Theme wise this book was a 5 ⭐️ for me. Plot, pacing and character development wise a 3 ⭐️.

The author is clearly passionate about languages and it shows in the narrative but this book suffers from the same problem I had with the Poppy War books - too much build up but very rushed pay off. Literally 70% of the book is more or less about life in an academia and honestly it gets quite repetitive after a while. It gets better once everything gets going but I definitely had to trudge through a huge chunck of the book to get to the good part.

The audiobook is fantastic though and it made my reading of this book more enjoyable.

As someone who loved R F Kuang’s The Poppy War series, I was beyond excited to read her latest book Babel.
To condense all my thoughts and emotions about Babel into clear points, here’s ten things I loved about Babel.
1. Accessible language & Etymology
- For a book that is dark academia and about the nuances of languages & translations. This is an easy book to read. You don’t have to navigate through a lot of academic lingo or be multi-lingual to understand what’s going on.
- On the other hand, I really take joy in learning about the historical, cultural context and root of words. I’m a word-nerd! This book is great for those who wants their brain cells tickled whilst being entertained
2. Use of footnotes.
- Footnotes are commonly found in academia and non-fiction so it really suits this book set in academic Oxford.
- Most interestingly Footnotes are used creatively to expand on the meaning, etymology and also backstory of the narrative. The bonus of it is that it keeps the plot moving without being bogged down with explanations. But the footnotes are optional sprinkles of enrichment to the story.
3. Character Experiences of Discrimination and Solidarity
- This book captures so well the experiences of isolation that marginalised people feel in predominantly elite surroundings. I’m not just talking about the direct racism that the characters go through but also how institutions will isolate people of colour, class and gender.
- On the other hand, I love how this book captured that feeling of hope when you find allies with similar experiences and the importance of intersectional solidarity.
4. Robin x Ramy - this is the best friendship ever. You felt their instant chemistry and their shared bond all throughout the book. This is the duo of characters that complimented each other. Robin helped Ramy be cautious where Ramy pushed Robin into action.
5. Rebecca famously said she started to write this when she studied in Oxford and I felt like the book captured the city’s atmosphere most perfectly. The beauty of this city of dreaming spires contrasted with the reality that the university upholds elitist traditions and that it has produced more English prime ministers and debaunched MP’s than any other university. It was also stark to note the play between the townies and gownies interacted in this fictional Oxford and how alike it is to the Oxford of today.
6. White feminism & it’s effect on other movements
- The character Letty is perhaps a fascinating lens to observe white feminism at work. Yes Letty faced discrimination and she did work hard to get into Oxford University. But her actions and Point of View highlighted that she was unable to see that not all discrimination were equal and that she was completely blind to her own privilege. This isn’t something that is often criticised in this genre of fiction and I absolutely adored the way it was addressed in Babel.
7. The magic system of silver and translation is so inventive. This will be one of the most unique language-based magic systems but simultaneously simple to understand.
8. Victoire- I love her. I need a stand alone book starring Victoire. That’s all.
9. Interconnected effects of Empire
- The industrial era brought mass wealth for the few and mass suffering for the many. This book really touched on how industrialisation and imperialism meant simultaneously robbing the local poor and colonised regions. Very few books have such a well-rounded picture of the cost of what makes institutions and the men running those institutions get so stinkingly rich. Babel just hit the spot.
10. Finally the ending. It was dramatic and incredibly melancholic. It had the same dramatic ending of any great revolutions, one that required sacrifice and love.

Do I have any criticism of Babel?
Maybe the pacing at points were a bit slow and at some points rushed. But otherwise an incredible read.

Babel by R. F. Kuang
Audiobook narration by Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
Thank you Netgalley and HarperVoyager for a copy of the audiobook for an unbiased review.

To be upfront as possible, I've already read the book and absolutely loved it. However, that doesn't always work for audiobook versions (for example, I adore The Priory of the Orange Tree but absolutely cannot get on with the narrator of the audiobook).

Here it was great but with a potential problem for some listeners. The main narrator was great. I personally found his voice easy to listen to, with the right amount of inflection to help bring this novel alive.
The problem was - certain words were definitely mispronounced on both sides, but was this intentional?

This book is very much about colonialism, about etymology and linguistics. So it might be these 'errors' are intended as they would be pronounced by the characters involved. In fact I suspect that is the case, but sadly I also suspect that it might well go over other listeners heads because perhaps they don't get the book in the same way I do? Which isn't a criticism of them, but it is a book that because of its overall theme, many won't get.
The thing is, I actually felt the mispronounced words added to the books powerful narrative, intentional or not. So I would say if you're struggling to get into the book reading it, go for the audiobook to try and get a different perspective and dynamic from it.

So once again I'm happy to give this 5/5 stars.

The only aspect I would ask is audio levels on inserted passages were way out of balance with the rest of the book audio. That really should be addressed in my opinion.

Gosh, where to start.... I really wanted to enjoy this book but I found it infuriating for many reasons, chief of which was the author's insistence on making her anti-colonial politics more important than delivering a decent plot, leading to a slow and painful disaster. Is it me, or is she obsessed with race and racism? Every single character in this book is a stereotype defined only by their race and race alone. It is ironic that the author sees so much ill in universities such as Oxford when it was this very university that encouraged her freedom of thought, a luxury many Chinese universities could only wish for under the regime they exist within. The overarching statement she has to make about Oxford is that, it is racist. It appears that writing this book was her way to settle some score with the university that did not live up to her expectations in some way. She seems to have only one thing to say about white people - they are racist. Page after page we are fed the same overweening pap.

Kuang would love to be as clever as. say, George Orwell, but she lacks the finesse and confidence. She is not able to merely tell a story and have the confidence in her own writing ability to get her point across. She has to spoon feed her readers as though we were all idiots, peppering the prose with those annoying, pointless and oh so patronising footnotes, providing explanations of exactly what she meant you to get from what was written, just in case any readers were broad-minded enough to form a conclusion of their own. This book is pure propaganda and shockingly racist, to a degree that is unbelievable in these enlightened times. Equally astounding is the praise that this book and it's author has received. If any British person were to write something like this about China and the Chinese, one can imagine that its reception would have been quite different. I am non-white and I am getting a little weary of this skewed, 'one-way-only' hypocrisy.

Regarding the story itself, the description of Robin Swift’s early years was engaging and interesting. I was very interested in the theme of language and etymology that pervaded the story although at times the narrative was a little pedagogic. This world is not far removed from historical reality but here it is in the possession and utilisation of silver magic where the money and the power lie, though it takes surprisingly little to convince the four main protagonists that they are being caught up in something more sinister than they imagined. The pace is measured but gives the reader time to get to know the main characters, Robin, Lettie, Rami and Victoire. The relationships between them are a crucial part of the story as they grow together as students of Babel in Oxford. Due to their origins the four also illustrate and unite in opposition to some of the many issues concerning class, race, gender, slavery etc that are explored sometimes I thought labouring the point a bit too forcefully. I would have liked a bit more story and a bit less social and colonial history, but then, as aforesaid, the author had a particular point to make and wasn't about to let a good story get in the way.

Many will, and indeed clearly do, think that this book is a masterpiece of literature, but it was not for me.

I LOVE THIS BOOK OMFG. DARK ACADEMIA DREAM. THE COVER IS BEAUT AND I LOVE R.F. KUANG!!! IT LOOKS AMAZING ON MY SHELF AND I CAN'T WAIT TO REREAD IT!

I definitely struggled with the audio of this book- maybe due to the length of it, but also because its not the usual style of book for me and i am relatively new to dark academia and i definitely feel that this is not a beginners book.

That being said i did enjoy the book (devastated by the ending) but did need to tandem read with the kindle book to full absorb the writing- thats not a critism of the writing.... just that it wasnt for me necessarily.

thankyou to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK Audio for a free audio copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I found this one a real struggle to get through. It has such amazing reviews but I’m guessing this kind of dark academia just isn’t for me. I thought it was very heavy going and just didn’t like any of the characters. I wanted to DNF about 30% through but persevered incase the later part of book picked up. It was just lacking for me. There were a few parts of the book that were entertaining otherwise it was just very historically factual and not much of a plot. I also found that a lot of the additional footnotes were just unnecessary and added length to the book that was definitely not needed.

This is a truly special book.

Robin is a young boy from china who is brought to Babel to become a master in translation. Translation and silver are used in the magic system. This magic system is fuelled with mystery and you need to be highly skilled and intelligent to use the magic. It is what made 1800’s Britain thrive when other countries were not!

The way Kuang has managed to build a unique magic system in a Britain which could be real. The issues faced in the book are real problems which were faced and are still faced in the uk and around the world: racism, sexism, colonialism, class divide.

Audiobook-
The way the narrator of the main text is playful with the text and the narrator of the footnote is very matter of fact. Often the notes in the footnotes are very interesting adding another dimension to the story.

I have kept this vague as I’m not 100% sure how to explain how much I loved this book without spoiling it.

R.f.Kuang is in a class of her own and at the point I’d read her shopping list!

I received this audiobook from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I paid from my own physical copy!

I need to start this review by revealing myself as uncultured as the first thing this book taught me was that Oxford university is not one university but instead is comprised of 44 different colleges!

I must admit that I didn’t get the hype with this book. It was one of my highly anticipated releases of the year and although it was incredibly well written, it just wasn’t the book for me.

It felt lacking in some parts and it just didn’t keep me engaged but I don’t know what was missing.

Maybe I read book at the wrong time?
Who knows but it was very middle of the road.

I had such high hopes for this book, I really did. What I can say is how well researched it was, the author really went to exceptional measures, and I really appreciated that. This was very much mostly world-building for me. But it was slow, not in a slow-burn way, but in a frustrating way.

I felt like this took me far too long to listen to the book, if I hadn't had the audio, I would have stopped with this one. It felt like you really had to be into language at master's level to truly get enough from it.

I liked the narrator, it was well paced and read well. I especially appreciated the narrator for a lot of the pronunciations, it may have taken me even longer to get through had it not been for the narrator!

For a book that I have had the highest of expectations for this year, it has ended up being the book that has disappointed me the most this year. To the point that I dragged myself through the first 50% of the audiobook and I had to then DNF it, which is a rarity for me. I kept listening to it because I was hoping that something would happen and that the slowness of it would eventually pay off, but even at the 50% mark, it just never did, while continuing to feel like I was slogging my way through it.

This was extremely disappointing, even more so when you think of this authors previous books and the imagery those books created while reading them, some images I wish to forget, but vivid and memorable all the same. There is very little that I actually remember about what happened in this book, as I just couldn’t get invested in it.

"Read" as audiobook - thank you Netgalley for the ARC.
CW: Colonialism, racism, violence

I try to ignore any BookTok/Bookstagram hype, because often it skews my view and I am often let down. I picked up this book due to the premise - I didn't particularly rate The Poppy War Trilogy. Perhaps because I went in expecting Babel to be another overhyped BookTok "sensation", I was completely blown away.

It's a dense book, but the speculative world of the Silver Industrial Revolution is utterly compelling and totally developed - as we follow Robin Swift, plucked from a slum in Canton to become a translating scholar at Oxford to help the machinations of the British Empire. It's complex, conflicted and messy, just like real life.

While there is a small amount of date fudging in terms of when the train system was developed (which makes sense and is absolutely fine and expected for speculative historical fiction!) the LACK of date fudging around the Victorians/ Social Attitudes / Slavery/ Abolition etc meant that this book hit really hard. Fiction (in the UK at least) often confines slavery and its ramifications to the Regency era, and the Victorians are often presented as far more modern as far as the historical period goes (if that makes sense). And that was the point of the book - how, in our current state, racist classist and corrupt attitudes really aren't historic, and just because laws are passed, it doesn't mean that they are good, just or enforced. I don't think I am articulating myself very well, but I am still percolating what feels like a very intense emotional experience having just finished this book.

A note about the audiobook:
When you have abook that long, the narrator is important, and Chris Lew Kum Hoi and Billie Fulford-Brown were perfect - particularly when accents and pronunciation are so key to the story. Listening to them for 20+hrs was a joy - and when it finished, I wished there was 20 hrs more.

Robin is orphaned at a young age and is taken from Canton for a new life in England. He spends his early years studying languages so that when he comes of age he can study at the elite Oxford Institution of Translation - Babel.
Robin soon learns about the magic of silver and uncovers how much it benefits one side whilst exploiting the other.

Babel is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I will say that’s it’s not my usual genre at all. I’d describe it as a dark academia with magical realism, and let me tell you I was INTIMIDATED starting (did not feel clever enough to be reading a book like this).

I absolutely adored the 4 main characters and their little friendship group. I was so invested in their story. The magic system was really creative but lost me a bit at times.

The amount of research that has gone into this book is insane and commendable but at times it feels a bit info dump overload, making it slow paced in places. To make this more digestible I honestly can’t recommend listening to the audiobook enough!!! The narrator is so engaging. His different accents really bring the characters to life and it means no struggling over the pronunciation of the difficult words.

Babel by R.F. Kuang is an epic fantasy that spans the world during an alternative 19th Century setting with Oxford at its centre. It feels cinematic in its writing and its characters nuanced and complicated. The book follows Robin Swift from Canton to Oxford and further afield in a scathing exploration of the British Empire and Colonialism. Although this is a fantasy based novel, one if its strengths is that it makes us question real British history and its role in the world.

I found Kuang’s writing compelling and her exploration of language as a magical technology to be truly original, creative and intriguing. Furthermore, the use of dual narrators was highly effective in the audiobook with the second narrator having the role of fact checking and being a critical view of the views that are expressed by characters at the time in the 19th Century. This acts as furthering the idea of holding the history of the British Empire and Colonialism to account. Overall I found that Babel worked very well in the audiobook format.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK Audio for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

If you loved the book - the audiobook is better. The narrator brought to life this world and I was enthralled. the dark academia vibes are strong and if that's a genre you love then this will not disappoint. I love stories set in Oxford and this one is beautiful. I cannot explain my thoughts on this book very well as I don't want to spoil a thing. Read it. Love it.

Ease of Reading: 4✨
Characters: 5✨
Plot: 5✨
Writing: 5✨
Overall: 5✨

I loved this. I loved the magic, how simple but clever it was. I loved the characters, they were real, self-aware, and changing. I loved the stages this book went through; I felt safe, I was learning, I couldn't conceive where things would go. As soon as I thought there was going to be a slowness or a lull in the story, the story said no and took off down a narrow Oxford alley of tales.

The setting was great, the language was great, I felt genuinely immersed and enjoyed the journey. The book was also important, covering real world history in a way that made you know which side you should be on, and upset that the other side ever existed. It was very real and I'd really recommend it.

"Pick one [book]"
Just one from all these treasures?"

I'M CRYING 😭😭😭 This book was sad, like I didn't expect book about translators to be so dramatic, but omggg what was happening, the characters, the plot, the ending 🤌
RF Kuang does not disappoint.

Thank you NetGalley for providing digital advanced copy in exchange for honest review.

A brilliant narrative – I was completely sucked in from the beginning. It's a great audiobook too. I liked the narrator and the way they portray the different characters. Will be recommending this book to everyone from here on out.

I don't usually read fantasy, or any book longer than 400 pages if I'm honest, but I adored this book. It's like a grown up Harry Potter (largely set at Oxford), very clever, with an accessible and believable fantasy conceit.

It's a terrific reading, although it took me a while to get my head around the footnotes, which are read by a different reader and scattered throughout. Once I had, I felt I got a good audio experience, but I suspect the best experience would come from reading the book itself, as wordplay and language are core concepts.

I've just ordered the hardback for my otherhalf, who I have no doubt will love this too!

I have mixed feelings about this audiobook. Where I liked the narrators, I found it off putting with the second narrator interjected.

I’d never read a book in the Dark Academia genre and I did enjoy the audiobook. Very interesting and well written.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC audiobook.