I like to start these reviews with a few lines about how I found the book and how it was recommended. This was an impulse buy. I was waiting for a student to attend my lesson in January when I noticed The Works had a sale.
For those who do not know, The Works is a stationery and bookstore in the United Kingdom. It rarely contains the type of books I read, but as I perused the shelves, Babel caught my attention. I also remember it appearing in a couple of videos I watched, so I bought it.
Synopsis
1828 Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.
Babel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters.
Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
Impressions
This book has taken some real thinking about, especially what grade to give it. The first 20% of the novel I flew through, I am a bit obsessed with Victorian England so this section was right up my street.
There was plenty to think about with this book. Initially, you see Robin's attachment issues, from how he is desperate for the Professor's attention to how he is drawn to groups that give him a sense of family. That was the only part of the book that the readers had to summarise themselves; everything else was spelt out. More on that later.
This book was a slow read in parts, but that is not always bad. Some aspects of it reminded me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt. The book deals with the issue of the English Empire and is well-researched, but there were times when the point felt too forced. Every other page was working through this issue at the expense of any character development or plot.
Here, though, is my biggest fault with the book, and that is the footnotes. Forgive me if I rant. On virtually every page are many footnotes for the story, most of them are irrelevant. Many people may have ignored them, but I am not that person, and reading them took away from the flow of the story.
They were almost like the author was trying to prove how clever she was, either that or this book was much longer when submitted, and to cut the word count down, she needed to add the footnotes so we had a clue what was going on. Either that or the author included some of her writing notes in the story.
Sometimes, they offered a little extra, but not enough for them to be so extensive. Some filled plot holes, but in my mind, these would have been better written into the actual story.
Even when I got to the end of the book, I could not tell you whether I enjoyed it, which is why the star rating was so hard for this book.
If this were a non-fiction book, it would be five stars on research and thought-provoking content. But it isn't. I know reading is subjective, so many of you might love this, but with a mix of the footnotes, awful characters you couldn't relate to and a slow plot, all things considered, I can only give it three stars.
Two-Sentence Summary
Four friends battle the British Empire for a better future. However, not one of them is a character you can learn to love so it all becomes a little pointless.
London was both unimaginable rich and wretchedly poor