Robin Swift is a Cantonese-born mixed-race child whose family was killed by a cholera outbreak in 1828. Professor Lovell of Oxford University (and later we find out, Robin's father), heals Robin with silverwork, and carts him off to England, where he completes rigorous coursework in Mandarin, Latin and Greek in preparation for admittance to Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, colloquially known as Babel.

Robin is overjoyed to be at Oxford. For the first time since he left home, he is surrounded by people his own age, and finds friends among his Babel cohort. Robin realizes he is not the only person of color in the Babel school of translation, and is surprised to hear of other students who were taken on as wards by wealthy Englishmen in preparation for attending Oxford. Babel is the world's leading translation center, and home of silver-working - the art of utilizing words of different languages with similar roots in order to create "match pairs" that can then be inscribed on silver bars in order to perform the task inscribed. Robin joins up with the Hermes society, a secret, Robinhood-esq order ran by Babel students who have faked their own deaths in order to steal these silver bars from Babel in order to re-distribute them to those in need. The Hermes society opens Robin's eyes to the evils of the British Empire. He learns that the English empire is utilizing silver-working to facilitate colonization, and specifically has plans to wage war on Canton and he can no longer sit idly by.

Babel is an excellent read for lovers of fantasy, historical fiction, and dark academia. It combines all the best elements of these genres, creating a Secret History style novel. R.F. Kuang paints a vivid story with themes of race, class, and colonialism in the 19th century. Themes that are, unfortunately, still relevant to today' society. One painful and blatant example of this is Letty who, despite spending years of being a loyal and loving friend to Robin, Rami, and Victoire, can never set aside her inherent prejudices and privilege to understand the world as it is in the eyes of her non-white friends. “What you don’t understand,’ said Rami, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.” I really loved this book, and am eager to read others by R.F. Kuang. Her writing style was thorough and eloquent and her world building kept me interested throughout, which is a feat considering my typical difficulty in following worldbuilding within the fantasy genre.