Babel

What first struck me was how this book used a smidge of magic to allow certain aspects of themes to be easier to comprehend. The writing does something with themes where it makes them recognizable and able to be investigated in more profound ways by shearing off the sides, so to speak. Yet while I noticed this up front, I was surprised how deep the book went as it reached its zenith and turned toward a conclusion. There were comments about colonialism and empire that I recognized, but the way they were delved into thanks to the aforementioned tactic struck me more deeply than I could have expected. The characters, despite being somewhat symbolic in their deployment, also grew on me immensely. It made me think, and it made my eyes tear up a few times. And that's without mentioning all the fun translation, history, and cultural movement details the writing wove in so elegantly! As a professional translator, it captured my intellect, my heart, and my imagination.

This is a historical novel about a small group of scholars (mostly of color) in Oxford in the 1830's, with an added fantastical element of magical silver powered by language and translations. Historically, it covers a modified industrial revolution, British colonialism, opium wars with China, and even gets into the Luddites, all impacted and warped by the British empire being powered by silver. What I especially appreciated is that the magic silver mostly just exacerbated issues and functioned as a metaphor for power in all of these historical situations; this is not a book about historical divergence due to magic but rather a book where the magic is used as a metaphor to reexamine things in a fresh light.

The idea of magic silver here powered by translations is just so well done. Scholars (and thus language) are extracted from colonies to power silver magic as a parallel to other resource extraction. The scholars are ultimately not really wanted for who they are but for the utility of what they know. And, I also love the detail that the empire is eating its own tail by its continual expansion and globalization weakening the magic. It reminds me a little of Yoon Ha Lee's Phoenix Extravagant where the magic system itself was intricately tied to colonial resource extraction.

It's a slow-building book that doesn't pull its punches about colonialism, racism, white folks siding with the establishment, or (as the subtitle to the book directly informs you) the necessity of violence. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

2 stars means "It was OK".

If you already know a fair bit about Colonial British History, The Abolitionist Movement, The Opium Wars, Etymology, and Linguistics, then move along. You won't learn anything new. This book isn't written for you. I think it would be far more enjoyable if you know nothing of these subjects.

The magic system is interesting. Definitely some dark spots. The character development is not great. It would have been nice, for example, to have more character development of Victoire. We really only get a hint of it as what feels like an afterthought at the end. Ramy almost as bad. The main characters are all walking stereotypes, and each is simply an incarnation of their culture of origin. Even that exists not in a deep way, but mostly just as a function of their difference.

It was very transparent what the author was doing, all the way through. There were a few moments of delight (mostly etymological in nature), but the ending is blindingly obvious from very early on in the book. There was only one actual surprise in the entire book (and that was in the timing of an event, not the actual event). So, for me, this is an OK Historical Fantasy with a cool linguistic magic system, very strong anti-colonial theme, poor character development of most characters, and you can see the end coming for hundreds of pages. It was difficult to stay engaged all the way to the finish, because so much was so obvious. This took me far longer to read than most Fantasy books, because it was just hard to keep slogging through for so long with no surprises and no character depth.

This memorable novel is both ingeniously creative and importantly timely in its message. R.F. Kuang weaves together a story that injects magical realism into a novel that is both historical and revisionist. That is, this is a story that asks us to imagine the road not taken at a certain time in history, and the ethics of the decisions of those in power–and question how and why such power came to be, in the first place.

I felt that the characters were well-developed and realistically complex, making it possible for the reader to feel the emotion in their stories. The plot was also well crafted and paced.

Instead of summarizing the plot, I want to simply recommend this novel, which I knew nothing about before I started reading. Part of the magic, for me, was simply reading on to discover the shape of the world as it is created by this author.

Bravo!

It was good, really good. The characters were interesting and three dimensional and enjoyable, the setting and plot was engaging and high stakes, and the translation lectures were tailor made for language nerds like me.

However, don’t do like I did and go into this expecting a fantasy novel. This is, mostly, historical fiction with a magic system reskinning technological progress in Victorian England.

This is not a knock on it, though, saying that it’s superfluous; it has a very interesting, if specific effect on the reader’s relationship with the world. It moves all of the varied goods and services that imperial Britain used to maintain power over their colonies into one spot and one profession: Oxford translators. As I see it, the silver magic system mostly exists to move the political center of Britain into this area. And I enjoyed it if only for this facet, if not for all the other symbolism it brings to the table.

However, I think it’s easy to be misled as a reader, that you will be seeing imaginative “what if?”s that are the bread and butter of alternate history fantasy novels.

To sum up, I recommend giving this novel a try if you are at all interested in Victorian England, in translation/linguistics, or just enjoy a really good, tragic, character driven story.