BABEL is the book I most wanted to read this year, but was also hesitant to pick up. There has been so much praise for it that I was concerned it wouldn't live up to the hype. However, this fear was quickly dispelled after the first chapter. I was completely hooked.

What Kuang managed to do with this story is nothing short of mastery. With a narrative steeped in so much history and the examination of language, one might think you are reading a reference book. However, by weaving in these amazingly diverse and complicated characters and the more fantastical elements the tale transforms into something completely new. There is emotion, double dealings, and the exploration of social constructs and race all wrapped up in a beautifully written package. This darkly candid account of the lives of Robin, his friends, family, those involved in the Royal Institute of Translation, and the people living in London at this time period allows the reader to immerse themselves in the world the author created. The vivid descriptions, the richness of the language, and the eloquence make the experience even better.

I spent some time within these pages because I didn't want to miss anything, absorbing the story for all it was. Every moment reading this, I would always push myself to read just one chapter more. BABEL is truly an epic fantasy worth reading. I cannot wait to dive back in for a second read.

This BOOK. I knew i was going to like this book as soon as I read the first footnote. Brutal, compelling, complex, and those freaking footnotes!!! Packed with historical context and knowledge! I learned facts as much as I read fiction! All the best parts of The Poppy War trilogy packed into one book.

I absolutely enjoyed this book, and it will be making its way to my top reads of 2022 list and most likely my best reads of all time. RF Kuang is a master storyteller. I took my time with this one so that I could enjoy every word on every page. This book was both atmospheric and transformational. I loved how the author used her knowledge of languages and language acquisition through colonization to create a story and magic system that was unlike any other that I've ever read. The characters were compelling and lovable (excluding one) and each played an integral role in propelling the story forward. There were points where I felt like this book was beyond me -- and I thoroughly enjoyed that! I love books that get me to think, and process, and sit with myself. And this one did that over and over and over again. I would highly recommend this book to -- anyone. Although it has fantastical elements, the story is much bigger than the magic. Thank you, RF Kuang! You've done it again.

I'm really gutted that I didn't love this more. It's somewhere between a 3 and a 4, but I've rounded up because I do think that the content is important to discuss. However, that's also my biggest complaint. This book is almost too heavy handed that it comes off as preaching to the choir. I've heard comments that this book feels written for people who don't understand the damage that colonialism causes, and I agree, but I don't think those people will be picking up this book.

I also felt like we kept getting to this really exciting moment and then it would just fall flat. This happened several times in the narrative arc.

Overall, I did enjoy it, but it's been so hyped and it seems to have an issue with knowing who the audience is that it ended up being a tad disappointing for me as a reader.

Note: I read this in May, it is now December. The only notes I took were at the beginning of the book when I was over the moon excited to finally be reading it, which is evidently reflected in my glowing notes. But upon completion I found it to be totally fine, average, but probably not deserving of the best book of the year hype (oops). Rebecca is forever a genius in my mind but that might have been to her detriment with this one. It felt a little too ostentatious, or as if she's trying a little too hard to come across as a literary genius. This one just didn't hit me like it did for others. Insert crying face emoji.

Anyways, here are my thoughts:

I was very intimidated by the synopsis of this book and the way I’ve heard the author speak about it. I thought it would be very existential and thematic and pretentious to the point where I wouldn’t be able to understand it, and this was only partly true in the end. I found it compulsively readable but still pretentious at points. It had A LOT to say and I think it could have benefitted from a bit more focus. Or honestly, make it two books. It was a lot to fit into one volume (even a 500+ page one).

The footnotes had the potential to be obnoxious but Kuang pulled them off well enough. They were a *chef’s kiss* perfect combination of humor, actual information, and snark. [I wrote those two sentences when I first started the book and was still enchanted by the idea of footnotes, but by the final third I did not even bother reading them. Oops]

The class sessions that dig into the language and translation work were boring to me and I kind of skimmed over most of those. I think she makes great points and explains it very well, I just don’t really care about that stuff. This was a big factor in my enjoyment of it. If I end up skimming or straight up skipping huge sections, something is wrong (for me).

The ending was dramatic in all the right ways, if somewhat predictable.

Overall, I'm disappointed in myself for not loving this as much as everyone else did. I think it's absolutely worth a read and it has obviously found its audience as evident by the nearly 16 thousand 5 star ratings on GoodReads.

I adored the Poppy War, and this was one of my most anticipated books of 2022. Unfortunately, I struggled through this - I restarted this twice and that it’s taken me over half a year to read. One of my biggest literary pet peeves is books being overly didactic - which this was. I 110% agreed with what the author was saying, but I was exhausted by the repetition and heavy handed approach Kuang took. I prefer novels that make me have to read between the lines, engage with the text, and “work” a bit for the author’s message - I don’t want it fed to me like thesis statements scattered throughout the text. It felt more like reading an etymology text book mixed with a dissertation on colonialism than an alternate history fantasy novel. I felt like silver working changed absolutely nothing about Industrial Revolution England and that this might just as well have not had any magic in it at all. The anachronistic speech and terms also threw me - these characters waffle between period appropriate speech and modern lingo, and it never stopped feeling odd to me. I didn’t feel connected to the characters, I hated the footnotes, and I was mostly bored the whole time. This wasn’t bad - there’s clearly an audience that adores this - but it just didn’t work for me.

This book was incredible! The complexity of the world, the fully fleshed out characters, the political drama, the amount of research on the history of translation, the social commentary about race, class, and industrialism....I can't say enough good things. I am a forever fan of Kuang's. 5 stars, easily.

this is one of the most interesting, thoughtful, gut-wrenching, human, books I've ever read.
the subjects this book touched upon are so universal and smart so specific to those wronged by imperialism and colonialism.
additionally, this books paint quite a detailed picture of Oxford.
linguistics, translation, etymology. I'm definitely interested in those subjects and this book felt like really engrossing lecture I was sitting in on.
really wonderful book. should be taught in schools

This book took me three months to read, and every second was worth it.

It didn't take me long because I was bored or not enjoying it. It took me that long because I annotated almost every page of the book and I had to process the genius that is R.F. Kuang's writing and mind.

This is such an important book. It is so much more than a fantasy dark academia novel. It’s about colonialism and imperialism and how the British Empire's intent to take over the world at anyone’s expense. It’s about using translation and how it’s a betrayal and exploitation in every form of the word. It’s about the four main characters’ guilt in grappling with what they and their institution (Babel) are contributing towards the war.

I have not cried this much reading a book in a long time and I am still heartbroken writing this review. The realities of war are never easy to consume, and that’s true with this book as well.

This is the best book I have ever read that i never want to read again. Please take that as a compliment, because it absolutely is.

Babel was not as good as I was hoping for, because when I started the novel it checked so many boxes for me such as the emphasis on Linguistics or rebellion, or coming of age, but these aspects were not as well executed as they were in the Poppy War. I do think that Kuang went into this book with a very ambitious book in mind and I think for some this will be exactly what they were looking for when they read the summary.

So it is safe to say I had very high expectations going into this book but regardless I did think the characters were pretty easy to relate to, maybe that is because I was also someone that was raised on another languages outside of English, and was forced to adapt to the "new age language." It was hard for me as a kid to start having all my thoughts be in a different language than what my native language was but I eventually came to appreciate English just as much as some of the other languages I was surrounded with in my youth. I wish the ending of the main cohort could have been a different than what we got because I could feel it coming about 2/3 of the way through the book.

This book was so detailed and well written. I simultaneously felt like I had a low IQ , was at college, but also getting the best education and fantasy possible. The feeling I had while reading this book was indescribable. I’m not sure how RF Kuang could write such a beautiful masterpiece like this that would take me 50 years to write but it was amazing!

*thank you Harper Voyager for an eARC in exchange for an honest review*

This book has some really great parts and some really not for me parts.

The historical fiction aspect was really interesting and I also thought the magic system of language and silver bars was fascinating. The Hermes society was intriguing and I wanted more and more of the work against the empire. I also enjoyed the character dynamics between our group of four.

With all that said, the pacing of this book was way off. Up until the last 80% I was bored and could not be bothered to pick the story back up whenever I put it down which as a mom of a 10 month old was frequent. It felt like there was a lot of waiting around even in the crux of action somehow.

This is everything I needed from Kuang, and an amazing followup to the promise of her debut series. Themes, plotting, and characterization are more mature and consistent than Kaung's previous work, and she didn't make life easy for herself by choosing to tackle such weighty issues as colonialism, the nature of the relationship between language and cultural violence, belonging and identity across power gradients, etc.

Wow. Babel is the reason I love the dark academic genre. 

Babel follows four translation students at Oxford University’s Institution of Translation. Known as Babblers, these students must navigate a lifestyle of prestigious academia, rampant colonialism, casual luxury, and equally as casual discrimination. 

The first part of the novel follows protagonist Robin Swift’s childhood. Although a bit slow, the momentum insidiously builds to support the rest of the novel. As a result, the characterization of Robin Swift is incredible. He is naive, loyal, desperate, loving, confused, and above all else: angry. What I love is that Robin has to learn to cultivate his anger. In the beginning, he is not traditionally bold or courageous, but he quickly becomes the outspoken face of an entire movement.

The cultural anthropology and linguistics student in me also had a field day. I understand how some will find the professor’s exhaustive lectures and the students’ back-and-forth philosophical musings tiresome, but they were sharp and well-researched. Furthermore, the magic system relying on nuances in etymology and translation is ingenious. I do wish the origins of the magic system had been better explained, as it would have been interesting to learn how people discovered the process, how translation managed to develop into a formal field of study, and more. 

Though not a feel-good story by any means, Babel will alter the way you think and process language.

Incredible. Just...incredible. This book blew me away.

For a book to deal with so many complex, potentially dense topics while moving along at an engaging (and, towards the end, action-movie-esque) pace, while also providing enough detail for the reader to soak in the sensory experience of being in 1800s Oxford, oh, and ALSO still giving those aforementioned unwieldy topics their due? That's outstanding, and damned hard to pull off. And yet this book does it: brilliantly, and movingly. On the sentence level, this book sings (so much beautiful detail; so many lovely descriptions), and when it comes to the plot, all the tensions of translating/working in the service of a country that hates and exploits you, it soars: it's so, so perfectly rendered, so sharp, so forceful, so confronting. I don't think you can walk away from this book without feeling shaken. (And there's so much else to it too: what it's like to be in academia, the actual practice of translation, deeply charged opinions on scones: all that kind of good stuff.)

The only real issue I had here was with the characters. I didn't really feel this at first, since we stick so close to Robin and he's very well-written, but towards the end I started noticing how little I knew the some ostensibly major characters (like...Victoire: who is she when she's not serving as a way for Robin to work his thoughts out out loud? Even the epilogue raised more questions for me than answers), never mind more minor ones. And with Robin, too, it does feel sometimes like he was more vehicle for the plot than anything else, which should have been terrible and dragged the book down a lot, but because the plot IS so strong you can kind of accept it. It just ends up feeling a bit lopsided, that in a book that's otherwise so dynamic, I didn't end up feeling fully connected to the characters.

This would in no way stop me from recommending it though: it's that good, that rich. And I think it's going to be a book I'll be thinking about for a long, long time.

I received an arc in exchange for an honest review.

My expectations were high. My excitement to read was even higher. And yet, it took me months to finish this book. I ended up switching to audiobook and finished it that way. If you are having a hard time with it, I highly recommend the audiobook.

RF Kuang can write a book. No doubt about that. The world was immersive, the plot was interesting, and the magic system was intriguing yet understandable.

Did Kuang beat you over the head with the themes? yes. Did I find the pacing to be off? yes.
Did the story feel entirely accessible? No. The footnotes I found pulled me out of the story.

Sadly I think this is a case of false marketing. I would say this book is historical fiction with magic realism-not historical fantasy. There was little character development for anyone besides our main character. I saw the "plot twist" coming from a mile away. Truthfully, if this was marketed properly I most likely would not have requested it.

A brilliant discussion of colonialism, racism, and the vehicles by which the British empire was expanded. As a black woman in academia, I felt so incredibly heavy-hearted processing this read, though this was to be expected from any read by Huang. It was a little bit slow from the start and I had to kind of readjust my mainframe going into the more hearty chapters centering etymology, but it genuinely was a well crafted and executed read. I can see where some get lost but I was able to shift gears because as aforementioned--I'm in academia. It's another 5 stars from me.

A plague orphan from Canton is taken in by a scheming English professor and in exchange for transport, room, and board he is set upon a rigorous course of linguistic study. He is also expected to abandon his own name and Cantonese language and adopt a pronounceable English one as part of the process. (He goes with Robin Swift, taking the names from books he’s read.) He spends the next six years studying Latin and Greek and keeping up with Mandarin in preparation to enter Oxford’s Babel, where the silver magic that powers the empire is designed. There Robin meets Ramy, another translation ward, and they hit it off at once. Unfortunately, they and the other two members of their cohort are the only people who are happy they’re there. The ubiquitous, casual racism as well as the aggressive racism is not downplayed. At least they’re there for translation, where there are more people of color, and even women.

Within his first week Robin is approached by a half-brother trying to convince him to be a part of a silver-stealing criminal enterprise, wooing him with the big picture idea that Babel is part of an evil imperialist conspiracy to divert needed silver and magic into wealthy Britons’ pockets and enslave all non-whites. Sounds plausible. It’s just less interesting than the linguistics, academics, and scholarly camaraderie that was genuinely enjoyable to read about. Nevertheless, it’s clear that this will become the main story of the book. After all, the full title is Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.

This book pulls no punches when dealing with privilege, colonialism, slavery, and the burden of being a minority. It also touches on the difference between being a minority who can “pass” as one of the majority versus one who cannot. The thing is, the anti-colonialist message doesn’t take long to start feeling preachy and the associated plot disappointingly predictable. Revolutions against The Man are no new thing after all. The British, and by extension Americans and other nations governed by white people, do not come out looking good. (And they shouldn't.) But, honestly, nor do the protagonists when they go on a power trip.

The prose here is as splendid as one might hope for in a book about linguistic precision, but the story is excessively long and falls into a tiresome predictability. I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll ever feel the need to re-read it.

Ms. Kuang is a young author like no other. She writes books that are sure to be categorized as modern classics. In this book, she tackles academia, colonization and the intricacies of language with a deft skill while never getting bogged down. This is not a little book either, but it feels like it flies by. I’m not sure what to say about it, it has been widely acclaimed and it absolutely deserves the hype.

It reminds me a great deal of Les Miserables. Young people who rebel against the society that they have been forced into, but she takes it a step further by showing how different classes/groups of people interact with that society and how it informs their viewpoint. She is so nuanced. Ultimately, this is a hard one to review, if only because its scope is so very wide I have trouble articulating how I feel about it. Don’t let the size discourage you, it really is as good as everyone is telling you it is.