Malevolent babbling: The November 2025 Bibliofiles

This month saw me reading some heady, intellectual historical fantasy while at the same devouring a book about vampire kangaroos and other strange creatures. Plus a bit of weird fiction and weird journalism!

Fiction

Babel by RF Kuang

Babel by RF Kuang is a complex and multilayered novel that defies easy description — which is befitting, given its subject matter.

Equal parts historical fantasy, dark academia, anticolonial manifesto and coming-of-age tale, Babel relates the tale of Robin Swift, a Chinese child orphaned by a plague and whisked away to Oxford to study the secret arts of magic.

In the world of Babel, magic is generated by the sort of imaginative gaps that occur when words are translated from one language to another and their meaning changes, creating a sort of linguistic loose energy. This energy is in turn channeled through silver bars — the physical manifestations of empire and power. It’s a compelling and utterly unique magic system that is well developed by Kuang, and there are echoes of, well, Eco here in the book’s linguistic and historical awareness.

The wonder of the magic system, which is used to transform every element of western society, is put into stark contrast with the abuses of the colonial system. The enchantment that Oxford holds for Robin soon fades as he realizes it is but another tool for sustaining the colonial machine — and he and his friends are but a cog in the machine.

Things inevitably come to a head when a war with China looms, driven by false pretences, and Robin joins an underground rebellion that strikes at the heart of the empire’s power.

The coming of age elements are layered everywhere throughout these events, as Robin confronts what it means to grow up in a place that was never meant for you, where you can never belong, and which uses you while abusing your people. It’s an interrogation of empire that examines more than colonialism and stretches wide to include capitalism itself. It’s all the more timely because of it.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57945316-babel

The Malevolent Eight by Sebastien de Castell