There's so many layers of thought and discussion this book evokes. I could probably talk out it for hours. I think it's a very appropriate book for the time we're living in. It is a slow start however I realized that the first half of the book is purposely written in a way that evokes some of the English classics of the period it's set in, such as Charles Darwin as referenced in it, and that makes it terribly clever. R.F. Kuang is always so very clever in how she is really able to bring the reader along the protagonist's emotional journey through her style and pacing. Babel and definitely made me look long and hard about my own views of the post-colonial world and how the colonial powers' impacts have left such deep scars in it.