Babel by RF Kuang
RF Kuang, author of The Poppy War, is back with Babel, one of my most anticipated reads for the last half of 2022!
Earlier this year, I came up with my dream author panel: RF Kuang, Patrick Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman. When thinking through this, I wanted to know if anyone has ever had a fantasy author panel before, and I discovered that, indeed, Comic-Con has had fantasy author panels in the past.
Because I have learned that the worst people can say is no, I contacted Comic-Con, asking if I could host this fantasy author panel. They said sure but would give me no budget, so it was a non-starter.
However, my dreams never die. Eventually, I will either invite all of the authors to visit when I am properly book famous or I will team up with someone to do a Kickstarter.
All that to say, I really think that RF Kuang is the future of fantasy. The Poppy War is an incredible book that I simply loved, and I have mad respect for her.
Now about Babel…….
The first 5% and the last 40% were very strong. However, from about the 5% mark to the 60% mark need some revision.
Recently, I have been reading Daemon Voices by Philip Pullman. It is a book about storytelling (which I highly, HIGHLY recommend). I’m going to paraphrase the gist of one of his thoughts, but Pullman is simply a master of writing. Authors or would-be authors need to practice the art of storytelling. Think of storytelling as a marketplace of sorts. Readers come into the marketplace with storytellers on every corner. Readers who are intrigued will linger, staying a few more minutes, but if they get bored, they will just pop on over to another corner to discover another storyteller.
Alright so what does this have to do with Babel or am I just delusional? Well I’ll let you be the judge of that.
What Didn’t Work
The storytelling needed improvement.
First, way too much time was covered in this book. Even in Harry Potter, they only cover one year in each book. This book covers way too many years. It would have been better if RK Kuang just focused on the first year at Oxford or broke up Babel into several different books.
Second, this book is too far in the weeds about language and etymology, the origin and history of English words. Certain sections of Babel were so technical that they reminded me of my tax classes (but I found those much more interesting because literally the rules save you real money or keep you out of prison).
Third, the story arc wasn’t clear until much, much later in the book. For a good portion of the time, I was like, “Um, where is this heading?”
Fourth, the ending is incredibly weak. Back to Pullman for a minute. In The Golden Compass, he has one of the best endings that I have ever read. I have never wanted to read the next book so badly. However, the ending in Babel is forgettable and lackluster.
Fifth, the sections on the characters need to be rewritten. The sections on Ramy, Victoire, and Letty were not as strong as they should have been. If I was editor of this book, I would have focused on one key moment in that character’s life and really focused on “showing, not telling”, really going through one moment which would move my readers’ very soul. Telling these characters’ life stories in one chapter is just too much to take in.
Sixth, I didn’t find Robin’s first day at Oxford very believable. Why would anyone risk everything without a safety net for a cause and a person that they only met 5 seconds ago?
Seventh, there is one death that had too much foreshadowing. Dune is one of my favorite books, and one of the reasons is that a character was killed off that I never saw coming. In Babel, I would have been really surprised when this character was killed off, but I wasn’t surprised when we were warned right before it happened.
What Worked
First, the beginning is really strong and interesting.
Second, RF Kuang has a very good grasp of readability. For example, she doesn’t have massive paragraphs and massive sentences. She has also modernized the language for 1828. There are no thees or thous.
Third, the fantasy is easy to understand and isn’t overwhelming.
Fourth, Babel addresses some important topics. Especially in today’s political climate, we have a choice: we can either work to change the system or we can refuse to engage. It really reminded me of all of the heat that Sheryl Sandberg received for writing Lean In, a book with tips about how women can succeed in the workforce. The criticism is that Sandberg offers how to succeed in the current atmosphere instead of advocating for changing the system. However, is it easier to change yourself or the entire system? That will be a question for your book club.
Conclusion
Overall, this book did turn around at the end, but it took too long to get there. However, I’m not giving up on RF Kuang just yet. If anything, it just proves that I definitely need to put together this fantasy author panel.
*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.