Senlin Ascends: Book One of the Books of Babel

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Thomas Senlin, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, is drawn to the Tower by scientific curiosity and the grandiose promises of a guidebook. The luxurious Baths of the Tower seem an ideal destination for a honeymoon, but soon after arriving, Senlin loses Marya in the crowd. Senlin’s search for Marya carries him through madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassination, and the long guns of a flying fortress. Bancroft, Josiah (3 November 2019). "The State of Book Four". The Books of Babel . Retrieved 29 January 2020. A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. Our main character, Thomas Senlin – a scholar, a head teacher, a sheltered man, is far from our ideal hero. At the beginning of the book, as Senlin and Marya travel by steam train to the Tower, we see Senlin as conservative with an aristocratic air about him, he’s pragmatic yet rigid, not one prone to displays of emotion. Whereas in contrast his wife has such an enthusiastic, chirpy nature about her. That is not to say Senlin is unkind, or ill suited for Marya, he is gentle and relatively quiet, but his whole experiences in life have come from books, and therefore when turmoil strikes he finds himself completely overwhelmed. However, Bancroft crafts Senlin’s personal growth in such fantastic ways. Throughout the book Senlin not only faces the wonders of the Tower but he soon encounters the dangers too. Assassins, betrayals, deadly ballrooms and theatre shows, once Senlin enters the Tower, he realises his only chance of survival is to use his intelligence. It was all so overwhelming, and for a moment Senlin stiffened like a corpse. The bark of vendors, the snap of tarps, the jangle of harnesses, and the dither of ten-thousand alien voices set a baseline of noise which could only be yelled over. Marya took hold of her husband’s belt just at his spine, startling him from his daze and goading him onward. He knew they couldn’t very well just stand there. He gathered a breath and took the first step.

and the ending to this is one i think will be surprising to most readers, as it was to me. with a title like ‘the fall of babel,’ it isnt hard to get a certain idea of how things are supposed to play out, but i found JBs ending to be completely unexpected. especially as it leaves rooms for additional books/possible companion series. In his debut novel, Bancroft takes readers into a steampunk world revolving around the great attraction and mystery that is the Tower of Babel—a colossal structure rising up into the heavens that devours the unwary with intrigue and danger. Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he’ll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the illusions of the Tower. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure. Luc Marat provides the villainy, aiming his Hod King into trouble. We're introduced to a cast of rogue wakemen who, as Marat's henchmen, provide a foil for Captain Winter's crew. There are quite a few fights between these folk and Edith, Iren, Voletta, and Reddleman. Some may feel too many. And it might have been nice to have met these people in earlier books given their role here. But these are minor gripes. The first of the series, Senlin Ascends, was followed by The Arm of the Sphinx, published 2014, The Hod King, published in 2019, and finally The Fall of Babel in 2021.First, and most of all, I enjoyed Edith. Remember me writing that this series is not about Senlin? That’s because this final book proves it. Edith is the main protagonist of the series, not Senlin. It had been Senlin’s quest from the very beginning till the very end, but it was only Edith and due to Edith that they succeeded in that quest and, arguably, it was Edith who grew and rose the most during the series. Senlin's and Edith's brief romance also left a bitter feeling for me. She's been used and thrown out like rubbish for whatever mediocre reasons. Meh!

I said prior that one of the polarising aspects of the novel is structure well this ultimately comes down to Senlin. He’s our main protagonist from day one, but here he feels very much a spectator of the events that unfolded. Voletta and Edith felt more like the main protagonists for this final novel than Senlin, even Adam had more contribution to the plot. Overall Bancroft put himself in an odd position. Senlin spends too much of this novel isolated from his companions. An example is his buddies in the Hod King and the many characters never had a reunion after the sacrifice they faced together. Senlin’s huge act at orchestrating the sabotage of the Hod King doesn’t feel as meaningful as mini-Hod King immediately takes its place. Another issue is that I said prior that Marat represented a certain ideology well, however, because he’s unashamedly evil a lot of his conversations with Senlin don’t feel like interesting dissections of ideologies but just listening to a philosophy of a man we know is bad. Considering Senlin spends this entire book with Marat, him dealing the final blow with some henchmen and the main conclusion handled by Edith felt odd. The book opens with a lengthy chunk of storytelling about Adam, who was separated from the rest of the characters at the end of ... book 2, I think, and was absent for book 3. But it's a really good bit of story that brings him to life, illuminates some mysteries, and introduces us to the top of the tower, where the story has always been wending its way. Yes, they are that good - with the two middle ones fabulous 5 stars because of remarkable character writing and interaction in that kind of witty, self-deprecating prose that I love so much in authors.Mason, Everdeen (13 November 2018). "The 5 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2018". Washington Post . Retrieved 23 November 2018. The main takeaway is that The Fall of Babel does its job admirably. We get the worldclass prose, the wit, the observation that we've come to expect. We get large doses of our favourite characters. Mysteries are unraveled. Endings are given. There's a little bitter in the sweet, but you need that or the sweetness would be cloying. The characters who aren't antagonists continue to be distinctive, dynamic, and they stand out. The writing is really good, although there was a metaphor or two that wasn't clear because in this setting describing grass as emerald grass could mean really green grass, or emeralds that look like lawns. gingerly she had handled him. He’d been a cub in the mouth of a lion. She was a master of violence. She was indomitable, and she was