Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

Sort of like an alternative history British empire where they gain their power through magic that's powered by translation (hence the name Babel).

It felt a bit weird though, like the book was shitting on the British empire (and rightly so) but via the alternate magic history version of the British empire.. like why though. Just shit on it directly or not at all thanks

I'm going to think about this book all the time, forever. It made me want to die and I mean that as a compliment.

There’s some fascinating worldbuilding here, a wonderfully crafted magic system, and an engaging setting, but it also feels very blunt and overstuffed, like 3 novels stuffed into one.

I am crying and trying to put my thoughts into words. Funnily enough I can't translate how this book made me feel. All I know is that I loved these characters, although they were flawed and complicated. I just loved the care for detail, history and feeling that was put in this book. Yeah I need to sleep now.

4.5. RTC

This book professes the authors love to language and tackles very important topics which are still current today although the time setting is early to mid 19th century and thus the peak of the British empire - with all the good and bad that entails.

Somehow I felt this book was divided into two books and my opinion on that is somewhat divided.
First you have the linguistics and translations which are the foundation of this Oxford's magic. As a fellow translator I loved the display of the power of translation and understanding other cultures. Intervowen words in other languages made me glad to have read it in English, the footnotes give the text a sort of commentary feel (I did have trouble finding the little asterisks within the text though) and the overall style of the book made me think of academia throughout. Usually I never annotate books (also because they are from the library) or even feel the urge to do so. However this book had some sentences or paragraphs that I was tempted to highlight.

Now to the second part. Let me tell you, the subtitle “arcane history of violence” is not to be taken lightly. As part of the colonialism and basically the Industrial Revolution aided by translation, the society of Britain is divided, if “the others” are allowed at all or not ignored. Topics like racism and sexism, even classicism, are unfortunately still relevant to this day and this book does not shy away from it. To me these parts seemed very realistic though painful to read. The descriptions were thought-provoking and made me think of life and loss and society and history and so much more.
There is the saying that history is written by the winner. I don't think there was a real winner at the end. And put in historic context, well you have the Empire and her colonies. Greed and exploitation (of person, land, resources) come with the territory of that.

The transition between these two parts of the book was not gradual. Some underlying or open aggression against our foreign students was always there but a very drastic happening changes the tone of the book and obviously also of the story.

Overall this book was utterly thought-provoking and I couldn't stop relating the writing to things I know of history, from colonialism to German national socialism of WW II, and even to current state of economics relying on finite resources and putting profit on a pedestal above humanity.
Definitely recommend to read!

It wasn't my favorite book, but i think it was well written and well researched and thats why I gave it four stars.

I didn't have any issue with anti-colonialism as some (Side eye ) readers did.

I could tell a lot of work and research went into this book. Having studied mandarin chinese, I felt able to relate to the chinese words and the history.

I don't think this book needed to be as long as it was. If we were going to get insight into Victoire, Ramy and Letty, I wish we would have gotten more. We barely scratched the surface with them. I wonder what this book could've been if it was written in Ramy's perspective, and I think it may have been better.

It hurts. I hurt reading the ending. The last 20% of the book is when you realize just how hopeless it feels to ask for change in a system that doesn't listen. 
A brilliantly written book that really captures colonialism at its core, but not at its worst. That's the scary thing about it.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

So many people have raved to me about this book, so when I received it as a Christmas present, I was thrilled - I'd been trying to hunt down a copy but it had been sold out for some time. Then, I almost DNF'ed. This was one of the slowest starts to a book that I've read in some time, and I struggled to get into it for over half the book.

Then, once Robin killed Professor Lovell, everything changed for me. I flew through the last ~40% of this book. Though there is not a ton of action, like I've grown accustomed to in books like Fourth Wing or the SJM universe, Babel captivated me. It was both an excellent, sort-of-fantasy read, and a scathing take on colonization; the end absolutely broke my heart but was incredibly satisfying. I will definitely be revisiting this book in the future.

I loved this for so many reasons:

- I love history
- I love language
- I love learning, anything really

For those reasons this will likely bore a lot of people to tears or they won't finish it, but I was swept away with it right from the start.

In the most simple summary, this follows a young boy from Canton in the 1830s who becomes the ward of a professor at Babel, a sector of Oxford University where they imbue silver bars with the magic of translation. These bars can make trains run faster, make lights burn longer, among many other things.

This explores so many themes like colonialism, racisim, revolution, the list goes on.

I do think it's perhaps a bit too long, there were points where I thought it was wrapping up but it kept going. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this and was in tears at the ending.

Also, I know I'm weird but I like footnotes

I loved the themes but the execution is boring and mediocre. The characters are ill written and I couldn't bond with any of them. You know how it all will end since the beginning and the narrative is just shallow and unimaginative. It's not bad but it's not good either.

It seems everyone either adores this book or loathes it. I might be one of the few who's firmly in between. I wouldn't call this book a masterpiece, it has some glaring flaws in its execution that unfortunately do bring down the overall quality, but I still found it an engaging read that at least attempts to give the readers something to think about.

Things I liked:

• The setting. Kuang wanted to milk the Dark Academia aesthetic, she did it masterfully, she built an excellent atmosphere and her descriptions of Oxford and college life are exactly what I was looking for. I also love how well the whole aesthetic gets brutally subverted at the end, and how the rot permeating the town (and by extension the academic world the characters have been immersed in) becomes more and more evident as the novel approaches its climax.
• The themes. I'm a sucker for a good revolution story, there's something incredibly liberating in seeing the oppressed rising up and giving a good ass kicking to their oppressors, or at least trying to do it. I feel Kuang did mostly a good job writing that specific part of the book. I also find it so very refreshing to see an author that is not afraid to state that violence might be necessary, in some circumstances, to affect lasting change and fight pervasive injustice, but at the same time is not afraid to show us the full consequences of said violence. War, no mater how righteous, is still a horrible thing; innocent people are going to die no matter how hard one tries to avoid it. Kuang doesn't shy away from this.                                                                                                                                  My heart also gave a little flutter when I found a quote from Les Misérables at the beginning of a chapter. I see what you did there Miss Kuang, and I like it. 
• The magic system. It might not have been incredibly developed, and as a metaphor for the industrial revolution it's maybe a bit simplistic, but the idea of generating power from the untranslatable meanings of words in different languages is quite original and very interesting.

Things I didn't like:

• The excessive telling instead of showing. Most of the characters are quite flat as a result. They don't read as true human beings with complex personalities. We're constantly told things about them, but we rarely see them act according to what we're told. Letty and Ramy suffer particularly from this. Ramy is supposed to be this witty, smart and decisive character loved by all, this is what we're told about him. We're shown very little about him, and what we're shown is a guy who's constantly angry. Not that he doesn't have excellent reasons to be angry, but “angry” cannot be a character's whole personality. Unfortunately, Ramy feels more like a racism detector than an actual person. Letty is the other character who suffers from this “cardboard figure syndrome”. Letty is supposed to be a well intentioned, well meaning white person who isn't overtly racist, and can even be nice towards people of colour, but is so entrenched in her privilege, so ignorant, blind and unwilling to doubt her worldview, that ends up perpetuating the violence of the colonial system all the same. The problem here is not that she's written like this, I would have loved a character like this; the problem is that, again, we're told she's nice, caring and friendly, if stubborn and ignorant, but every time she opens her mouth she's either unpleasant, or the author proceeds to bash her, to the point that she becomes a caricature of the kind of person she's supposed to represent. More than once I just asked myself why the hell the other characters were friends with her. 
• The lack of trust in the reader. Kuang seems very preoccupied with making sure her message gets across, as a result, parts of this novel feel very didactic, repetitive, and overall just insulting towards the intelligence of the reader. The message is just not delivered very elegantly, there's no subtlety or balance. Unfortunately, while the lack of subtlety wouldn't be a problem for a YA novel or an essay, in a novel meant for adults it just reads like bad writing. The footnotes in particular add absolutely unnecessary extra commentary, they take the reader out of the story to state things that should hopefully be obvious to any person of normal intelligence and culture. One could argue that it wasn't the author's intent to be elegant or subtle, that she wanted to punch the reader in the gut and make them feel uneasy, but again, i feel this kind of aim, in a novel, should be pursued through plot points and character interactions, not through footnotes and endless narrator commentary. 

Pretty imaginative story with a unique premise. Really cool window into etymology and some of the philosophy behind translation!

A bit awkwardly written at times, though.

This is an absolute standout that grips you with its rich narrative and complex characters. It's a book that masterfully intertwines the intricacies of language, magic, and the harsh realities of colonialism.

The story of Robin Swift, from Canton to the enigmatic halls of Oxford's Babel, is both captivating and thought-provoking. Kuang's storytelling is fearless, plunging into deep themes without losing the personal touch of her characters. The plot, at times dense, is balanced with moments of calm that allow the characters to develop and us as readers to unpack and consolidate what we've read before being swept up again in the narrative's intense pace.

The last third of the book is a rollercoaster, leading to an ending that is as inevitable as it is impactful. Kuang shows remarkable bravery in her storytelling, weaving a tale that is both devastating and deeply meaningful.

In short, Babel is not just a great read; it's an experience. It's a book that challenges, enlightens, and stays with you long after the last page.

“That's what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpses what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

It was quite a challenge and but it was worth it. Amazing.

When I read the first page of this, I was like...oh shit yeah. This is what loving reading is supposed to feel like. I love when smart people write and I love when smart people let loose and create something never seen before. Not only is this story inventive, but it's incredibly well written. The writing was good enough that if my adrenaline wasn't pumping, I was still truly engrossed in the words themselves. Maybe that's just the writer in me. Was in awe of dialogue and banter. I found the actual plot of this pretty fascinating too. There was definitely some jargon/language here that totally went over my head (seriously, whenever different languages pop up with translations, I totally skim by accident), but other than that, this was a pretty fast paced and exciting story to me. Not necessarily fighting dragons and going to war (side-eye) but there's a lot to love here. And there's seriously a lot of twists and turns.

The only real criticism I have is that the dialogue and events didn't always feel realistic to the time period. The book sometimes feels like it was just plucked into a convenient part of history but didn't make too much effort to talk about what that actually looked like in some nuanced ways. But it really showed up to me in the way they spoke. That being said, I appreciated that the dialogue wasn't old english and stuffy sounding. It was easy to read because its language was very current. But yeah, definitely was not getting 1800s vibes from this. Even descriptions of the town felt modern.

Beside from this, I think I can also admit that Letty's character was very predictable. And the harshness in which she was spoken to in the beginning gives too much leeway for people to start justifying her disloyalty. Not criticism, just observation: Letty's character is extremely hateable, while at the same time, resembling so many white people we interact with on the daily. Our colleagues, classmates, even family. They just can't seem to ~get~ racism. Can't comprehend why having privilege doesn't bar you from offering criticism to the very system that gives you that privilege. Also can't seem to understand why privilege is sometimes not a privilege at all, if it thrusted upon you as a means to get you to hush up and be grateful. If your own family and community are suffering while you've got your nose stuck in a book, dedicating your life to people who don't see you as human. At about 60% through, I could feel Lettys betrayal coming on. It was still well done, but very predictable. I never once in the book thought she was ever trustworthy with the whole Hermes thing, let alone murder and revolution.

This is the type of book I finish and, despite having small details I'd change, I really just want to leave a one sentence review saying i love it because none of the other shit matters. I think this is a skill many need to learn. But alas, they never do. So, classic me going on and on about bad takes from bad reviews:

the assertion that footnotes = breathing down your neck conveniently ignores the fact that a LOT of folks know a whole lot of nothing about everything. Maybe it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I know VERY LITTLE on imperialism and colonialism, especially in the environment presented here. So the footnotes and allusions were essential to me. You're reading too much into it if you think Kuang assumes her readers aren't intelligent enough to get it. But even then, some of us aren't going to automatically ~get it~ and that's okay. I can understand on an individual level that the footnotes can feel disruptive or unnecessary. But I truly felt like Kuang was there with me, introducing me to new details and history. Anyways, some things are just fun. Footnotes are fun. This is a book that's talking directly to you, begging for you to pay attention. It's making its argument obvious for the sake it of it not being missed. So it is accessible to EVERYONE, not just people who can read between the lines, who love big words and indecipherable symbolism. Let people enjoy things. Let writers indulge. That's literally their job.

And finally, the request that this book get deeper into “the action”. Not sure how to combat this but. Let's point out the obvious: it's already there! If you wanted the “juicy” details of colonialism, it's right there. On the first page. And everywhere. Secondly: the whole point of Babel is that these children are not seeing the gruesome effects of what they participate in. It's constantly rammed into their heads that others, their own motherlands and all its people, are lazy and deserve whatever strife they suffer. So no, you're not seeing the gory details! Sorry? Wanting more explicit violence, for this book to be less ‘preachy', for it to comfort white audiences, are all tone deaf. You want the book to shy away from its purpose, to sugarcoat its lesson on oppression. That is not how it works. If you read this entire thing and your lasting sentiment is that you hate how the book is preaching to you, how the book is making its lesson too obvious, how it makes you feel awful for being white, then your view of the book as a whole is severely devalued.

I didn't get past the second chapter. While I do want to continue reading this someday, I'm not really in the right headspace for it now, and am fairly over-familiar with the themes. I'm going to preference Yellowface to get to first as I think it will appeal more to me at this point

Oof. What a disappointment. 2.5 stars.

I can't believe this didn't win Goodread's Fantasy Award for 2022 because I absolutely loved this book. I have to be upfront and say that I can't be objective about it, there's too much overlap with my life, I have my own Robyn, I'm bilingual and I work in a linguistic/translators capacity so this slid right in the pocket. Whether or not any of that is true for you, do yourself a favor and add it to your list; if you've had it on your shelf, make it your next read.

Set at Oxford during the leadup to the First Opium War (1830s/1840s), Babel: An Arcane History is a mashup of Fantasy and Historical fiction, a well-thought-out combo of Harry Potter and The Professor and the Madman. This is a book where magic silverwork has supplanted steam as the engine of the First Industrial Revolution, engraved silver serves as a medium to capture the meanings lost in translation. The translators of this universe are its sorcerers supreme, our main character Robin, and his cohort of multicultural fledgling translators are the next generation to unlock this power.

Babel: An Arcane History is a book with two faces, the characters of this story are indeed the miraculous chosen few, but they are also products of the horrors of colonialism, assets to their masters. Robin is uprooted from Canton and adopted by Professor Lovell; in exchange for his deliverance from poverty, he is strictly raised to exercise his language skills in the interest of the British crown. Robin is one of many children taken to England, once he grows up to attend Oxford (Read: Hogwarts) he meets Ramy, Victoire, and Letty (the only white European member of their cohort) a group of children from across the empire raised similarly to him. Almost immediately they are excluded by their privileged peers and come together as a group of their own. We join them as they choose between living lives in “naive, ignorant, luxury,” as tools of their oppressors, or risking their safety to resist the oppressive system.

The pointedly anti-colonialist message is mirrored by the efforts and attention directed at the majesty of language and the depth of its historical accuracy. Kuang elaborates beautifully on this period of history, it should come as no surprise but she really knows her stuff about this time period. It was difficult to tell where the worldbuilding ended and the historical facts began in some cases, and the in-universe footnotes took the immersive feelings I was having to the next level. There is also an expert's level of depth and understanding of language in this book, R.F. Kuang is a linguist in her own right and that's clearly on display. Whether it's a treatise and theory or simple fun facts (Did you know “very sad” in French is triste comme un repas sans fromage? sad like a meal without cheese) she's an in-universe expert too; it's refreshing to read about a magical world from a well-considered perspective.

At this point in my reviews, I try to list at least one flaw but for this novel, I only have a few observations and notes: Robin and his dormmate Ramy are both implied to be gay and attracted to each other. Since the story is told from the perspective of Robin, once we get to Oxford most of his attention is focused on his half-brother and Ramy. The rest of the main cohort is female, they barely register on Robins' radar and the novel suffers for it. In stories with similar setups, the romance between characters is the narrative vehicle for their backstory. The lack of romantic ties between our male and female characters kills off the de facto method of characterization for Letty and Victoire (at least early on). I can't believe I'm saying this but this story needed a much stronger love triangle!

Letty in particular gets poor treatment, very little of her character came across- she was little more than a well-meaning white friend. Letty is tragic in a sense, she experiences her own form of exclusion as she is a woman at Oxford in the 1830s and the campus is not hospitable to women. She's also excluded within her own cohort- she doesn't share in their differences and cannot accommodate their worldview. Given Letty's ultimate betrayal of the group, this token attribute of her character can make it seem like Kuang is painting with a broad brush. Given the importance of colonialism to the story, a lot of the depictions of the characters and their treatment within the story have some racial charge. Letty's betrayal seemed to be a critique of the complicity of all the white people who had a chance to stand against injustice but chose instead to sit aside or worse still, aid the forces of oppression for personal gain. I expected to see Letty transformed by her experience, but that subversion of expectation helped to amplify the central message of the story. I'm not sure how much of this interpretation is the conscious choice of the author or a byproduct of the narrative's structure.

TL;DR: Loved the crap out of it, definitely a must-read.

I have never been this bored by a book written so well.

I was so impressed when I initially picked up this book; the author demonstrated both knowledge and philosophical prowess. Or so I thought, until I started getting deeper into the book and patterns started bleeding through the endless barrage of linguistic theory.

This book is the most unoriginal piece of work I have read in a very very long time. There is not a single original thought in this entire story. 90% of it is reformatted basic linguistic theory, made to sound not at all different from what you will find in any textbook on the subject (and what I am forced to assume was the author's own recycled university thesis). And generous part of the other 10% was spent on her criticising classic authors, through the lens of modern morals. As though the outdated political view on minorities and women from back in the day isn't widely criticised today by damn near everyone. You don't have to hate the authors of yesterday just because they lived when they did. You're not a better person for holding our modern views today, when it's easy to do it. I am baffled that people refuse to acknowledge it.

All of the characters were made to appear as mouthpieces for modern politics and you couldn't find nuance in them to save your life. They were bland, inconsistent and altogether somewhat distant. Like I wasn't reading a story about them, but rather reading a story that they happened to be dragged into at times.

But worst of all was the setting. Let me lay it out for you plainly - this is a rigid historical fiction that is masquerading as a fantasy. The setting is not based in history - it tries to copy history entirely, with embellishments that are supposed to be perceived as authentic. The author has injected magic into it, but made sure that said magic changes absolutely nothing!
Let me tell you this, if you had exactly the same Earth, with the only difference being that foxes were green, we'd have a vastly different history - with foxes being bred for camouflage wear, their natural habitats changing, lore and religion being influenced etc.
Yet in an Earth with MAGIC, history is exactly the same?! Please! This is just lazy. This is what you get when you have an author who is used to learning but has no imagination.

One last thing to mention were the footnotes, which was basically the author telling you plainly word for word what you should take out of a situation, instead of making the effort to weave the nuance into the story. She would just drop “context” in the form of “This is how you should feel about what you just read and why. Don't think about it, just accept it and move along.” I have rarely felt more patronised; like I'm not intelligent enough to be trusted with a story - I need to be guided through the intricacies of thinking. Kind of ironic considering the themes of the book...

To me, Babel was such a tremendous waste of time and a massive disappointment.

Мене вже встигли повеселити рев'ю цієї книги. В основному це стосується негативних рев'ю. Там люди явно очікували не те, що отримали. Якщо ви прийшли за якимись пригодами, магією, любовними лініями то ви дуже сильно помилились обкладинкою. Закрийте і пошукайте щось інше.

Моїм єдиним очікуванням від книги було те, що тут буде багато деталей саме про мови і про лінгвістику. З цим все впорядку, таких речей там навалом. Щось мене цікавило більше, щось менше, але це дуже гарно вписувалось в загальну атмосферу книги. Моя улюблена частина - це все те, що стосувалось перекладу, його складнощів і те, що ідеальний переклад неможливий. Бо отакі проблеми мене спіткали ще в школі, коли я одну книгу з серії починала читати однією мовою, іншу - іншою і харилась з того, що все по різному називається.

Взагалі, описати жанр цієї книги досить складно. Можливо, це історичне фентезі, але от фентезі тут дуже мало. По суті, у їхній реальності було silver-working. Це от такі срібні злитки на яких писали слова двома різними мовами і вони створювали певний магічний ефект. Одним з розчарувань для деяких читачів було те, що всі люди в цій альтернативній Великобританії були досить байдужі до цього срібла і просто його використовували не дуже про це задумуючись. У них була магія, а вони отак от її ігнорували. Ну як можна? Але у мене такої претензії не виникло. Навпаки, мені дуже імпонувало те, що авторка показала як швидко щось чудесне стає буденним. Я тут радше сприймаю це не як магію і магічну систему як таку, а просто технологію. От ви давно відчували благовіння перед мікрохвильовкою? Але от якби вас попросили зібрати свою, то навряд чи б у вас це вийшло. Чим це відрізняється від магії? І це геть ніяк не заважає вам нагріти тарілку вчорашньої страви і її з'їсти. Молитись цьому богу розігрівання напівфабрикатів необов'язково.

Другим великим розчарування для деяких читачів стало те, що тут дуже багато чорно-білого і мало сірого. Основна тема цієї історії - це висосування імперією всього можливого і неможливого зі своїх колоній. І так, це достатньо чорно-біла історія, в якій колонізатор має дуже поганий, а пригнічені дуже добрі. Ці ж читачі кажуть, що тут не вистачило нюансів, авторка не знає, що таке subtlety. (оффтоп, я перше поставила цій книзі 4 зірки, бо в мене є деякі питання до логіки деяких речей, але поки я тут думала що далі писати в рев'ю, то я зависла на 20 хвилин просто згадуючи книгу і всі ті думки, що в мене вона викликала. І таке трапляється далеко не вперше з того моменту, як я її закінчила. Якщо моїх вражень так багато, то на мою думку це варто всіх зірок). Я знову таки не погоджуюсь з цією тезою. Ми дивимось на весь цей світ через очі героя, якого малим забрали зі свого дому і своєї країни. Йому світ розвалився в один момент – у нього немає рідних, тепер він не може говорити своєю мовою і навіть ім'я мусить обрати собі нове, яке буде зручним для країни через половину земної кулі. При цьому всьому, що він втратив, що від його роботи залежить успіх імперії, йому постійно нагадують, що тут він ніколи не буде своїм, але він повинен бути вдячним за все те, що йому дали. Я не бачу нічого дивного в тому, що він почувався ближче до таких же іноземців як він сам, що він був схильний більше довіряти їм. З його ж точки зору всі великобританці були для нього лише нагадуванням, що він тут чужий. Вони й самі були не проти йому про це нагадати. Але чи були вони абсотньо негативними персонажами? Знову ж таки ні. Особливо не для себе, бо для людини немислимо щиро вважати себе поганою людиною. Я впевнена, що професор Ловелл вважав себе прекрасною людиною, яка була щиро впевнена в тому, що його призначення керувати і спрямовувати цих лінивих китайців для їхнього ж блага. Покровитель одного з вавилонців дуже підтримував скасування рабства і був проти продажу людей. Але не вбачав нічого поганого, що сам володів рабом і був готовий переїхати з ним в Америку, аби тільки його не відпускати. Тут вся книга була про те, як легко в людині можуть вживатись абсолютно протилежні речі і наскільки гарно ми навчились цього не помічати. Що вже казати про переконання цілої країни?

Тут ще безліч речей про які можна писати,але я раджу таки прочитати цю книгу. Майте на увазі, що в кінці ви не отримаєте відповіді на всі свої питання. Я максимально вдячна, що авторка в цій книзі не вирішила роз'язати всі проблеми однією революцією і завершити утопією в епілозі. Бо от це була б найфентезійніша книга зі всього фентезі, куди там якимось системам магії. Проблеми цієї книги залишається нашими проблемами і сьогодні. На жаль, для декого з нас буквально, бо їм не повезло мати за сусіда країну, що ніяк не може відпустити імперське минуле. Для Вавилону позбавитись всіх проблем в епілозі було б тим самим, що закінчити Гру Престолів виборами.

Примітка з тими речами, у яких мені таки не вистачило логіки:
- Чому Bablers настільки малочисельні? Джуе малоймовірно щоб їх вистачало на всю ту роботу, що вони мають робити. Тут мені здається, що імперія мала б потурбуватись про їхню чисельність і таки мати більше ніж 4 людини в рік. Бо вони навіть на всі свої поверхи по людині в рік не зможуть додавати.
- Товариство Гермес настільки впливове, наскільки ж секретне, тому кінець книги вирішився без нього. Його явно не вистачило ні на сторінках, ні хоч ще якихось відомостей поза ними.

I enjoyed this novel. It took me some time to get through it, but overall this was a great experience.

4/5 • I was hooked by the first 20 pages, however, the story dried up a bit up until page 150. Almost DNF'd but I had read so many amazing reviews that I persisted and I am so glad I did. I read the final 50% of this book in one day. There was twists I didn't see coming and the overall message and correlations of the British colonisation was so moving and eye opening that it should be on everybody's TBR.

3,5 el set up y la critica están guay pero el desarrollo de la historia y la mayoría del final me han resultado súper indiferentes

90/100

I really loved this. It has great characters, a unique idea and great execution. I'm left wanting more of this world though. I do think she could've made this a trilogy to fleet out the school, teachers and students more so the events have more impact. But for a novel under 600 pages. The author accomplishes a lot and it's so damn good.