Dear lord I just found this book so pretentious... So many parts are clearly just Kuang wanting to show off all the research she had done for the book, without actually adding anything to the story. It made this an unnecessarily dense read in places.
I also felt really distant from the story. It was a pretty clinical reading experience, and I struggled to care about the characters. 
Reading M.L. Wang's 'Blood Over Bright Haven' at the same time as this definitely did not help 'Babel' out. I was constantly comparing the two as they are both dark academia with some similar themes, and 'Babel' always came out lacking. I'm so annoyed this book has had so much hype around it when 'Blood Over Bright Haven' is SO much better. Maybe I'll pick 'Babel' up again once the 'Bright Haven' dust has settled...
On another note, the asterisks in my copy of this are RIDICULOUSLY small, and I missed them almost every time.
I really want to enjoy Kuang's writing again, and hoped 'Babel' would make up for the disappointment of 'The Burning God', but sadly it did not, and I might have to give up on her, at least for a while.