The Barker books are pretty depressing, in the sense that most of the characters are in a horrific situation that they will never get out of — the best they can hope for is to survive and forge some sense of community in the margins. For me, this is enough — as long as there is a sense that characters are able to find a sense of connection with each other, and moments of happiness and meaning, it doesn't really matter to me if they're otherwise living in a completely dystopian situation. But we all have our own limits when it comes to reading this sort of thing, and I see no reason why you should force yourself to read this series if you think you'll find it unrelentingly bleak.

Regarding Babel, I just find it insulting to me as a reader. It's as if the book is trying to handhold me into responding correctly not just to the story as a whole, but to individual incidents and throwaway lines within it — it feels like a lack of trust in the reader's ability to interpret meaning. It's also very dispiriting that all this feels like a preemptive attempt to deflect anticipated criticism — as if the book were written with an imagined Twitter mob looking over the author's shoulder, threatening to descend and harangue her about her lack of knowledge or insufficient ideological purity.