of colonialism and its invisible claws on the everyday, mundane lives of people. It truly grips you from the first page and never lets you go. I loved Kuang’s clever use of translation (and the nuances often missing in between) and how her book is unafraid to venture into the darkest parts of the human psyche.

This book was what dark academia should be. I absolutely loved everything about it and I just knew Kuang would break my heart again and again in the most amazing ways.

My God, this. was. everything.

I had discovered this book through a journal (I think Kirkus? Maybe???) and the title and premise intrigued me. I love alternate history where the discovery of magic has altered the course of how we view our place in history and experiencing Victorian England, where silver runs the country, and Oxford through Robin's eyes was a fantastic ride.

I'm so happy I decided to request it because it's wonderful and heavy and full of twists and turns and delicate but complete worldbuilding. Any expectations I had were blown away because the things that happen were things that I didn't see coming and I was left clutching my pearls going "WHY R.F. KUANG WHY".

I have so many things to say but can't find the words to say them so: book very good will buy copy when it's out.

Thank you to Harper Voyager for the eARC!

(I def. will come back and edit this once the novel is out)

Rebecca Kuang is one of the most dazzling literary voices writing today -- I'm legitimately in awe of how much she is able to achieve in this novel. BABEL is a towering work of literature, fusing dark academia with razor-sharp postcolonial critique and a stunning meditation on linguistics and the (im)possibilities of translation. BABEL is also deeply in conversation with the histories of print, academia, and literature--the novel is structured like an early 19th-century novel and, moreover, is fully aware of the degree to which the nineteenth century relied on print circulation. Robin and his cohort are well read, of course--they're Oxfordians, after all--and Kuang doesn't fall for the modern trap of imagining that historical characters operated within the same canon as we do. These students are smart, thoughtful readers of Equiano and L'Ouverture and fans of Shelley but skeptical of her dramatic husband. Robin's coming to consciousness is beautiful and painful to witness, his bitter understanding of the university's imbrication with the state, the British Empire, and the exploitative practices of capitalism and colonialism is no less relevant due to its historical/fantastical distance form today's reader. BABEL is an absolutely brilliant book -- I cannot wait to see where Kuang goes next!

Wow. This book was deep and dark and everything that I love in a novel. Very Jonathan Strange. It will be a great atmospheric novel to recommend. Although I would imagine from the buzz it is getting that this book will sell itself.