Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(I haven't settled on a star rating yet. 2-3 stars I believe)
Thank you Harper Audio for an early audiobook copy of this book.

The audiobook narrators did a fantastic job and really enhanced my enjoyment of BABEL. I thought the way they handled the footnotes was quite well done, and the main narrator, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, did a phenomenal job with voices and emotion throughout. I would definitely recommend this on audio.

Review:

I, like every bookish person I know, was highly anticipating BABEL. When I was sent the audiobook, I dove in immediately. There were definitely things that I really loved about the book, but those things tended to be on the educational and informational side and not on the story itself. I found the world of Babel to be fascinating. The way language was used in the book is such a perfect metaphor for how important, manipulative, destructive, and motivating language can be in life. There were incredibly relevant and complicated looks into racism, classism, sexism, colonialism, etc. And if these things are enough to make you love a book, or you really enjoy a deep dive into linguistics and academia, I believe you will love Babel. Many people already do.

However, I personally found the book as a whole to be too focused on the mundane day to day of academic life. And often when the story did get more exciting, I found it to be simplistic and unbelievable. I wish as much time had been given to fleshing out these characters that had so much potential, but so little depth. Instead they were all very one dimensional and seemed more like a representation of a type of person than actual people that we should care about. It was blatantly obvious who we were suppose to like and who we were supposed to hate. The "villains" of the story were so awful and so obvious it was hard to take them seriously at all. Most people, even the worst people, are more complex than that. Even if it's just to manipulate you. Otherwise why would anyone follow them?

This one dimensional character issue even extends to the main characters themselves. They were very cookie cutter and seemed only to exist to provide a single defining characteristic than to actually be people we believed in and were invested in. To be honest, even Robin didn't really seem to be invested in them. The most frustrating are Letty and Victoire. Letty because she is so one-dimensional, annoying, and awful that it made no sense that they were even friends with her, and (view spoiler)[left us with no surprises as to the way she would behave (hide spoiler)] And Victoire because she was the only relatively interesting and savvy character but got so little page time that we as readers are left wishing it had been her story we had read. (at least for me)

Then there was the story itself. I found myself often rolling my eyes by the things that just didn't make any sense and honestly felt like an easy way to create conflict or solve problems. Most of these things are spoilers so do not click on the spoiler tag if you haven't read the book because you will be spoiled.

(view spoiler)[It was ridiculous to me that silver was SO important and so coveted and guarded, yet no one noticed when it went missing. That just didn't make any sense to me, especially when you find out that they knew there was an organization that was trying to work against them the entire time. And they had had success beforehand. And the excuse given was that they're bad at math?? All of them? Then the fact that when the tower was taken they didn't have any safeguard against that, or a secret way only the people at the top knew about to get in? And everyone just had easy access to the blood vials and could destroy them on a whim. Then when Robin has his awkward rally cry, the professor just graciously and accidentally (and conveniently) confesses everything. These are literally the stupidest smart people ever. And speaking of stupid smart people, when Robin kills the professor, there is no way anyone would've suspected him if the group of them didn't act like total guilty idiots. I guess this is somewhat believable because of panic, but it was so hard to watch these four supposedly brilliant minds basically carry around a billboard saying WE DID IT. When characters act this stupidly it just feels like an easy way to create tension. (hide spoiler)]

I hope that this review doesn't upset people. I know how closely we can hold the things we love and want to protect them, but if I didn't see the potential in this story, and didn't love certain aspects, the parts that bothered me wouldn't have bothered me so much. And I have to be true to my feelings which I fully admit are tightly bound to how well characters are developed.

However, I do believe that even if this book doesn't end up being one that you love, you will still enjoy enough of it to make it worth your time. And I'd love to hear what you think!

-Andye

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