Babel in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Oct 18, 2022 Nataliya rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022-reads

Welcome to the party. Let me introduce you: Subtlety, meet Ms. Kuang; Ms. Kuang, meet Nuance. I see you’ve already met Didacticism, Repetitiveness and Overexplaining, so no intros needed there.
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This book, besides managing to both annoy me and bore me to tears also managed to almost ruin footnotes for me. (That’s a crime, given that I, as a devoted Terry Pratchett fan, have not previously met a footnote I didn’t love — until Babel came along).

It’s a book that greatly suffers under the shee ...more

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Aug 26, 2022 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Oh my! Who could have known that this unscheduled surprise read would end up being perhaps my favorite book this year (and considering that I'm reading the Wheel of Time series, that is saying a lot)?!

Oxford, England, 1828.
A young boy is brought from Canton, China, to England after his mother (his only known relative) has died of Cholera. He's made the ward of an Oxford professor, tutored and eventually begins studying at the university's famous Institute of Translation (known as Babel due to th ...more

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Aug 25, 2022 Emma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: british-hf, bipoc, alternative-history, historical-fiction, netgalley, historical-fantasy, magic, re-read, oriental-chinese-japanese

This was beyond compare. I absolutely loved it. This would suit historical fiction fans as well as fantasy. The magic systems of this world are ingenious and thought provoking. In fact there was so much about this that was thought provoking-colonialism, racism, slavery, misogyny, poverty, the dilemmas and subtleties of translation- it’s all here. I doubt I’ll ready anything to top this in the foreseeable future. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

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Aug 25, 2022 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2022-shelf, fantasy, fanboy-goes-squee

I enjoyed this novel wildly. In fact, I think I loved it more than R. F. Kuang's The Poppy War or sequels. I certainly enjoyed it more than the majority of the more recent fantasy novels that have been written for years.

Why?

It has that perfect blend of great characters, depth of worldbuilding, true historical scholarship, and a great story all wrapped in one hard-hitting package.

Let me list the ways I loved this: I really loved the Poppy Wars for being an epic-fantasy rendition of the Opium Wars ...more

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Dec 09, 2022 Christina Pilkington rated it liked it

Shelves: genre-fantasy

For the first third of this novel, I was sure I would give Babel 5 stars. I was loving it! All the discussions of liguistics and translation and how words and ideas are lost in translation? I was eating that up!

But then things slowly began to go downhill. The themes of colonialism and racism and misogony which had started out nicely integrated into the plot and character development became so on the nose and in your face that the characters fell apart at the end and just became a sounding board ...more

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Mar 20, 2023 DivaDiane SM rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley-arc, sfbr-damn-i-meant-to-read-that

This 5-star book totally deserves what I used to reserve 5 stars for. It is pretty world-view altering and mind-blowing.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was enthralled from the get-go. I enjoyed all the language and linguistic tidbits in the book. If I hadn’t become a singer, I might have gone into linguistics. I thought the idea that silver and linguistics were behind the British Empire’s success was brilli ...more

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Jul 29, 2023 Susy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, audio-finished

2.5 stars
This was definitely not the book for me. Though I really liked the premise, I didn't like the execution, it read like a textbook instead of a fantasy novel. I did my best to immerse myself into the story but the pace was way too slow and the footnotes kept pulling me out of it. During the first 60% of the book I considered DNFing it multiple times. The last 40% were more interesting, there were less references to the origins of words and less footnotes, so that part raised my rating fro ...more

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Sep 19, 2022 Lata rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: auth-f, favourites, bipoc-author, bipoc-actor, x2022-read

It is impossible not to think of all the ill-gotten riches that underpin the English monarchy with Queen Elizabeth's death. This book also points out the violence (theft, rape, slavery and murder) that ensured that England could say , in all its arrogance, that the sun never set on its Empire.

R.F. Kuang's utterly brilliant and heartbreaking novel posits a fantastical reason behind the British dominance over many countries: magic, in the form of words transcribed on silver bars that did everythin It is impossible not to think of all the ill-gotten riches that underpin the English monarchy with Queen Elizabeth's death. This book also points out the violence (theft, rape, slavery and murder) that ensured that England could say , in all its arrogance, that the sun never set on its Empire.

R.F. Kuang's utterly brilliant and heartbreaking novel posits a fantastical reason behind the British dominance over many countries: magic, in the form of words transcribed on silver bars that did everything from keeping a loom running well, to holding up a bridge. These words came from initially Latin and Greek, but eventually became words taken from China, India, and anywhere else the British colonized and took/kidnapped children back to England to become translators educated in Oxford.

These children were steeped in English culture, and made to venerate Britain through their education. And when grown, their minds completely steeped in British culture, never questioning the impact of Britain's use of silver at home against its own population, and definitely not against the lands filled with "savages" and "animals" who would do well to wear proper clothing and espouse British culture.

And despite their love of scones and many other aspects of their lives in Oxford, they're shown, daily, that they really don't belong, and should just be deeply grateful for what they have. Any questioning or resistance is brutally answered, forcing various people of colour working as Translators to fake their deaths and work surreptitiously against the British government. Their victories are tiny, and easily reversed and overshadowed by England's unethical actions to satisfy its voracious appetite for more foods, spices, textiles and other items from all over the world.

Using four young Translators, R.F. Kuang shows the impact of the indoctrination of children and their loss of culture has on their psyches, while showing how they react to the inequality and injustice they're perpetuating:

Robin Swift preferred to not see the inequality and bigotry around him, and didn't come to an full awareness of Oxford's Translators' actions till it was brought home hard after a working trip to his birthplace.

Ramiz Rafi Mirza (Ramy) used cleverness, irony and wit to deflect others from his feelings about anything. Taken from Calcutta, he was much more aware of how little he is tolerated in Oxford, by virtue of his skin colour.

The same went for Victoire Degraves, a transplant from France, who was punished when young whenever she spoke in her own language (she hailed from Haiti), and was daily shown that as a brown-skinned woman she was only barely tolerated in Oxford while studying to be a Translator.

I was instantly wary of Letitia Price (Letty),which proved 100% right. She was privileged (gentry), was despised by her father for being a woman, and was keen to tell of her own problems due to misogyny, but completely unable to see past her nose or feel empathy for anyone else’s situation, such as her three peers.

These four become central to the story's action, and must all ask themselves what they believe, who they are, and who they want to be. The story is complex, sweeping, painful and amazing. R.F. Kuang's prose is wonderful, and I loved her treatment of words and their meaning. This was one of my favourite books of this year. ...more

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Nov 22, 2022 Helen rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book replaces the British Industrial age with Magic. Silver has the power to make all things more effective - faster carriages, more stable bridges, efficient looms. You won’t need those pesky people to work! It’s clever.

From the outset, you can see the phenomenal amount of research that has gone into this book to enable the author to pop it into ‘history’. Replacing industrialism with Silver Magic. Therein lies my problem; reading for me is escapism and this read too much like a history b ...more

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Feb 03, 2023 Cindy rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi, audiobooks

A well-researched and well-written novel whose conceit lies in the power of word pairs linked by meanings known only to fluent speakers of both languages. This power has influence over the world, running ships and keeping bridges aloft. In the novel, the translators who hold such power forge it into bars of silver, and the (powerful, racist, misogynistic) British government wields the silver to grow their empire. The story is told through the eyes of a boy from Canton who is brought over to Engl ...more

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