Babel by R.F. Kuang | Five Star Book Review (spoiler free)

Hi Readers!

Well, here it is. I have finally found it. My first five star read of 2024!

Took me long enough…

I had a feeling Babel was going to be a new favourite, and for that reason I was actually quite scared to start it. It’s takes some courage, I think, to read a book you have a lot of expectation for. There is always the chance it could be, rather than the greatest book of the year, the greatest disappointment of the year.

That was not the case for this book.

The first line alone had me hooked, and this book kept me in it’s clutches for the whole two weeks it took me to read. A long time for me to finish a book but it was worth it with this one. I dreaded getting to the last page, dreaded learning how it would end. Have you ever been tempted to just leave a book unfinished, not because you were hating it and wanted to toss it out of the window, but because you always wanted to have the possibility of having a new page to read?

I was tempted, but finish it I did. And yes, I was right to be weary of the ending. Who ever heard of a completely happy ending in dark academia anyway? The characters go through too much, know too much.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt famously started the dark academia genre. Now we have countless books that follow tortured students studying elusive courses that usually require a lot of talent and intelligence, and money. These books can sometimes have the potential to feel pretentious, especially because they can follow pretentious characters. This felt like a refreshing twist on the dark academia trope.

Babel begins in Canton where we meet a boy as he lies dying beside the body of his mother. He is rescued by an English professor of Oxford, and then offered the opportunity to become his ward, to study under his guardianship, and eventually become an Oxford student himself. The boy agrees, and from that moment on becomes known as Robin Swift.

Upon reaching Oxford he meets his classmates. Ramy, Letty and Victoiree. They become his cohort, his band of misfits, his friends. In dark academia you normally follow a main character who is deemed as an outsider either because they are poor or they feel less worthy of the prestige that comes so easy to the others. In Babel, they are all outsiders, which is what bonds them.

I immediately fell in love with this group of characters. It has an almost found family feel to their dynamic. But there’s an underlying tension clear to see to the reader. This is Victorian England, two of them are women, three of them are people of colour. They all face discrimination, but different levels of discrimination. It brilliantly explores how oppressed hate being told somebody is ‘more oppressed’ than you are.

I loved the writing. I read this book with a pencil in my hand, as every other page there was something I wanted to underline, or note down. It’s an incredibly thought-provoking novel, something I know R.F. Kuang to be good at from a previous novel I have read by her.

It’s an ambitious novel, and one I could talk about for hours. But I think I’ve said enough for you to know that this is a must read. So, what are you waiting for?

Thanks For Reading,
Jess X