Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Babel by R.F. Kuang

386 reviews

emviolet's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Physical abuse, Racism, Colonisation, Torture, Death, Xenophobia, Suicide, Slavery, Murder, War, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Death of parent, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Classism, Drug use, Toxic friendship, Blood, and Cultural appropriation

winterjasmine's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Racial slurs, Classism, Death, Racism, Violence, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Suicide, Child abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Murder, Sexism, and Misogyny

Minor: Blood, Sexual harassment, Drug use, Grief, Alcohol, and Cultural appropriation

laurawho's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Colonisation, Police brutality, Suicide, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Racism, Murder, Racial slurs, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Emotional abuse, Death, Sexism, War, Child abuse, and Misogyny

Minor: Slavery and Drug use

isaaceelliot's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, War, Islamophobia, Death of parent, Gun violence, Racism, Sexism, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Slavery, Child abuse, and Colonisation

ericadawson's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I'd give it 4.9 if I could. Explanation below:

People like to pull Playfair's quote about the violence and betrayal of translation from the text and present it as one of the most gut-wrenching lines in the entire novel. In fact, there are many such lines across many contexts. If I went through Babel now to put them all here, I'd never stop. I may as well quote the whole book. 

Babel is about a a young, half-Chinese, half-English man named Robin Swift as he grapples with his role in support Britain's colonial Empire in the 1830s. The lynchpin for all of England's dealings is silver, imbued with the magical and abstract powers of the tongue via the powerful spaces between translation. 

Babel has almost everything for me. I love all of the characters. The "math" of the arcs--that is, why anyone one character says or does anything at any give time--makes perfect sense. It's not predictable; simply logical. I could never hate Robin or Victoire or Letty for their initial love of Babel. I couldn't blame Ramy for anything he did or said. Letty's white feminism, white supremancy, and willfully ignorant understanding of the world was on point until it got tiresome. 

That is where I have to shave off a portion of a point, unfortunately. Letty's point as a character was hammered home until the wood was dented and the head was flying off the hammer. While I can understand that narrative math of Robin, Ramy, and Victoire explaining to Letty over and over how hard it is to be non-white in a fundamentally white supremacist insitution, white supremacist land--at a point, I grew patient with them. Especially after

Letty shoots Ramy in a classic case of a white woman's sexual entitlement to a brown man ending in violence

, I truly could not wrap my head around why they bothered speaking to her again, after that. 

Another portion of a point gets shaved off for Victoire's character. I loved her, I do, I just wish she stood out more from the beginning. I loved her especially in the end, with how her character was set up against Robin's and how they played off each other's strengths and weaknesses. 

Yet another portion of a point for the pacing of the ending in general. It was slow for me. There were two supposed twists/keys to success that I was waiting for the characters to remember and use, which made me get impatient. 

None of these things overall seriously detracts from my star-point rating for Babel. It was a lovely book. The prose was straightforward without being plain, and often punched me in the gut (in a good way). The concept was amazing, and the entire plot was clearly well-researched. I loved the footnotes. I loved everything. Highly recommended. If there was top-shelf wine for books, Babel would be up there.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Child abuse, Death of parent, Violence, Racial slurs, Classism, and Blood

Moderate: Colonisation, Murder, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Addiction

smateer73's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Absolutely one of the most incredible books I have read this year and probably all time. This book brings to the surface all those questions of language and colonization and power and violence and resistance and the oxymoronic nature of capitalism and consumption and the utter indifference that is the natural enemy of progress. I will be thinking about this book forever I think. As a linguist, I loved the concept of translation and betrayal and loss. As an academic I mourn for lost knowledge, even as I desire liberation. I want the world to be free and yet I do not want to give up basic comforts. But I must. We must. A violent world can only be faced with violence, with intersectional unity. Wow. Just wow. For one single book, and a fiction book at that to conjure all these thoughts is truly incredible.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Violence, Racial slurs, War, Blood, Colonisation, Death, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Abandonment

lucyatoz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Babel by R.F.Kuang is a brilliant read although it does challenge and engage you in so many disparate themes of race, class, colonialism, slavery,  violence and  exploitation of the many by the few. 

It tells the story of four young adults, Robin, Victoire, Ramy and Lettie, as they come together as the 1st year cohort at the Oxford University's Royal Institute of Translation in 1836, as they each have amazing talents when it comes to learning languages that can be used for the benefit of the British Empire, regardless of the cost for them and those they love and care about. 

It is a big and  ambitious novel tackling big topics although it starts off quite slowly, but when the group come together, the action starts apace and takes you on a fantastical journey, which, at times, I could not tell was real or imaginary.  

I borrowed a copy of this book from Taunton Library and listened to it on BorrowBox. I read this for prompt 26, hybrid genre, for the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge 2024. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Gore, Xenophobia, Death of parent, Gun violence, Murder, Misogyny, Racism, Grief, Toxic friendship, Death, Violence, and Classism

Moderate: War, Pandemic/Epidemic, Vomit, and Blood

bernika999's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This book was amazing.
I would recommend 100 per cent. I had finished the Poppy War series and would recommend reading that first. Not because you have to. You don't. But I think this book hits harder when you do. 
The connections between them kills man.
I'd admit that it's a slow start, I mean it was for me. The footnotes are lengthy and sometimes the terminology goes over your head. However, that doesn't matter, at all, it didn't prevent the book from getting five stars from me. Very painful but definitely worth it. Wish I could read it again for the first time.
 And all her other books, are all 5 stars for me, must read them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Grief, and Suicide

Moderate: War, Racism, Death of parent, Child abuse, Murder, and Blood

discocaptain's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

what else do i fucking say, r. f. kuang has brought me to my knees. i have things to pick at but they're not important right now. all that comes to mind is how painfully real it felt to me. i can already see this being a "dark academia" staple in the same way that a secret history or the dead poets society is, which is not necessarily a bad thing and i want to say i ALSO like them but can we be real for a second and forget that? its an evolution past these stories. it's an attempt to infiltrate and blast through the silver laden halls of the ivy league. it's the futility of trying to love a place that does not love you back. it's trying to hold two things in your mind at once, two contradictory things. robin is an excellent protagonist and the undergrads are a wonderful ensemble. it's a bit obvious and a bit overt and a bit heavy handed but, well, as those that have read it to completion know: toppling empire necessitates violence. learn. internalize. listen. understand. this book is just begging you. listen, and then act.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Bullying, Child abuse, Death of parent, Misogyny, Suicide, Classism, Suicidal thoughts, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Cultural appropriation, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, War, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Blood, Alcohol, Gun violence, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

bugsybugs's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Easiest 5 stars I've given in years. An exceptional read. Detailed, epic, tackling ambitious themes of empire, colonialism, and the costs of freedom from them. I couldn't put it down.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Murder, Torture, Violence, Death, Grief, Blood, Colonisation, Misogyny, Racism, and Classism