It was a strange read for me and the first time I’ve felt out of touch with the new generation of writers. The research quality is inconsistent—impressively thorough in some aspects yet glaringly lacking in others. The critique of 19th-century British imperialism is justified and compelling. However, the narrative abruptly shifts to a surprisingly uncritical support of Qing and Mughal Khan regimes, both of which had pretty shocking and unsound policies. Kind of flattening the politics into “British Empire bad, opponents of Britain good.”

As an enthusiast of etymology, particularly when examining the concept of “revolution,” I found the book’s treatment disappointing. It overlooks the nuanced and historical origins of the term, especially relevant to 17th-century England during the Glorious Revolution’s swift rotations in power between Catholic and Protestant monarchs. Instead, it opts for a simplified, pop culture interpretation that equates revolution with the notion of ‘burn everything down.’

The pro-Luddite sections also felt like a mischaracterization of those nuanced movements without a clear working of the economic factors at play there which don’t lend them to be natural allies of the protagonists. Additionally, there’s a poor grasp of the military tactics associated with barricade warfare, comparable to what one might infer from a single viewing of Les Misérables. That whole section was a bit cringe.

Which is to say the huge sections of the book had my face in my palms but I’m happy to be challenged and glad I read it to re-question my priors on a fascinating period with a fun, nerdy take on a magic system.

> Now I want to read the books that were excluded

You wouldn't learn anything. The whole point of this article is that the people making the exclusion decisions had no idea what might or might not be sensitive, so they just excluded everything with any conceivable connection to China, such as mentioning it.

What a mess. They removed the book Babel, but Babel has already been published in China :facepalm:

Babel is a decent sci-fi book, it's actually quite anti-capitalist. I'm not making a political statement.