Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

This was a well-written book, and I can tell within this book that R.F. Kuang is a highly educated person passionate about what she does. That said, I don't think I will ever reread it. This beautifully written book looks at colonialism and how it affects the characters in this book, and it is an excellent way of telling it with a good mix of fiction and reality. Still, there was almost too much reality for it to be an easy read.

Going into this book, I heard great things, and I am not here to disagree, but this was a dense book not only in plot but also in information overall. The chapters were long, and so many sections felt like info dumps about languages, making it read like a book for a language class rather than just for enjoyment. This made it hard for me to read, and it took me more than double the time a book this length would take because I couldn't enjoy it initially.

With that in mind, some sections were dense but did provide necessary context, but that does not make the book read any faster.

The focus on colonialism and the relationships of the characters are what made me rate this book 4 stars rather than anything less because you see how racism in the English empire manifested for people who were not English and in a unique environment in which they were the most important people for the empire. I enjoyed this aspect of the book, and this is frankly the part of the book that was historical fiction, not the dark academia part, which I know now is not for me.