12-30-2022, 02:37 PM
Babel by R.F. Kuang
A Victorian England at the time of the Opium Wars where is enabled by inscribing complimentary words of different languages in silver bars. England rules the world because it does this best. Robin Swift is an English/Chinese boy taken away to England where he is sent to Oxford to learn how to inscribe words into the silver that keeps the world running. At Oxford learns about the racism and colonialism underneath the British power.
I'm a little tired of the people going to school to learn magic trope and this story is rife with it. Sure, the school is a fictionalized Oxford University but it's still the struggles of young wizards. And this book is all about words and their origins. That got tiring very quickly as we went over different words in their different languages. It seemed like the plot was just a device to talk about words and language for 500 pages. And then there were the footnotes. Every couple of pages there was a footnote that has some tidbit about the language or more information or something and it would just drag you away from the narrative. I eventually stopped reading them. Why not just work that information into the regular story. I guess the aim was to make it seem more like a real history novel. The idea failed for me.
This was one of those books I was glad I was done reading because I wouldn't have to deal with the story any more.
A Victorian England at the time of the Opium Wars where is enabled by inscribing complimentary words of different languages in silver bars. England rules the world because it does this best. Robin Swift is an English/Chinese boy taken away to England where he is sent to Oxford to learn how to inscribe words into the silver that keeps the world running. At Oxford learns about the racism and colonialism underneath the British power.
I'm a little tired of the people going to school to learn magic trope and this story is rife with it. Sure, the school is a fictionalized Oxford University but it's still the struggles of young wizards. And this book is all about words and their origins. That got tiring very quickly as we went over different words in their different languages. It seemed like the plot was just a device to talk about words and language for 500 pages. And then there were the footnotes. Every couple of pages there was a footnote that has some tidbit about the language or more information or something and it would just drag you away from the narrative. I eventually stopped reading them. Why not just work that information into the regular story. I guess the aim was to make it seem more like a real history novel. The idea failed for me.
This was one of those books I was glad I was done reading because I wouldn't have to deal with the story any more.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm