BOOK REVIEW: Babel by RF Kuang
Historical fiction that was good in theory but lost me execution.
Oh Babel! How I really wanted you to be a five star read! I really struggle with historical fiction and that was the case with this one, and it didn’t help that it was a really long book. I think that is why I kept putting off reading this one. I was just never in the mood, but I knew that I should read it before our Dark Academia episode of our podcast, Speaking LITerally. Especially since this was the book recommendation given to me by my podcast co-host as part of the 2023 12 books in 12 months by 12 friends challenge.
But I did it and made it through the whole thing. Even if it did take me almost a month! Don’t get me wrong, there were parts that I enjoyed; the more action based scenes were engaging and held my attention, but while the highs were high, the lows were low and slowwwwww. My biggest pet peeve was the footnote explanations of all the words. I was really getting annoyed with that.
I’m getting ahead of myself though. Babel is a dark academia set in 1828 about Robin Swift who is “rescued” by an Oxford professor, Lovell, after his mother passes away in an impoverished China community. He is whisked away and given the best of the best education. Even if his guardian, Professor Lovell, is a horrible human being. Robin chooses his new “English” name and prepares to enter Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation known as Babel. There he continues to learn and study in the classic languages as well as his native Chinese in order to, in essence, use word pairs on silver bars that then create magical reactions from the gold bars. It is really just a fancy political plot to ensure that England remains the most powerful country, but Robin discovers a secret society that is trying to bring down Babel and what they are doing.
I loved the Hermes Society. It was a great little secret society run by Griffin, who has an unexpected connection to Robin. The only issue is that it wasn’t as big of a focal point as I had hoped it to be. There was just enough to make you keep reading, but Robin continually spoiled it because he acted like a 13 year old for the majority of the books, not someone college age. His immaturity was a big obstacle for me for most of the book.
That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.
The language of the novel itself was elegant and elevated. It was the perfect style for the ideas and topics presented in this book and all that the setting symbolizes. It is Oxford after all! There clearly was a lot of research done in the creation of the story, and maybe it is just way smarter of a book than I am of a reader.
Robin was paired with three other students for his cohort at Babel. I loved the diversity of them, and the character development was on point. They were each created to be very distinct from one another and each from a different cultural background. Their relationships with each other ebbed and flowed over the years as you would expect, but the differences between some of them were too great. I loved Ramy and, wow, did I end up hating Letty. I will admit that I was completely taken aback by her character evolution.
I’m sure people were happy with the ending and thought it was powerful. I can respect that, but I think that I was already in such a “is this over yet” that I missed some of the impact. By the end, I felt as if it was a little rushed. Everything else was so drawn out and the end was - BAM - done. Over. And there was, from my perspective, no real resolution to the major conflicts, and Hermes was at that point just an afterthought.
The things I liked:
The diversity of the four main characters
Hermes society (wish it was a bigger focus)
Their trip to China (felt this had the most impact on the progression of the conflict)
The magical realism with the silver bars (I’m a sucker for anything magical)
Things that I struggled with:
I felt as if Robin acted like a child for the whole book. I just couldn’t wrap my head around all of them being in their early 20s.
Scenes were dragged out and it felt like it walks taking forever
It’s a book that is smarter than me! :)
Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?
Where does this book land on my bookshelf?
I hate putting books on my bottom shelf, so I’ll put it on the lower part of the middle shelf. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it. Overall, it was ok. I mean, there were a few points where I thought about DNFing it, but I held on and saw it through. I know people who absolutely love this book, and I can appreciate the reasons why, but this one just wasn’t my cup of tea. Maybe, if it had more Hermes and 150 less pages I would feel differently. However, if you are looking for a book that hits all the boxes for a dark academia, you will definitely want to give this one a go.
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