I liked this one a lot. In early Victorian England, a group of students from England’s colonial outposts are spirited away to Oxford to learn to use the magic of translation, only to find that they are only being used as pawns in England’s game of empire. First off, I found the modality of magic explored in this book to be so fascinating and refreshing. The characters were really beautifully written. I’m also a huge fan of the use of genre to explore big themes, and this book did it with aplomb, not only exploring colonization and racism but also class consciousness. I only have three criticisms. First, I felt a lot of the social critique was implicit, and on occasion the book got more didactic than I think it needed to. And then my favorite critique, there was what I felt was a queerbaity undercurrent between two of the main characters.