#but then again i just cannot imagine a person of colour from any formerly colonised countries to need this level of spoonfeeding

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

OKAY DONE WITH THE BOOK, god bless.

idk final thoughts abt babel is that its readable, but it will concuss you into oblivion by repeating its points so, so many times.

its not even that those points are not fair, but just that i wish by the middle point onwards kuang could have assumed them as to have been received an internalised (bc frankly, if they didnt by then, they never would) and went deeper into the topic. it reads like baby's first foray into social change for somebody has just been weened off ya's understanding of revolution.

the characters are all flat bc they are conceived as very strict idols to showcase the ideology (ie. Letty is the racist white woman; Ramy is the one who constantly had to go 'letty thats racist' and was murdered by the aforementioned white woman; Robin has to kill himself in proper rf kuang protagonist fashion as the revolutionary who cannot go on; Victoire is not developed as she should). the pacing is tremendous bc there are so many conversations whose points are repeated across the book bc god forbid assuming your readers have some basic literacy. in general, the characters other than the mc only reach some form of actualisation in the brief interlude where you are treated with a quick rundown of their backstory and personal motivation; before then they just existed ig. which is so? this is a 600 pages book i would hope smth as basic as MOTIVATION did not need to go in an interlude, but whatever ig

the ending is that by destroying silver they prevented the first opium war. but tbh? i think it would have been better achieved in a historical that then deviated from the normal course of history. bc what better way imho to show that history is not immutable and neither is empire. as is, silver is gone but the worldbuilding abt this alternative britain is so light that i cannot conceptualise it being gone bc tbh I cant even think of it existing, so history is altered bc we are told its altered and godbless goodbye.