A Review of Babel: #4 of My Top Reads of 2023

This review of Babel  was written back in February of 2024! I was looking in my drafts and found it and remembered I never finished reviewing my 2023 books. 2023 was the year I really dove into reading and discovered it as a serious hobby for me.
So now I’m looking forward to properly honoring that year.
If you want to see the reviews I’ve already written, check them out:
#5 – The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue  –  #5 – Legends & Lattees

Look! It’s number 4! I can count backwards! I mentioned in Another Book Post About More Book Posts! that I had to rearrange my top 5 books because there was one I totally forgot I read in 2023. Well, say hello to that title! I started reading Babel (also known as Babel: Or a Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History… Or.. Babel: An Arcane History… Or you know, just Babel if you’re nasty)  in the first week of January in 2023. The bar that it put up was fairly high, let me tell you. Any other year I feel like it would’ve placed higher than spot 4. Especially with how much it made me love Dark Academia. 

Dark academia. This really swung those genre doors open for me! I wasn’t too keen on it before, but after reading this, it became one of my top genres. But I digress.

Babel was fantastic. But even with how great it was, I still have 3 others in front of it on my list. All around, those other 3 were just more fun and more exciting to experience. I know, it seems like I’m making excuses here. Like why didn’t I adjust it if I felt so strongly about it? I’m just clearing my conscious, ok?! I do feel bad  for not having this in the top 3, and I want to let you know that. 

Enough foreshadowing! Babel doesn’t deserve beating around the bush, it deserves to be praised out front! Shoot, out of everything I read last year, it’s easily the most powerfully written, and most demanding of your attention. At the time of reading it, this was my first foray into the dark academia genre, and it made me a fan to say the least. Maybe the cover has something to do with it? I mean, look at it!

So Many Special  Editions

Yes, it gets more and more awesome the longer you look at it! I’m 100% the type to judge a book by its cover, and don’t you dare look at me like you’re not. My love of the cover art along with the story made me realize that it’s ok to have multiple copies of books. Yeah, it’s redundant and many would consider it a waste of space and money. But when such a work comes around and hits you so hard, it’s not a question of “should I buy this other edition of it, I already have a copy?” It’s more a “how many editions are out there and which can I get a hold of??”

How many copies do I have? Haha, only two. There are more out there! But my copies are unique and different enough to make it worth it. Heck, I wouldn’t mind having a standard copy to just round it out! Don’t judge me, this is totally normal. 👀

Above, on the left, is Illumicrate’s Special Edition, which was only available in their August 2022 box. It came in a slipcase and was highly regarded… On the right.. Fairyloot’s Special Edition, which was also only available in their August 2022 box. This was the one to get. For a looooong time. Matter of fact, if you ask me, ever since they released this edition, they’ve been trying to top it and just can’t. It lit book collectors ablaze and it’s still being sold for ridiculous amounts in the aftermarket. (Which hey, if you haven’t joined Mercari, be sure to use my link here to sign up before you go crazy buying pretty books 😉 I promise, they’re not all $200+)

Why is Fairyloot’s so sought after? Look at that edge! Myyyyy goodness, don’t get me started. Since we’re on the topic, let me just state for the record that it was this very book that got me into my Special Edition rabbit hole that I may or may not be known for. A year or so later, I was able to grab Babel during a clean-out sale they had. I jumped in as soon as it went live, and snagged it before it sold out in like 3 minutes. AND I did it from a dentist chair while getting my teeth cleaned! I was like “can you give me a minute, I need to buy something for my wife that just went on sale and it’ll sell out.” Hahahaha, I had problems. BUT, I’m happy I have it, so you can’t judge me!

I could say that I’m clean and done with all that now . I still have my soft spots here and there, for sure. But that’s another post. Babel though was legit the one that hooked me. I saw it on a YouTube video and was like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, why does that look so cool?! Let me look into this… What can I say? The dark, gothic vibes really hit home with me. If my life had a narrator, this would have been exactly where they said, “It was at this point, he knew he f$@!ed up.” 

Stop ‘babeling’, what is it about?!

Haha, BABELing. See what I did… oh, never mind. OK ok ok, back to the actual book. Babel came out in August of 2022. Later that year is when I started to really find a footing with reading, so I had just missed the excitement of this being fresh on the bookstore shelves. But I’m happy I caught on to it while the fires of its hype were still burning. And they burned pretty good, I think! It didn’t hit the viral levels of Fourth Wing, but amongst those who picked it up, Babel was a smart, dark, rich fantasy in a world that is quite believable. Actually, it’s more than believable – it’s an alternate reality that isn’t far off from our own.

If you are not aware of what the story is about, here is a spoiler free rundown: Ultimately, it’s following the main character’s point of view. But along with him there are three other students, each with their own personalities. This is heavy dark academia. Like you’ll read this and realize that you either love the trope or hate it. They get into some stuff, the way students in these stories typically do. Mysteries get uncovered, there’s an overarching group of bad people that need to be stopped, or do they?, yes they do… right?? blah blah, yada yada, it’s all good stuff!

So what made it so good?

At times, it could get a little slow paced, but overall I felt the richness of the setting picked it up. I really liked this book, and if I had to nail it down, there are two things that I really enjoyed:

First, how it takes place in an alternate reality. I said the world was quite believable and that’s because you can totally see the politics and the plot being something that would happen in our world. The setting is 1830’s England and it takes place in Oxford University. I’m always a sucker for alternate realities. 

Second, is the magic system. Yesssss, the magic! There’s no traditional sense of spells or incantations or mystical forces. Having magic in a fantasy novel is pretty normal. That’s like saying I use eggs in my cake recipe. But the trick is to make it unique. Make it… magical. Ha, see what I did there?! The more clever the magic system is, the better the story will hit. BUT it can’t be overly complicated. It can’t have too many rules and things to remember. There needs to be a balance. And R.F. Kuang definitely found it here. The way magic works in this world is not only intriguing, but it’s believable. And it makes the story so much more enriched, it’s really fascinating to watch how it’s implemented.

If you’re curious, the magic is based on silver working. Using enchanted silver bars to perform magic. How?? Well, spoilers if you want to go in completely blind:

Should You Read it?

Just thinking about the story makes me want to revisit it again. I absolutely loved the way the magic worked in this story. Something about it just feels so… real. With how everything is set up, it feels like such a believable thing that can happen. Much more believable than a wizard shooting electricity from the end of a stick. I think it has to do with the way the translations of different languages are used. This entire story feels like a love letter to language itself, showing such an admiration and respect to the art and history of translation. It takes a fundamental tool of communication between so many cultures, and uses it as a way to create magic. It’s a powerful and deep message between the lines if you know how to read it. 

The only negative that I would say prevents this from being perfect, would be that at some points, things dragged on. I mean, this is a freaking door stopper. It’s chonky. I’m not saying there’s a ton of fluff that’s not needed, because that’s far from the truth. But there were definitely times things could’ve been cut shorter. 

Anyway, that’s me nitpicking. It’s really hard for me to call something perfect and if there’s a flaw that made me think twice, then it’ll be enough to put it on the negative column. But in the grand scheme of things, a tiny bit of fluff won’t hurt this book. I’d love to get into more detail, but I can’t without spoiling!

So I hope if you’re reading this and it gets you interested and you actually give Babel a shot, please let me know! Like I said, it’s been a while, but I’d love to talk about it if you need someone to chat to. There are things that happened in this book that stay in my head and always pop up whenever I start to think about the story. And I freaking love that! It’s how I measure the books I really enjoyed vs the ones I just read, and Babel is definitely up there on my enjoyed titles. 

If you’re curious and want to dive into Babel for yourself, here are some options!
First and foremost, be sure to scope out any local book shops, your library, or even chains like Barnes & Noble.
Do what you can to support your local book community! 
But if shopping at Amazon is your thing, please utilize these links below.
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Hardcover
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