Babel by R.F Kuang: a Review

Bogor Botanical Garden | 28 June, 2025 

       Babel is a story about language, power, and the price of belonging. It’s a bold historical fantasy rooted in translation, colonial critique, and academic resistance. Set in 19th-century Oxford, it follows Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan brought to England to study at the Royal Institute of Translation, better known as Babel. There, he joins Ramy, Victoire, and Letty as they train to become translators, key players in sustaining the British Empire through magical silver-working. At first, they’re enchanted by the world of books and knowledge. But the deeper they go, the more they realize that Babel doesn’t serve truth or progress, it serves the empire. As tensions rise, they must confront where they stand: within the system or against it.
        At first, I found the book difficult to get into. The early chapters are heavy on etymology, theory, and mechanics, often skimming over the actual story. I kept wondering what was really happening with the characters. I was close to giving up. But around the 200-page mark, something shifted. The pace picked up, the tension built, and suddenly I was gripped. The emotional weight hit hard, and the story transformed into something urgent. By the time I reached the final chapters, I was fully exhausted, invested, and bracing for what came next. The ending felt painfully long in the best way, like I was begging the story to hurry up while also not wanting to let go. It was tense, devastating, and so, so good.
        While I understand that Kuang’s focus was more on history, sociology, and linguistics, I do believe this emphasis came at the cost of character depth. As a very character-driven reader, this mattered a lot to me. The world-building and research were incredible, but I kept wishing I could feel the characters more. It’s one thing to be told how close they are or what they’re like, it’s another to actually see it and believe it. That emotional connection just didn’t fully land for me. If their inner lives had been explored more deeply, I think the story could’ve hit even harder.
        Robin and Griffin’s relationship had the potential to be something powerful and complicated, but the story rarely slowed down enough to explore it. Maybe that distance was intentional, but it still felt like a missed opportunity. The same goes for Robin’s group. Ramy, Victoire, and Letty were central to the story, but their friendship often felt brushed over. Small details like Victoire’s tea or Ramy’s habits were meant to build intimacy, but they read more like character notes than moments of real connection. I longed for more warmth, vulnerability, and time spent with them, not just around them.
        That said, Babel is remarkable in other ways. The amount of research Kuang pours into the narrative is staggering. The way she explores etymology, colonial violence, and the politics of language is both educational and eye-opening. One line especially stuck with me: “An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.” I’d never thought about it like that before, but the more I sat with it, the more it made sense. Language is never neutral. Translation, especially in colonial contexts, isn’t just about meaning, it’s about power. Something is always lost or reshaped. This book made me see that more clearly than ever.
        This novel reminded me, strangely, of Laut Bercerita by Leila S. Chudori. Not in setting or style, but in how it made me feel. There is the same sense of desperation, the same weight of resistance, and the haunting reality that silence can sometimes be both survival and surrender. Both books carry a shared grief, a quiet recognition that fighting against systems of oppression often means losing parts of yourself. But Babel challenged me to think about the systems we inherit, the languages we use, and the histories we often ignore.
Reading this wasn’t easy. It tested my patience and challenged my expectations. I didn’t connect with the characters the way I hoped, but by the end, I understood the heart of what Kuang was doing. This is a story about how the empire thrives not just through violence, but through control over meaning, words, and silence. And how rebellion sometimes begins not with action, but with reclaiming language.
        If you love language, postcolonial critique, and dark academia, this might be the perfect read for you. But if you're someone who needs close character relationships and emotional intimacy, it may leave you wanting more. like it did for me.
        Still, Babel is a book worth reading and discussing. It doesn’t try to please. It asks you to sit with discomfort, to question what you’ve been taught, and to think harder about the systems we live in.

 caught up on some reading during lunch at work.
25 June, 2025

Post-Read Thought:

        This is my first time writing a book review this long, and honestly, I’m still figuring things out how to balance thoughts, what to focus on, and how to reflect without rambling. But Babel gave me so much to think about that I wanted to push myself. Writing about it helped me process what the book made me feel, and also helped me understand how stories like this connect fiction with the real world in such intentional ways.

        After finishing the book, I became curious about how much of it was rooted in real history. Oxford in the 19th century wasn’t just a place of learning, it was also deeply tied to the British Empire. Scholars there were translating religious texts, colonial laws, and cultural works, not purely for academic curiosity, but to serve imperial control. The more I read, the more I saw how Kuang wasn’t just building a fictional world, but drawing from an uncomfortable truth. The Tower of Babel in the Bible was meant to represent unity through language, but in Kuang’s version and in colonial-era Oxford. It becomes a symbol of how knowledge can be hoarded, manipulated, and weaponized. The magic system in the book may be fictional, but the idea of translation as power, and academia as a tool of empire, couldn’t be more real.

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