Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

3.5* rounded up

Bookclub read [UoG]: There's a lot to like about this novel. As an amateur etymologist, I loved the literal power of words in this world. There's a kind of steampunk fantasy element that fascinated me and I love, love, love a library. It was also refreshing to read on family, friendship and betrayal without any irritating romantic love stories. I enjoyed the asides where we got a deeper understanding of the main characters. I found the world Kiang created was quite realistic with it's grubbyness and confliction. The cover is delightfully designed and illustrated - overall it is a thing of beauty.

On the dislike side - it's huge! I'm sure it could have been shorter and kept it together. The footnotes were distracting (and often unnecessary). Letty, as a character, was a scapegoat for the white ruling upper classes. Her Interlude purports Letty's discrimination by sex is comparable to the racial injustice experienced by her friends - “Leticia Price was not a wicked person. Harsh, perhaps. Cold, blunt, severe: all the words one might use to describe a girl who demanded from the world the same things a man would”. Yet she continues to come across as a selfish, silly girl who just cannot understand what her friends experience.

Nevertheless, it ended well and I will often ponder how the world was left, what it did to recover and how Victoire's tale continues.