Babel

3.5I was really ready and excited to get started with this book. Now having (finally) finished it, I am..disappointed ?First of all, Kuang's writing was exceptional by any means! Absolutely great and worth all of the 500+ pages of this book.The content however..I couldn't really get myself to really like any of the characters. I think Victoire was probably the most likeable of them all. And Anthony.Anyone else, including Robin, was more or less no one I felt some sort of an attachment to.Babel and Oxford in the 1830s was a great place for the plot. I enjoyed this setting a lot.Anything that went into linguistics, a deeper dive into languages including the footnotes, anything more in depth regarding politics and economics was more of a dense material. And I don't mean that it was boring, but took some brain capacity to get through. I feel like coming from a non-native english perspective, this is something one might need to consider before picking this book up.I was also missing some shocking plot twists. Yes, there were some unexpected things happening though I never felt truly shocked ? It was written without any anticipation "hyping" it up. To be fair, which might also was intended to be like that.Over all, I don't think this was a book for me, nor am I really the dark academia type of person. Nonetheless I am still intending to read Kuang's Poppy War series. Though in translation.

Feines Worldbuilding, sympathische Protas und viel Linguistik, Etymologie & Co. Das letzte Drittel zu didaktisch und pathetisch, mit Längen.