BABEL: A Rant

PATREON...

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:51 Disclaimers
04:37 Magic Words
13:55 Non-Spoiler Babel Thoughts
22:16 Silver aka The Magic System
31:03 Characters/Plot
39:25 Footnotes
40:59 Conclusion

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| S O C I A L M E D I A |

[DavidB]

I appreciate the likelihood of anyone reading this is slim and I'm likely wasting my time writing this, but I need to get this rant off my chest.

I finished reading Babel yesterday and ugh, what a frustrating read! With all the praise I'd seen of Kuang's writing, I'd expected quite an intellectual story, with a deep and rich world and set of characters. Instead, I'm presented with a borderline pretentious lecture filled with non-existent world building and some of the most flat, one dimensional and stupid set of characters I've ever encountered. And themes in the book are handled with all the subtlety of a flying brick.

I thought the subject exploring the evil's of colonialism through a fictionalised version of one of the most quintessentially English of establishments was quite an interesting take on the usual fantasy novel. Unfortunately the handling was so ham-fisted that the continual use of "racism is bad" and "colonialism is bad" on what seemed like nearly every page became quite condescending. Does Kuang think we are too stupid to reach this conclusion on our own and therefore need this fact continually drilled into our skulls? Or was this merely a tool to cover up the fact that the story has about as much depth as a shallow puddle?

Speaking of depth, onto the characters. Each character is so transparent that from the moment they are introduced, it really isn't hard to see what direction that they would go in. And at no point did Kuang ever try to push our opinions of these characters in other directions. Letty was always destined to betray the group, Lovell and Playfair were clearly the most entrenched of colonisers the second they were introduced. It was all too predictable. Given that Kuang liked to tell us that colonisers succeed by turning conquered populations against each other (not an unfair point) it's shocking that she didn't use this idea and have either Victoire or Ramy end up being the character to turn against Hermes, having been fully indoctrinated into life at Oxford. It would have been far more interesting to see Letty grapple with her conscience, knowing that her life of privilege has come as a result of the suffering and exploitations of people like her friends, but instead we get someone that isn't much more than a lazy pantomime villain.

To add to the point in the video about how stupid it is that Robin just instantly does things for Hermes mere day's into his life at Babel, it's equally stupid that Hermes would even try and recruit someone so new and without even getting a slight grasp of their personality. How about spreading some anti-Babel propaganda first? And also, we know that the traps protecting Babel don't set off if the persons blood vial is in the building, so why did nobody think to remove the vials of Robin and Victoire upon their capture? The characters in Babel are suppose to be intellectual heavy weights yet the book is full of supposedly clever people making the most basic of stupid decisions. Something that I've also read is common in The Poppy War. Which reminds me, I need to go and remove that from my Wishlist.

[Erdosign]

My weird take is that the combination of silver and linguistics makes this much more a metaphor for the information age than for the industrial age, with silver as a stand-in for lithium and linguistics as a stand-in for coding. If I had to guess, though, I'd say that's unintentional.

[rivka]

Yours is absolutely the best description of dark academia I have ever heard!

[junibacken]

If you’re interested in the theme of colonialism I would highly recommend “Noli me tangere”. It’s a classic from the Philippines published in 1887. The main character has spent some years in Spain and very much internalized the colonialist narrative when he is confronted with the reality back in his home country. The author of the novel was eventually executed by the Spanish colonial government as his writings were considered a rebelious act.

[gilasantos]

I was sharing my thoughts with a friend and how I wasn’t liking this book. It just felt off. And he sent me this video. I am grateful to him! What a great video. Gonna go binge your other videos now!

[gidegnom]

I have to say that I, personally, loved most things about the book. I agree that the characters were flat (and if they hadn't been, I believe I would have loved the book to an impossible extent). As a person who speaks three languages fluently and grew up bilingually, the magic was so fascinating and relatable to me! I saw it as a "power of the word thing", less as a "magic because magic thing". I love linguistics and languages, so the magic really resonated with me. I also realized fairly early into the book that what I was reading wasn't truly just fantasy, and more of a mix of history and theory with some fantasy elements. I also, contrary to many, loved the writing style. I had no problem with the fact that Kuang tends to tell rather than show, because, in some way, it fit into the way I perceived the book as a whole. I also bawled my eyes out at the end by the way, but that may be because I tend to be overly empathetic, especially when reading (and especially when I project myself onto a character, which happened to me with Robin in a certain way). All in all, your review was interesting to listen to, and I definitely see some of your points. Thanks for the video :)

[ruth]

Thank you for this. I agree 100% And I add that the book much of the time felt condescending to me as a reader. I was soooo disappointed in this book. I didn’t hear you mention how the characters often speak in 21st century idiom-I caught this more than once. I love how you put it that it’s more like an essay than a fantasy. Makes sense.

[annadiana]

As a linguist and translator I enjoyed Babel's magic system very much. I don't think that silver needed to understand anything. It was the words themselves that held magic and silver worked just as a medium. I believe the whole point in it was to show that words have a lot of power.
This magic system and translation talks was honestly the most enjoyable thing in this book for me, but I can see how for uninterested people it might be tiring or dull. Nonetheless that's what the author knows the most about and it shows. She is passionate about linguistics and has a lot to tell about it.
Also I'm under the impression that you take magic way to seriously. It's not sci-fi. Magic is magic, because it's inexplicable. So the whole explanation in this book was not about magic, but about translations and meanings for the sole pleasure of it.
And if one don't find pleasure in linguistic talks I truly have no idea how they would be able to finish this book. Because I agree with your other points. The novel wasn't all that well written in terms of storytelling and seemed hurried. So yeah.

[HarukoZ]

My goodness, finally someone who reflects my feelings on this book. I cannot understand how this book has won the Nebula Award and is receiving such high praise. I really liked the themes and ideas in the book, but the delivery. Ugh It was such a painful read.

[tylerv]

I was reading Babel while taking a translation theory course in college and not gonna lie, a lot of it just felt like a more boring version of my lectures for the longest time and I really wanted to skip over those parts but I'm not really that kind of reader and just powered through. I also found the critique of translation and colonialism to be very outdated, since translating works into English was very much how it went in the 1830s when the book was set as a way to entertain the wealthy and upper classes, but if you look at the state of translated works now, a lot of what gets translated is often out of English into other languages as a way to promote cultural hegemony (at least, in my opinion, but why does Colleen Hoover get translated into 50 languages and authors of the same caliber as her in other languages remain obscure?). Something like 3% of books on the market in English are translations which is insanely low compared to the past and a work has to meet really high standards to get that English translation and then be marketed to a wider anglospeaking audience. There is value to discussing how that shift happened but I don't think that's what was happening with Babel specifically.

[Seolhe]

In fairness to R.F. Kuang, I don't think authors usually write their own blurbs or have that much say in how their books are marketed (beyond their own social media presence). I don't know if the she's actually the one who made that pitch (in which case I 100% agree with you), or if it was the publisher doing their own dark academia version of "this is the next Game of Thrones!" (in which case I don't think the author is deserving of your ire on this particular issue).

[Punkandcannonballer]

Babel for me was just... Lazy. "Hey guys, colonialism was bad, " was about as deep as the book ever was. The characters lacked nuance just like the incredible simple breakdown for colonialism. There wasn't a SINGLE moment while reading the book where I felt Kuang was utilizing an interesting setting and magic system to tell a thematically complex narrative. Instead, I just left the book thinking "wow, what a waste of a good idea."

[RebeccaNeffati]

You hit the freaking nail on the head with this review! Loved it.

[yannie]

Thank you for this. It's 3 years later that I restarted trying this book again and DNFED it again.

[SeanMurphy-du]

7:00 this is an utterly ridiculous reason to not accept something that, under any circumstance, can't happen anyway. Why would you ever compare an abstract concept that can never happen no matter what the explanation to the real, natural world?

[namai-ki]

The specific footnote you mentioned about Griffin's fight with his former friend was the one that made me almost drop the book. Not only does it feel like Kuang pulled this piece of background info out of her bum that very moment, no, she was also too lazy to rewrite previous chapters to let the reader find out about this friendship organically. I was so mad when this happened. Like girl, you'e just gonna tell me the emotional significance of this scene in a FOOTNOTE? The disrespect, I just can't.

[Arpurin]

I love everything about babel except the telling of the story lol

It felt like it didn't trust it's readers to put together that colonialism is bad and the people benefitting from it have trouble letting go of its benefits even when they directly confront the hurt it causes. But it kinda just tells you that which i think weakens the story.

As far as the magic system goes, i worked as an interpreter when i read the book, and absolutely loved it, it hurts me to hear you call it bad lol but im forcing myself to understand why you would say its bad given the standards you have for magic lol

Edit: just got to the part of the video where you basically said this lol

[aurelia]

The characters indeed felt like vessels for arguments and points of view that the author wanted to highlight. I've noticed with young writers, that when they write stories set in the past, or write retellings of mythology, they put contemporary ways of thinking in there and it irks me so much. It is clear that Kuang has done a lot of research for this book, so why did the dialogue between the characters feel so anachronistic?
I also agree with you that there was a lack of character development. I found Robin to be a quite boring character and it is indeed unrealistic that he has the worldview that he has in the circumstances that he is brought up in. The characters were also very clearly either 'good' or 'bad', which doesn't make for a particularly engaging story.

[nelsonliao]

Thanks for speaking out what I felt when I was finishing this book. I am amazed to see so many acclaimed reviews but now I glad to see I am not that much wrong.

[andrewf]

This is a fantastic review and I largely agree with your points. I'm not bothered by magic words as a magic system, but I did think it odd while reading the book that silver magic hardly changed anything from real history. However, that didn't detract from my reading experience. I just suspended my disbelief but it's perfectly understandable why that would bother a reader. While I overall liked Babel (I rated it 4 stars as I found the discussion of words and translation very fascinating and I enjoy linguistics), for me it was the characters that brought down the story. You articulated weaknesses that I hadn't considered and I found myself nodding in agreement. Kuang relies too much on telling versus showing and simply isn't a great character writer - at least not yet. Also, yes, it was very distasteful to call out The Secret History and Jonathan Strange. I wonder if Kuang is getting way too overpraised in her inner circle. She has talent, but she's young and still needs to hone her craft for what she wants to do.