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A review by owlsreads
Babel by R.F. Kuang
5.0
It took me a month, but I have finally finished Babel \o/
To say I loved every single minute of reading this would be an understatement. This book had such fantastic discussions about language and translation as well as colonialism in a way that was accessible and so so interesting. As someone who works with languages and has studied a bit about what it means to translate, it was lovely to see that subject explored and addressed in detail in a fantasy book.
R.F. Kuang was so mindful when weaving translation into the plot and while setting up the world-building here. There were so many difficult topics approached due to the nature of this work and I loved how those conflicts were presented here and developed. The plot itself was engrossing and, while I did find it pretty straightforward and sometimes predictable, I had such a great experience reading about Robin and Oxford and Babel as an institution.
Robin himself was an amazing narrator and it was wonderful and heartbreaking to go on this journey through his perspective. The little interludes from other points of view were also extremely well written and worked to add more depth to the novel. And I did love Victoire and Ramy as characters and did appreciate the part Letty played in illustrating how white people are sometimes.
The ending did make me cry a little bit. I don't think I'm really able to put into words how the final few chapters made me feel? There was a certain hopelessness to reading about what happened and then thinking about how the world is today--because yes, Babel was fictional but it did borrow from history and we still deal with systemic oppression and racism now--which was.. precisely the point. This book raised a lot of questions that didn't, and still don't, have easy answers and I think the overall tone here really shined through with the final chapter.
I will be rereading this when my physical copy arrives so I can annotate it to my heart's content! And I recommend this to anyone with an interest in languages and/or academia who enjoys a little fantasy in their works.
To say I loved every single minute of reading this would be an understatement. This book had such fantastic discussions about language and translation as well as colonialism in a way that was accessible and so so interesting. As someone who works with languages and has studied a bit about what it means to translate, it was lovely to see that subject explored and addressed in detail in a fantasy book.
R.F. Kuang was so mindful when weaving translation into the plot and while setting up the world-building here. There were so many difficult topics approached due to the nature of this work and I loved how those conflicts were presented here and developed. The plot itself was engrossing and, while I did find it pretty straightforward and sometimes predictable, I had such a great experience reading about Robin and Oxford and Babel as an institution.
Robin himself was an amazing narrator and it was wonderful and heartbreaking to go on this journey through his perspective. The little interludes from other points of view were also extremely well written and worked to add more depth to the novel. And I did love Victoire and Ramy as characters and did appreciate the part Letty played in illustrating how white people are sometimes.
The ending did make me cry a little bit. I don't think I'm really able to put into words how the final few chapters made me feel? There was a certain hopelessness to reading about what happened and then thinking about how the world is today--because yes, Babel was fictional but it did borrow from history and we still deal with systemic oppression and racism now--which was.. precisely the point. This book raised a lot of questions that didn't, and still don't, have easy answers and I think the overall tone here really shined through with the final chapter.
I will be rereading this when my physical copy arrives so I can annotate it to my heart's content! And I recommend this to anyone with an interest in languages and/or academia who enjoys a little fantasy in their works.