Empires, History, Languages, and Tower-Pushing Teenagers
After reading Babel by Kuang Lingxiu I really enjoyed it and found it shocking, and wanted to write about what I liked about the book, and by the way DEFINITELY what a lot of people in the short reviews have been accusing Babel of. Admittedly, this is a book with obvious flaws and shallowness, AFTER ALL, it is a fantasy novel written by a very young writer (born in 1996). But the flaws are not overshadowed by the book's aura, intelligence, ambition and insight, which give the story a very unique and dazzling color.
Babel's story unfolds from the point of view of a Chinese boy, Robin Swift (Chinese real name unknown), chronicling his short and tumultuous life.
Brought from plague-ravaged Guangzhou to Oxford, England, where he studied at the Royal College of Translators, Robin's world is almost synchronized with the historical timeline of the real world, and a large number of the historical events and figures depicted are 90% archetypal (the invention of the camera, the popularization of Morse Code).
Despite the introduction of silver-making into the worldview and the creation of an overhead Tower of Babel in Oxford, the story as a whole is still low-magic. Moreover, magic is not actually the theme of the book.
The setting of silver-making is very original and bizarre - the idea of capturing and utilizing some kind of fantastical energy generated between translators of different languages, through the medium of a silver bar, to achieve different purposes (such as making a car go faster, making a gun aim better, making flowers more brightly colored, make water cleaner, make people lose their memories, or cause explosions).
But as the story progresses and the world stage unfolds, it is the interplay of characters, forces, organizations, nations, and the confrontation of each other that is the real focus of the story, and the magic of silver-making becomes more and more of a symbol and a metaphor for the empire's plunder, extraction, oppression, and deception of the world in the later stages.
After all, in real history, even without the presence of magic, even without the need to hoard large quantities of silver bullion, the expansion and invasion of empires still occurred as expected, still spreading misery to as many lands as their expeditions could reach. As a student of Chinese and world history, Kuang Lingxiu's starting point for writing is history, the pillars on which she relies are history, and the motives, themes, and writing techniques are all derived from history. In that respect. Readers expecting Babel to develop her own independent worldview and story utilizing a fantasy setting may be disappointed.
This is because Quang Ling Soo's story never steps outside of its original historical framework. Instead of building a virtual universe around silver-making centered on magic and fantasy, she infiltrates fantasy and magic through silver-making into the very history she is studying and focusing on.
Such a unique idea is a talent of Lingxiu Kuang and something she excels at based on her own higher education experience and experience.
To put it more plainly, Babel reads like a fantasy story of Kuang Lingxiu, who was forced by his coursework and papers when he was studying in Oxford, in order to relieve himself from the pressure of his studies and to create some fun for the boring reading. But Kuang Lingxiu's vision and ambition are beyond the reach and realization of ordinary students.
New angles, old history, new magic, old lore.