My thoughts on Babel by R.F Kuang Part 2

Spoilers

Why on earth did Hermes let Letty join them suddenly when they were careful in any other situation? They let her in when Griffin barely told Robin anything about Hermes initially?

Letty and the others already had a big divide between them from start to finish. It was not a believable friendship.

I wish we go to learn more about the languages and cultural origins of the side characters. We know that Vimal is studying Telugu and Tamil, Ibrahim is Egyptian and studying Arabic, Ilse is Japanese and Cathy is studying Gaelic. That is it? What are Juliana’s, Meghana’s and Yusuf’s origin? What languages does Ilse study? Japanese and Dutch? Anything else?

The book took a very different approach to Ireland. With China, India and Africa it was all very tell don’t show with info dumps about colonialism. With Ireland they just let you infer it through Cathy’s name and the decline of Gaelic. Not glossed over, but still.

The book seems inconsistent when it comes to whether the struggle is white vs non White or White English vs non White English.

The book also didn’t explore intersectionality well. Anthony tries to make a point about Class and there’s the Strikers, yet they don’t acknowledge that students like Bill would face classism and thus would likely identify with the foreign students. They also didn’t acknowledge that minorities like Jewish people, Irish people and Welsh people could ally with the colonised and the strike at the tower. And Catholics. Anthony also failed to mention that it is possible that women could identify with the oppression by the state. There was Craft and the Suffragists, but this was a missed opportunity to get Letty on their side.

Some of the language was too modern when it came to the discourse around feminism and colonialism.

I wish more was done to acknowledge Chinese imperialism through Mandarin and Ramy not learning Bengali when he was born in Calcutta/Kolkata.

Did Robin not learn other subjects apart from languages before Babel? No Maths, Literature, Science et cetera?

Why did Lovell get suspicious of Robin being shot when Victore and Ramy entered the tower when Robin was supposed to be there?

And the cohort was bad at covering up Lovell’s death. They should have just said they hadn’t seen him since setting foot on English soil rather than lying.

And Ramy, btw, Robin was right not to tell you he was a part of Hermes. Hermes is supposed to be a secret organisation.

Overall, the book was okay. Had some great ideas but needed better character depth.