I have just finished reading some books by R. F. Kuang, specifically Babel and The Poppy Wars series. Both I would say were enjoyable books that were worth the time however I have nitpicks to air. I will not be going into massive event spoilers but if you are planning on reading the books this may not persuade you to read them.

The poppy wars is about an alternate history type asia country where they can actually communicate with their gods and act as a conduit for their powers by sacrificing their mental stability and also getting addicted to opium. They are 30 years past a civil war in which 3 godly conduits fought off an invasion from "the federation" but it was mostly settled by the intervention of a larger military power from the west after the federation went too far and now the federation are getting antsy again. There are lots of themes of revenge and choosing who to fight for and I didn't really like the ending of the trilogy but that isn't what I'm complaining about here. The setting and the countries were obviously references to real life asian countries being pumped with opium and then used by western powers. A lot of the later books focus on the western powers believing in their own one god (the maker) and trying to convert the country with missionaries, believing that the main character's religion is chaotic and needs to be cured. I think however that the restriction to it being mostly identical to real life except that the main character's gods are real restricted the world-building a bit as a few events felt like they wouldn't happen given how much power these gods had. It makes sense towards the end that the team with guns were able to shoot down the ones who can shoot fire from their hands and stuff but it is crazy that the westerners do not believe in the main characters religion given they can literally shoot fire from their hands, and instead follow the fake version of christianity. It also sort of ends with the westerners using science to cut off their connection to the gods somewhat, which sort of muddies the message. I think that it sort of sacrifices some interesting ways they could have gone with the worldbuilding for the sake of ensuring the reader knows that it is a reference to real life, even though it was quite obvious from the start. It feels a bit like disrespecting the reader.

Babel, a book about 1830s oxford except they can use silver and the power of languages to do magic, is a similar premise but set in the western world. A young boy is "adopted" from Canton and drilled to become an oxford boy so he can join the translation institute. There are lots of subtle hints of the dramatic inequality - in the first few pages of the book, the MC's mother dies to the plague and then he is saved by a bar of silver hours later, with no effort at all. When he gets home he sees every carriage has a silver bar, every street lamp, the rich are using silver to make their gardens more appealing, etc. People use mild to very racist language referring to non-whites, there's lots of "can you see through those eyes" type dialogue when he first reaches the UK and encounters strangers. As the book goes on the MC has to come to terms with how much he loves oxford and the studying despite how it is propped up by slavery and the negative impact it is having on the world outside of Britain. The translation institute is the only faculty that accepts people of colour and women, so every character has varying levels of injustice to deal with as they navigate their time at the university. It is a pretty strong concept and it feels like there is much better justification for why the silver magic is so limited in use and function - it is a source of income for the empire and has been commercialised so the focus is on developing it for military might (making ships more stable, guns more accurate) and rich people more fancy (old buildings more structurally sound, plumbing, etc.). I encounter a similar sort of vibe to the Poppy Wars series however where it feels like a lot of the time some of the writing is a bit clunky for the sake of making sure the reader is aware of the message. For example one passage, where the two men and two women comprising the main group are meeting with a professor from a different faculty, goes "...he said, then he pointedly shook Robin's hand, then Ramy's hand, then hurried them along" or similar (I am somewhat paraphrasing). The implication being, there is a lack of respect for women in the faculty enough that this professor doesn't see them as scholars worth his time to acknowledge, a powerful message. It then explicitly goes "Letty and Victoire's hands remained unshaken". I did say it was nitpicking and I acknowledge this is a small gripe, but it's just like... yeah I got it from the previous sentence, you don't need to drill it in like I'm 5 years old. This book uses swear words and references sex so it's clearly not for anyone too young for critical thought. There are other examples but the formula is mostly just:

• something sexist/racist happens
• I go wow that sucks I can see themes of racism and sexism here
• main character says "wow that was really sexist/racist" in his internal monologue just to make sure I hadn't missed it

I think however this doesn't make these books bad - I enjoyed reading them after all - it just means that I wasn't the target audience. Given the amount of injustice in the world it is clear that there are people who upon reading this maybe wouldn't pick up on some of the themes. There are parallels to the Barbie movie here. Some critiqued it as very "surface level/introductory feminism" - the main theme is that women can be whatever they aspire to be and can exist without the validation of a man, but it didn't really tackle anything particularly deep because it is also a film for children based on a toy. However despite the fact that a lot of the points were very explicit and what a lot of people would take for granted as not needing to be said, a lot of people found real life value in the film. Many stories arose of people breaking up with their long term partners because of how uncomfortable the themes in barbie made them. I'm not arguing that the barbie movie was good or bad for feminism here particularly, just that it definitely brings attention to the different audiences levels' of exposure to the themes, requiring some things to be more explicit lest they go unrecognised.

I would read these books again though probably the worldbuilding and characters were all good and the writing style was good enough that I did't ever stop reading it out of boredom and have to make myself pick it up again. Probably both 4/5 level books.

Thanks for reading.

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