Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

I didn’t realize the power of Babel until the last fifty or so pages, but then it all clicked for me. The story wasn’t really about the characters themselves, rather the imperialist system they found themselves in. Using a magic system based on translation was a stroke of genius when it came to enforcing the message of the book. Language is the backbone of cultural identity, so to weaponize it as silver does, using a cultures own words to oppress them, was incredibly effective. Rf Kuang was not subtle in communicating the themes in this book, but maybe that was the point. There isn’t subtlety to the impacts of colonialism so why pretend that the book is about anything else. I do wish she’d spent more time building up the characters, especially as we get to know them in their formative years at Babel. I felt like I was being told about the bonds between the four main characters more than I was seeing them develop naturally. That led to a frustrating first half of the book, but from the trip to Canton onwards a switch was flipped. This is a book I think everyone should read at some point, I certainly am glad I gave it a second try.