While the prose is objectively good and Kuang is clearly intelligent, the core composition of Babel: plot, pacing, characters, structure, are very weak. I wanted to love this book as an academic whose work heavily involves linguistics and etymology, but it’s formally a bit of a mess. The momentum of the book drags horribly, and any fantasy elements are extremely underused. It’s clear that Kuang’s main objective was to write a book about imperialism and identity, which is fine, but plot, characterization, and genre elements fell by the wayside in service of it. The translation theory included in the book is super basic, and Kuang doesn’t add anything to the discussion, so it ends up feeling like a narrativized Translation 101 lecture. Some people might like this aspect, but to me it felt repetitive and indulgent. I heavily skimmed this book from around page 300 to its conclusion. This book could have been historical fiction about an early Cantonese student at Oxford but then Kuang would have to be more precise; the translation-magic idea ends up being flavor instead of substance.

i’ve read two hundred and ten pages of this allegedly academic book and all i’ve come away with is the fact that both rf kuang and her writing style are utterly insufferable. the author’s note in the beginning is completely unnecessary and feels like it’s no more than yet another way for her to flex the fact that she studied in oxford unlike the rest of us plebeians. “the trouble with writing an oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at oxford will [nitpick] your text” yes, yes—is that not exactly what happens with any other real-world setting? you’ll have to forgive me for not understanding how ivory-towered oxford is any different.

now for my review of the actual book, which will be done in bullet points because this book is not worth the time and effort a full-length review will require:

• rfk can’t seem to decide whether she wants to use pinyin (with godsforsaken diacritics) or the actual characters themselves when she inserts chinese words into the narration. there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason to which she chooses to use at any point in time and i absolutely loathe it. if you want to switch between transliteration and using the actual characters, i beg you to come up with a coherent system for it.

• robin speaks mandarin in 1820s guangzhou, which is the most absurd thing i’ve ever heard of in my life. unless you had to deal with the imperial court, most chinese people would simply speak their own local variety. indeed, most chinese people today speak their own regional varieties, be it of mandarin or their topolect. watch literally any variety show, particularly if you speak a southern variety, and you will notice that even the form of mandarin most celebrities (being northerners) speak differs from standard mandarin. rfk inserts a footnote two chapters later to explain that it’s because robin’s family migrated from beijing recently, which would be a logical explanation for why robin speaks mandarin in his own home, but then claims cantonese is robin’s “preferred native tongue”? and yet he seems to instinctively revert to mandarin? make it make sense.

• the fact that pinyin is used in a book about languages and translation set in the 1820s KILLS me. the 1820s predates even wades-giles, which—no matter how much i hate the sight of it—would at least in turn predate pinyin, which was only created/formalised in the 1950s. more than a century later. rfk would’ve been much better served doing less research on oxford for historical accuracy and more on the languages her protagonist speaks, i think. also, there’s that glaring (but unfortunately lost) opportunity to make some meta-commentary on the colonisation of language and translation (very relevant for this book, i believe!) in using wades-giles (a transliteration system created by white men) instead of pinyin (which was created by chinese people).

• speaking of historical accuracy and oxford, there are a bunch of things rfk openly admits to changing—not for any narrative purpose, no, but simply to parallel her characters’ experience to her own. for instance, despite “oysters being a staple of the early-victorian poor”, rfk “choose[s] to make them a delicacy” because “heaps and heaps of oysters on ice” was her “first impression of the 2019 may ball at magdalene college, cambridge”. the fact that this paragraph is then followed up with the sentence “if you find any other inconsistencies, feel free to remind yourself this is a work of fiction”—which, in fact, suffices to sum up her entire two-page author’s note—makes this justification completely fucking insufferable. either own your inaccuracies or cut them. quit dithering.

• rfk mistypes 無形 / incorporeal as 五行 / the five phases, despite 無形 being used correctly in the previous sentence. in the same page, she proceeds to translate “help me” as 幫忙 / help, which is such a clunky and awkward translation from a professional chinese-english translator that i am embarrassed on her behalf. i would’ve translated “help me” as 幫我 or 助我 (a more formal alternative which i think fits better in this context).

• the politics really are just twittercore but couched in a vaguely victorian-sounding register. i say “vaguely” because it really isn’t all that victorian. it just sounds like a slightly formal modern register. and apparently this problem is consistent with her other books, particularly yellowface, though it would at least make more sense for her to be responding to a very online form of criticism there.

• the fact that she uses a long-running stem/arts joke as an explanation for why babel hasn’t noticed the hermes society stealing their silver is just astoundingly beyond any capacity for suspension of disbelief i have. “for the virtue of a humanities faculty … was that everyone was hopeless with numbers” are you joking. is this a joke to you. you cannot possibly expect me to take this seriously.

• everything they’ve said and been taught about translation so far has been incredibly basic, and i’m only an amateur translator. i’d be embarrassed on oxford’s behalf if they truly taught this to third-year undergraduates.

• chattel slavery is a “wholly european invention” now :)

• despite this being an adult novel and therefore requiring some level of sophistication and maturity on the reader’s part, rfk can’t seem to resist the urge to shove her opinions—all entirely correct, of course—in the reader’s face. it’s pretty humiliating to read a book whose author seems to believe that the reader can’t go two sentences without being reminded that “racism bad” in the footnotes. of course it is, but i’d like to believe that it’s also possible to write a novel critiquing racism, elitism, and colonialism in academia without such hamfisted arguments.

anyway, i do think this novel does something good for the dark academia genre, in that it critiques the elitism inherent to academia, and it does have some good points about translation and colonialism and the like, but i think more subtlety and elegance would’ve served it better—and also better editing and proof-reading, because it’s genuinely embarrassing for your protagonist to make such errors in his native language(s).

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: .✦ . :★. ───✧

pre-reading

why is he speaking mandarin in canton...

edit: they’re also using pinyin despite it not having been created until the 1950s? correct me if i’m wrong but the transliteration systems in use until the mid-19th century were based on nanjingese? so even if they did have a reason to speak mandarin it wouldn’t have been romanised this way

This book certainly aspires to blend epic fantasy with political intrigue and a murder mystery, but in my opinion, it ultimately falters under the weight of its own ambition.

The world-building is undeniably vast with rich in history, lore, and complex systems but instead of drawing me in, it often felt dense, overwhelming, and felt like it didn’t make sense in some areas. The novel is packed with detailed backstories and intricately layered exposition, which, while impressive on their own, bog down the pacing significantly. At close to 700 pages, the journey felt far longer than it needs to be, and the narrative momentum struggled to keep up.

Character development is where The Raven Scholar really lost me. Despite a large, diverse cast, very few of the characters felt fully realized. I found it difficult to connect emotionally with any of them, and at times, I wasn't even sure I cared about any of them. Although many are meant to be in their mid-thirties, their voices and choices rarely reflected that age or experience. The supposed romance subplot was so underdeveloped that I honestly forgot it existed until it was pointed out later, there’s little chemistry, buildup, or payoff, and it adds virtually nothing to the story’s emotional stakes.

I know I seem to be in the minority here because The Raven Scholar has received glowing reviews so far, I have to chalk this up to the book simply not being for me. It's unfortunate, because there are some genuinely fascinating ideas and concepts at play here. Hodgson clearly put a great deal of care into crafting this world, and I especially appreciated the reveal of the narrator, which was one of the few moments that genuinely surprised and impressed me.

All in all, The Raven Scholar offers a richly imagined setting brimming with potential, but its convoluted structure, slow pacing, and emotionally distant characters made it a difficult and ultimately unsatisfying read.