Attack of the Ninja Language

       For me, Babel-17 was a bit too wordy. By that I mean I am a visual learner it was very hard for me to picture some if any of this book's happenings. I'm not much of a linguist so most of the information about language didn't really do much for me. It was kind of like being talked at for 200 pages in another language I didn't quite understand. There was like no visual description whatsoever of what anything looked like and instead the reader was left focusing solely on the speaker's language. I can understand how this was the heart of the story, but sometimes I felt it left me totally in the dark. For example, I had to reread the entire scene where Brass was introduced because I couldn't picture him with the description I was given. I think Delany took too much for granted with his sparse background story while he jumped into a complicated world that was hard to follow. We were introduced to dozens of new characters within just a few pages and it was a bit overwhelming.

        The way the story was written in segments, proved to be very jaunting for me. A chapter would end in one place with something like a space jump and then Rydra would be entangled in a web and it just didn't seem to match up. I couldn't tell how much time had passed at first and I seriously had no idea what was going on. I like being able to read books in one pass but this book required me constantly going back trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  But regardless, I did like the story though, it was just it was sort of the wrong flavor for me, like I got pistachio instead of chocolate.

          Rydra herself ticked me off a bit. It was like she had it too easy. Almost everyone was bound to automatically fall for her. She was a badass, knew all these languages, and could also fight. I felt like she had so much potential as a character but all she really did was get transported to meet more people and have intense discussions about language.  I felt like there wasn't enough of a payoff regarding the Babel-17 language, too.  There was all this building up to this amazing idea and then it was just sort of a letdown when we never got to learn anything about these Invaders or their culture after this really long attempt to stop them. I mean we followed Rydra on this quest to stop them, and we sort of got side tracked and then met this man without a past and then mentally bonded. And then it was over. I felt like the explanation revolving how to neutralize Babel's negative effects was also a bit childish. The answer is just introducing a contradictory idea? Really? That just seems just a bit too easy.