Senlin Ascends: Book One of the Books of Babel

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Bancroft, Josiah (3 November 2019). "The State of Book Four". The Books of Babel . Retrieved 29 January 2020. I spent a long time reading this one. It's a long book and I was in no hurry to finish since it marks the end of a truly excellent quadrillogy. They responded with slight maternal smiles that made him feel belittled, “We’re far past our holidays,” one said.

This is the fourth and final book of the series. Fortunately, the book begins with a brief recapitulation. Referring to the fourth book: “[I] … shall hitherto attempt to puff upon the dwindling coals of your enthusiasm for a tale that, like the besotted guest who has begun to drape upon the drapery, departs not a moment too soon!” Even with the recap, this book doesn’t work as a standalone, way too much has happened in the Tower of Babel and a new reader would be missing a lot. I also quite liked the falling action, it had something that was insanely creative that I am currently learning some people hate. I thought it was cool. The book has three main plot threads, that (as you would expect) converge in the story's finale. Each, to me, highlights a noteworthy flaw in this book. The first thread focuses on Adam, absent from the series since the second volume, who has made it to the paradisiacal city that crowns the Tower and found that he and his sister are somehow well-known to its inhabitants. When Adam's fame was touched upon in volume two I worried that the book would go in a metanarrative direction, which thankfully it doesn't, but this aspect of the book has a different problem: I praised the first volume for revealing that certain plot points that initially seemed to rely on coincidence in fact were not based on coincidence at all, but in this thread (and throughout this volume) coincidence is key. It is only thanks to chance that among the hundreds or perhaps thousands of eyes sent up to Nebos, Adam’s eye was used to make a groundbreaking film by one of the most powerful people in Nebos, which led to the son of that person recognizing Adam and choosing to spare him against city regulations, and that also led to the daughter of that person to fall in love with Adam. Without that one chance out of however many eyes, Adam would be a charred skeleton on the roof of the Tower. And it’s not just Adam’s plot thread that relies on coincidence either, as by the end of the series it’s clear that the confluence of Luc Marat trying to take over the Tower (and relatedly grabbing paintings) and the crisis of the Tower’s internal systems coming to a head (which also necessitates having the paintings) is pure happenstance, with each crisis arising independently. While prior volumes made it seem as though Bancroft was crafting a story where each step forward understandably and predictably followed from the last, this final volume disappointingly reveals that such is not the case. I will say Bancroft did well depicting Marya as a new mother who’s deeply wounded and going through a healing process. I loved the addition of her POV, it was a welcome change.

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bined into a single, fluid reflex. He’d long suspected that she had been overly hard on him when they’d sparred, but now he knew just how As Marat's siege engine bores through the Tower, erupting inside ringdoms and leaving chaos in its wake, Senlin can do nothing but observe the mayhem from inside the belly of the beast. Caught in a charade, Senlin desperately tries to sabotage the rampaging Hod King, even as Marat's objective grows increasingly clear. The leader of the zealots is bound for the Sphinx's lair and the unimaginable power it contains. I will read everything that Bancroft puts out in the future, make no mistake. I genuinely think he is the best author I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Without sounding cliché – these are my classics. I’ve never wanted to annotate a book before, there’s nothing that I’ve read before that has made me go “that’s profound, I want to save and remember that” – but there was SO MUCH in this series where I just had to read a line over and over again because it was so beautifully crafted. I now understand how people feel when they quote lines from a book because I want to do that too! But only with this series. The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case. Look, I didn’t get the ending I wanted lol and I’m bitter and disappointed, but this shall pass. I’m a reader who loves seeing the puzzle pieces come together and with some of these puzzles I’ve waited a long time and I didn’t get my answers. I also really didn't love that the story ended up veering more into sci fi - just really not a direction I enjoyed unfortunately (despite the fact I love sci fi, but I just don't think this series needed it or that it fit with the previous books). Again, this is a personal feeling and doesn’t mean the book isn’t objectively good – because it is!

No spoilers, but this adventure that gave us more Senlin and a great deal of Adam and others as well, is satisfying in a way that all huge epic fantasies can be. If you've loved the series so far, you will definitely love this as well. Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants. The Tower of Babel is sometimes called the Sink of Humanity. Its immensity, the variety of its ringdoms, its mysterious and luxurious heights are irresistible to all corners. We are drawn to it like water to a drain.We were told again and again that the Tower loathes nothing more than a smug survivor. And here one, Thomas Senlin. I was waiting for the reunion of the two star-crossed lovers and, admittedly, this was one of the most anticipated moments in the book. Age-Gap Romance: Senlin and Marya have about ten years between them. They first met as Senlin first took over teaching duties at the village school. Tower of Babel: The titular tower. There are hints that this is the Tower, albeit in a parallel universe.

Naïve Newcomer: Every tourist to the Tower of Babel, and every new arrival to a new ringdom besides.

This book provides examples of:

Because this is book 4. I know this series is going to be weird. I know the characters are going to be weirdly poetic in situations when they shouldn't. I know there are going to be weird cyborg people. I know there's going to be plot elements that come out of nowhere and that ringdoms are going to be introduced that are too weird to exist. So why did I hate all of it this time?