This was an amazing, brilliant book set in an alternative-history Oxford in the 1800s, an Oxford in which, in addition to the colleges that really exist, there is an additional tower called "Babel" where the translation students find pairs of matched words to create enchanted silver bars that power the British Empire. This book is one of the highly deserving novels that should have received a Hugo nomination in 2024 but was left off through prejudiced and imcompetent shenanigans on the part of the selections committee (which is a story in itself); suffice it to say, it definitely deserved the nomination and is well worth a read.