Babel - R.F. Kuang ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

R.F. Kuang’s Babel or The Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of Oxford Translators’ Revolution was… Let me cut to the chase. It was hands-down my favourite book of 2023.

This is a standalone book in the increasingly popular “dark academia” genre and it’s quite a beefy undertaking. At 500+ pages (depending on the edition you have) it’s a slow burn of world-building, history, and etymology lessons. It. Was. Fascinating.

This book is told from the perspective of Robin Swift, a young child who loses his family to cholera in the early 1800’s. He is scooped up seemingly randomly by a professor, who raises him to be a badass polyglot, so Robin can later enroll in Babel, the extremely prestigious translation school at Oxford. 

Babel, aside from a translation institute, is also the world’s silver-working hub (this is where a sprinkle of fantasy comes into play). Silver-working is an intricate art that uses different languages, translations, and word combinations to activate special powers. Have you ever felt like a genius for solving Wordle? Robin and his friends are like, 100x more powerful than that. 

Speaking of friends, Robin has 3 other classmates in his year (it’s THAT prestigious and exclusive) and 3 of them, including Robin, are BIPOC. The last one is a random white girl. Because Oxford is so powerful in using language to produce the whole world’s silver supply, the student body is quite diverse. Robin is East-Asian, and his first language is Chinese, so he’s seen as quite valuable at the school, for example. Seems like a positive thing, right? 

With Britain wielding so much power, there are strong themes of colonialism and racism. Sounds familiar I bet. But the plot unfolds surprisingly. Events play out like you don’t expect, characters aren’t who you think they are, and every revelation will have you basically white-knuckling your book. By the way, I recommend getting the hardcover.

There. I’ve got some vague plot notes out of the way, I can move on to gushing about how brilliant it is. 

R.F. Kuang is so meticulous with her writing, and such an incredible world-builder. I became very invested in her characters early on. The details of the silver-working and how the magic system impacted society felt so believable too.

And the ending. Oh my gosh, the ending. I was shocked by how high the stakes were, and I cried for the last 50-60 pages. Maybe more? I’m not sure, but it felt like a hot minute. I think about how the story turned out for Babel all the time. It was heartbreaking. 

Go get this book. It’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars. Join me and we can be lifelong Kuang fans together.