Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

This book was good, if a little too on the nose for its theming. I can see a lot of people really liking this book (and the reviews back it up), but so often I was left wishing Kuang would just trust her readers a little more. The characters were fine, I did end up liking them, but their journey throughout the book felt unrealistic to me because they just immediately begin with the ideals that Kuang wants them to have, instead of coming to terms with how colonialism and imperialism is bad through time. Being indoctrinated into a system usually clouds how you perceive that system, especially in youth, but here it just seems like all the characters immediately hate the British and I don't think that they would.

Also, I detested the footnotes. There's one footnote where major characterization to a major character is relegated to a footnote, and at the time I read it, I considered docking an entire star for how much I hated that footnote - characterization does not belong in footnotes. Find a way for your MC to learn that information throughout the story, or leave that part ambiguous. But more generally, I didn't find the footnotes added anything, they felt tacked on to show how much Kuang knows about a subject, and on audio the footnotes were extremely jarring.

I did find the end very good. In fact, the last third I was very into, even if like I said earlier, I wish Kuang trusted her readers a little more. The magic system was nonsensical but I can see why Kuang decided to include it, and it's so minimal that you can basically pretend the entire magic system is a giant daydream from the main character in order to make his studies more exciting, and the book is actually just historical fiction.

If it seems like I”m harsh on the book, its only because the praise has been so overwhelming and a bit strange. But I also don't think the book deserves the hate it gets. I saw someone say that basically everyone agrees on what Babel is, but disagree on whether that's good, and I concur with that. This book will really work for some and be hated by others, but I just find myself in the middle, seeing both sides, having enjoyed this book but wished for something better.

6/10