A wild combination of etymology, politics, history and race, this book is filled to the brim with darkness and light. There’s so much going on in this story and it’s so incredibly clever, containing so much of Kuang’s knowledge and research on every page. It was fascinating to read about the different languages, the sources of words, the history of Oxford interwoven with fiction and the elaborate politics of the early 1800s.

There’s betrayal stacked upon betrayal, some cutting deeper than others. I was shocked multiple times throughout, with the violence and Robin’s lack of response to it. His character is frustrating but he’s also easy to empathise with. He makes some bad choices, he’s constantly afraid, and who can blame him? He’s in a place that won’t accept him, with people that want to use him, that think little of him and his countrymen. But he finds solace and comfort in his band of fellow scholars. The friendship between Robin, Ramy, Victoire and Letty as they set forward on their journeys in the elusive Oxford college is full of beauty, a thing of kinship and finding your people. The connections they made through being outsiders, whether because of their race, their gender, or both. We’re shown the highs and lows over their years at Oxford and then we’re shown the inevitable downfalls. And somehow, I never saw that ending coming…

Babel is one of my top reads so far in 2022. The story is about Robin, a chinese boy taken to Oxford and Babel tower where he is introduced to translators. The story is set in the 1800s and the writing and descriptions are vivid and really pull you in and make everything come alive on the page. I found myself pulled deep into the story and really enjoy learning about the origins of words and language too. The characters were well crafted and fleshed out and if you've read R.F. Kuang's other books you are going to love this one too. The plot is great and I loved how the story took a twist about halfway through. It really kept me on the edge of my seat. I expect to see this book hitting all the bestseller lists and being a big talking point among historical fantasy readers.

SMASH all the stars!
Thank you very much to netgalley for granting my wish and giving me the e-arc of this book as it was my anticipated book of the year 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

Literally i have no words left once i finished the book and i don’t pick any book after that. The whole story really save the dark academia genre istg it’s worth the hype everyone should read this because?. How can the author writes such incredible outstanding characters, plot, and everything else in the book is a slap to me.
All the research for this book, i want to stand for you!! It was INSANE i could barely breath every chapter with the knowledge i gain and the magic system that linked to england’s colonialism?? I need r.f. Kuang to open class only to discuss all of the material in this book i will dive into it and shallow it whole to know behind all of this!

This one is a masterpiece other than tpw trilogy and still stand outmost of all. Absolute bangers

Phew. I just managed to get this book finished before its publication date. I have lots of thoughts, mostly positive, but this is a challenging read, though worth it in the long run. I will be back with my thoughts once I have deliberated a bit more. And slept.

5/5 stars.

Babel was one of my most anticipated reads of this year, and it did not disappoint! When the author said her previous book series, The Poppy War trilogy, were training wheels for Babel, I didn't think she was being serious, but Babel was such a stunning and thought provoking read that it might be on my top 3 books of all time. The details and descriptions in this book are absolutely beautiful.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I feel like I am going to have to approach this from so many different ways and even then I am never going to fully explain the greatness that is this book so this is going part one of many 🗝

🕯This book has everything, everything in it to grab you by the heart and by the brain, and never ever let go. This book is unputdownable and yet teaches you more than history class at school did. It’s a masterclass in politics, history and human rights. The magic system is so real, so tangible, it doesn’t seem like magic anymore. The characters are so vivid, so strong, that they will leave long lasting impressions.

🗝This book is dark academia while acknowledging so much that is wrong about academia itself, and the aesthetic too. It’s about struggle and hate and love and friendship and knowledge and wisdom and power. This book is truly a master piece

Babel is a rich, wonderfully written novel that stole my heart. It is one of the best books I have read this year.
The concept is entirely original, and the world building is simply beautiful. The author has worked diligently to out together something remarkable and has truly succeeded.

The characters were absolutely stunning and complete versions of themselves. This will not be a book for everyone as it is particularly dark, but if that’s your jam definitely pick this one up!

Dark and spellbinding. This story resonates power. Brought from his life of poverty in Canton to the dreaming spires of Oxford, Robin finds himself thrust into a life of power struggles which will eventually lead him to the darkest deed a man can commit.
This story then begins a route into a struggle with the powers of the country akin to genocide.
It is an amazing and totally unique book. Dark and unimaginable occurrences that put the reader in mind of Armageddon.
Then? Sacrifice and also new beginnings. This story is just a fabulous trip into a very dark fantasy and should be read.

This book was everything. Everything in its complexity, twists, details, world building, magic systems, writing style, and plot.
I didn't keep my heart safe even knowing how R.F. Kuang loves to torture us readers. I should've known better. My heart went through so many emotional rollercoaster, I finished the book with a heart full and shattered at the same time. Excellent storytelling, excellent story. I loved it a lot.

Thank you for my ARC.

What a book. Beautiful writing in a masterfully structured read.

Dark academia at its finest, will become a sensation I’m sure.

A must read.

@cotswoldbooks

This was beyond compare. I absolutely loved it. This would suit historical fiction fans as well as fantasy. The magic systems of this world are ingenious and thought provoking. In fact there was so much about this that was thought provoking-colonialism, racism, slavery, misogyny, poverty, the dilemmas and subtleties of translation- it’s all here. I doubt I’ll ready anything to top this in the foreseeable future. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

This book. It was stunning and funny and heartbreaking and everything else in between.

It is split into 4 or 5 little books, or sets of chapters, and it really does feel as if you’re reading different books as you follow Robin and his friends through their time at Oxford, and more specifically in Babel.

The only thing I’d say is that the book sometimes went into rambling essays about linguistics, which whilst aiding the background to the plot, could be very hard to follow.

Really enjoyed it, and so glad I have such a beautiful physical copy.

I don't read many fantasy books at all but the fact that this was set in an alternative OXford and looked at the mystery of Babel and languages really made me want to read it.
It's far reaching and epic in scope and even the bits that went over my head were exciting. Im not a fantasy reader as I say so things were a bit lost on me at times but the overall themes made this so worth reading.
Babel tower, a centre of learning, mysterious Oxford and a power emanating from one of its towers.....what a premise!

Beautifully written and obviously well researched, this is destined to be highly acclaimed in the world of dark academia. Adding magical abilities to the already rich and powerful white British empire, just tilts the balance even further from fairness. It was horrifying to read how they rode roughshod across other nations, taking whatever they want. It made me appreciate just how much "fiction" has taught me about the world, as I sure as heck didn't learn even half of this whilst at school. It was also interesting to read about the translation side of things but it was heavy going at times.
This was dark, disturbing, emotional and a lot more educational than I am used to. I wish there had been more of an emotional connection with the characters, I'd have loved to know more about Victoire and her story. It was too dry for my taste, and was a chore to finish.

Thank you @harper_reach for the free copy

Okay, listen.

The reason this is not a 5 star read is purely my own personal interest in the story and plot. There is nothing wrong with this book what so ever.

Babel is absolutely phenomenal. 
The writing is stunning - its so sharp and cleverly written. And probably one of the best written books i've ever had the pleasure of reading. The story explores colonial history, and the industrial revolution and really dives deep into all of the problems that makes empires and powerful institutions grow and maintain power. I could keep talking about the commentary that this books delves into, but we would be here for days.

The amount of research that went into writing this book is astounding to me - but that is what makes this book so goddamn phenomenal.

R.F. Kuang has accomplished something spectaluar with this book. And it's my believe that even if this book is not your type of book, you should at least explore the posibility of reading it anyway. I firmly believe that this book could change how many of us see the world and in many years, this will be a classic that people will read time and time again

Now, because of the fact that I personally don't find history that interesting in general, I found the book to be a little long and I would sort of zone out. But that is not to say that the book or writing is not amazing - because it is - It's simply my own interest that stands in the way of me giving 5 stars.

4.5/5⭐️

Really good, but found it took a lot of perseverance to push through especially in the beginning parts before it started to get exciting. Even then, when I took breaks, I found myself gravitating to other books and full disclosure haven't been able to entice myself back to finish it. I think I was expecting somehow a little closer to Olivie Blake's book, but this is more dense, you have to be in the mood for it. Thats not to say when you're reading it you're not enjoying it!

I’ll start by admitting that I wasn’t so sure about this book for the first 200 pages. I thought it was good, but I didn’t quite care enough to think it was great. There is a lot of setting up to be done and a lot of heavy translation content - all of which paves the way for the second half to take off.

And take off it did! Once the momentum really got going I didn’t want to put it down. The action came thick and fast (along with a few too many deaths for my liking!) and didn’t stop until the end.

I also really really loved the fact that they got to eat scones from the Vaults (the best scones in Oxford!) so that made me very happy.

Babel is a historical fantasy novel exploring the importance of translation in colonialism and the ways in which power manifests both in academia and in the world. Robin Swift was taken from his home in Canton to England by a mysterious guardian after his mother's death, learning Latin and Greek in preparation for the future his guardian has planned for him at Oxford's Royal Institution of Translation, Babel. It seems a haven, a place where Robin makes a group of close friends and despite the huge workload, finds happiness. However, it starts to become clear that Babel may not be such a haven after all, and the implications of the translation work and the silver-working magic that translation allows have dark and far-reaching consequences.

The concept of this novel is fantastic, centred around ideas of translation and how they could both evoke magic (by having translations that have slightly different meanings, bringing in something extra) and be used as tools of power and colonisation. The dark academia type setting (being set in the nineteenth century makes it different to most of the popular dark academia books, but it definitely tries to expose the dark side of academia) will bring it a lot of appeal, and the narrative centres around four main characters, with Robin the protagonist but his friends Ramy, Victoire and Letty being crucial to the story, which makes it engaging despite the huge amount of heavy academic linguistic content.

Reading the book on Kindle I wasn't quite aware how long it is, and I will say that you really feel the length. For me, it did drag at times, and though the length is partly due to the writing style and use of footnotes to elaborate, maybe the pacing didn't quite work for me. In terms of the style, I really liked the third person removed narrative style, which matched the academic nature and allowed for a lot of context (it's clearly a heavily researched novel). The footnotes I was less keen on, as a lot of them served to make obvious points and took you away from the story. It was clever, though, that they were used to explain the racist attitudes of people cited/mentioned as a sharp commentary on the people in the novel who believed in translation, but still saw the languages they needed for silver-working or trade as lesser and the people who spoke them very much so.

The language used to discuss race, class, and gender was at times strangely modern for a novel that was so placed in a historical setting, which occasionally felt too notable to be ignored, but in general the book engaged interestingly with the historical setting. It's quite different to something like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which integrates magic fully into its historical setting, as in Babel the silver-working element, which is the only fantasy part, is more of a structure that impacts the workings of the country, but not in ways that make it particularly different than in real life. Personally, as someone who isn't really a fantasy fan, I enjoyed this, and I was pleasantly surprised that the book was much more about translation and academia than magic.

The depiction of Oxford is an interesting one, with some brilliant commentary and satirical jibes atthe attitudes of different kinds of people within the University and an accurate depiction through the Babel institute of the kinds of workloads and the ways in which people end up cocooned from the outside world. Even though Babel is fictional, and Kuang's opening author's note explains a range of inaccuracies with the Oxford depiction specifically, it did feel pretty true to life. Occasionally there was too much day to day university stuff which slowed the pace down, but at the same time that is what people are probably looking for from something marketed as dark academia. What was perhaps strangest was that the changes to the realities of Oxford (like having a somewhat anachronistic commemoration ball with oysters served at it) were only explained in the author's note, and not made a feature based on being an alternative history with the silver-working magic integrated into it.

There's a lot to say about Babel, as it has a lot to say both in terms of length and content. Generally, it's an engaging and insightful read that, as a fan of dark academia and not so much fantasy, I enjoyed. There's plenty of other things I've not even gone into in this review in the book (like arguments about models of resistance and protest, violence and non-violence) and it combines the academic and conceptual concepts like ideas of translation, languages, and power with a good story about a group of friends finding their way at Oxford.

Just a quick one for this.

This has so much hype surrounding this I think it's made it more difficult to get into. I'm finding it really slow but for now it's just not for me but will give it another go in future!

This book was so good! is one of those books you sit to read and when you stop you realise it hasn't been just 10 min but 5 hours, and you have to pee badly but didn't even notice it. That is how absorbing and fluid this was.
I think this could have also been separated in two smaller books, because there is a clear diferent from the first part of the book and the second, but it works perfectly as one book too.
This is a great story about racism, colonisation, revolution, strikes during an industrial revolution in the British empire supported by a kind of magic based on silver and language but that despite everything fantasy it doesn't go that far away from our actual history.

I love the way Robin the main character, wonders about the etymology of words when he is little, cause I have always done the same, and don't really know other people that do the same, exceptfor maybe this author(?).
I should've know better than to get attached to a character this is R.F Kuang, is not like I'm new to the game, so yes my heart broke so many times... so be ready when reading this.

This books have many similarities to the poppy war with the characters starting from a poverty position, to a school where they are very good, to revolution. Griffin have a similar presence for Robin as Altan have for Rin. For a time I was worried that this book would disappoint me as the poppy war series did, where I loved the 1st book but disliked the last one, but being an stand alone this didn't happen, and I loved this book from start to finish.
I think this is a must read for everyone, I learned a lot about racism, colonialism and white privilege, all themes I am passionate about, and also about language and translation another topic I'm passionate about.