[I rated it a 4 star]

Well I just read it for the last 5 hours straight, so maybe it deserves a 4.5? It took a fair while to hook me, when it came to getting the plot in motion, but there's enough in this that appealed immensely to my interests. Language, translation, etymology (wheee, lots of latin), anticolonialism, underground revolutionaries, pamphlets, more than a few Percy Shelley mentions and all.

All the dark academia touches felt a little Secret History-lite to me, though in this case the main set of characters were generally likeable. (Halfway through I said I loved Ramy to death and I'm not exaggerating.) It was also very Les-Mis-esque later on, Victor Hugo quote and barricades and all.

So I shed a tear or two and did get enormously invested as things progressed, but there were a few pitfalls that prevented me falling in absolute love with it... firstly, Kuang is at her best talking nerdy about language, obviously, but gets a little preachy on colonialism. The book really likes to beat you over the head with the implications of the British Empire, as if you can't possibly make those connections yourself, and, IDK, it took away some of the power of the message, for me.

Secondly, as a piece of quasi-historical fiction, it failed for me, because I never truly believed that it was set in the early 1800s? I am ALL for POC representation and anticolonialism and other "~modern opinions" in historical fiction, don't get me wrong, but the writing itself felt jarringly modern to me??? Like, if we're talking about translation here - particularly in character speech, the casual, almost millenial, conversations just didn't land right for me. The characters didn't feel from the era, and when the setting and their backgrounds are so important to what's going on that felt like a massive oversight to me. So, mixed feelings, but I am very fond of this book in spite of that, would still recommend!