Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

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 As though the outdated political view on minorities and women from back in the day isn't widely criticised today by damn near everyone.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.