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Senlin Ascends: Book One of the Books of Babel

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The title would suggest that in the series Tower of Babel has fallen. The ending of the previous instalment has made it clear that this book will be about the incoming apocalypses. That’s right, more than one! Here lies the catch: In the end, we are still unsure whether the Tower is worth saving. And whether the fact that the colossus is still standing means victory. Senlin Ascends and its sequels, the Books of Babel series, deal with the adventures of the schoolteacher Thomas Senlin, who is separated from his wife Marya at the foot of the immense Tower of Babel, and spends the rest of the narrative searching for her. The novel was uncommonly successful for a self-published work, due in large part to notice gained during the 2016 SPFBO competition, praise on social media from author Mark Lawrence, and a positive review by Emily May, a popular reviewer on Goodreads. As a result, it was republished, together with the sequel Arm of the Sphinx, by Orbit Books in 2018. The third book in the series, The Hod King, came out in 2019. The finale of the series, The Fall of Babel, was published in 2021. Bancroft's inspirations for the story are numerous and include Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, The Castle by Franz Kafka, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. [1] The Tower of Babel in the books is not intended to be the tower of biblical fame. Bancroft has explained that the setting is "more of an alternate universe than an alternate history. The Tower is not part of our timeline or this reality". [1] Bancroft took the name Senlin from the 1920 poem "Morning Song of Senlin" by Conrad Aiken. [2] The cover art for the three published books was created by Ian Leino, a childhood friend of Bancroft.

Bancroft, Josiah (3 December 2021). "Acquisition Announcement: The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft". Orbit Books . Retrieved 1 June 2022. Everywhere he looked now he saw groups of people roped together. Any movement through the crowd was made more difficult by the web of leashes. Why had the Guide neglected to mention that little nugget of wisdom? Bring a good rope. Aboard the State of Art, Edith and her crew adjust to the reality that Voleta has awoken from death changed. She seems to share more in common with the Red Hand now than her former self. While Edith wars for the soul of the young woman, a greater crisis looms: They will have to face Marat on unequal footing and with Senlin caught in the crossfire. But that’s not all. It actually took me another week to finish the rest of the novel; this makes The Fall of Babel the longest time I ever spent to finish a book. It’s insane, The Fall of Babel consists of 241k words but it felt like 600k words. For comparison, Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson (460k words) took me a week to start and finish, and The Stand Uncut Edition by Stephen King (468k words) took me ten days. I don’t know about you, but often I can measure how invested and enamored I am by a book through how fast—not intentionally, but I always feel like I WANT to continue reading—I can read through it. Yes, the immense pacing issues I had with the beginning of this book could’ve been fixed simply by having all the POV characters appearing interchangeably instead of doing it in a large chunk. It’s also true that this worked in The Hod King, but it didn’t in here, not for me anyway. But The Fall of Babel felt like four novellas combined into one book, and the only sections I loved from the book were the four long chapters titled “From the Belly of the Beast” and some of the chapters in the last part of the novel, at least until the ending happened.

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I’m sure this review is just an unpopular opinion, I can already feel all the spoon of Bancroft's fans being raised, and I genuinely hope people love this book and series. But in my opinion, The Fall of Babel was utterly disappointing. I wanted to love it. I really do. I mean, I even reread the previous three books just to refresh my memory before I read The Fall of Babel so I can enjoy every detail of it. For those of you who don’t know, this is something that I rarely do due to my mountainous TBR pile, but I did it for The Books of Babel because I highly enjoyed the first three books. I chose this as the last fantasy book I read in 2021, it was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and unfortunately, it ended up being the disappointment of the year. Here comes my biggest grievance: I was promised answers. I was promised “revelations startling, strange, disappointing but a finished and decisive end, at the least” — or were they? Decisive, I mean. Marya jumped in her seat when a camel’s head swung unexpectedly near. Senlin tried to calm her by example, but couldn’t stop himself from yelping when the camel snorted, spraying them with warm spit. Frustrated by this lapse in decorum, Senlin cleared his throat and shooed the camel out with his handkerchief. I do like the conclusions for most of the characters mostly everyone in the main cast got a fitting conclusion. I did think certain aspects of Senlin's arc was fitting though certain development, which I’m semi-mixed upon, but I did like how the novel ended overall.

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. The first book in the word-of-mouth phenomenon debut fantasy series about one man's dangerous journey through a labyrinthine world. The Fall of Babel is a freight train of story threads finally coming to a head, but it is also a love letter, saying goodbye to this weird and endearing group of adventurers and castoffs, far removed from where they all started, now so much further along the journeys of their lives.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. In this novel, I noticed there was more philosophising in than instalment than prior (at least from what I can tell) which I thought was executed well. Though I don’t think the main antagonist is complex, I do think he represented a certain ideology well. You can see the Borges influence and maybe some Gene Wolfe? Though I could be stretching the later one.

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. All the ringdomsBy nature of a series finale of course there are more characters – those we’ve met along the way all coming together with their own stories and we can’t stay in the same closed off cities and ringdoms forever. But in all honesty, I felt like there was just a little bit too much going on in this one and it didn’t really need so much action. Artificial Limbs: An unknown inventor replaces missing limbs through mysterious, highly advanced science, powered by a glass vial filled with a glowing red substance. For years I had pondered the mystery behind Adam's disappearance and what the surrounding clues meant. Bancroft wrote an original and immensely satisfying explanation that sated my curiosity. The Edith & Marya conundrum was one of the biggest plot points to the story, and its resolution was one of the most heart-wrenching and ultimately human conclusions I could have asked for. And the story ends just as it began: full of mystery, wonder, excitement, and promise. That being said: This series is more than a mere reference to the Tower of Babel; it is a reinvention of a story featuring a great, magnificent and proud building whose creators, in their hubris, were so much convinced of its magnificence that they ultimately allowed its demise. And this demise, dark and painful despite its many solemn and memorable touches, I’d hoped we can finally read about in detail in the grand finale. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Firstly, I will have to talk about the structure, I’m unsure what Bancroft could have done but some restructure probably would have reduced some of the negative reception. An Example, Part 1 serves as that missing Part from The Hod King, but it’s also a link to the Fall of Babel. This section primarily concerns Adam, which was a character missing from the Hod King, what portrays is important no doubt but is the beginning of the odd structure. Maybe Bancroft could have provided a teaser of these events in Hod-Kings epilogue to make that shift less jarring. I knew about this development well beforehand, but the people who aren’t active in certain communities wouldn’t know and could feel jarring. Most of part 1, I would say was excellent, it made Adam interesting and explored an interesting civilisation in the process. There’s some nice relationship building and some interesting lore which connects to the ending quite well. All that said this compromised the first quarter of the novel, with no interaction with our heroes from the Hod King. 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! wow. i cant believe i am here and that the ending of the series has finally arrived. its definitely a lot to process.

But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake—going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven—the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people. Josiah Bancroft is an American writer of fantasy, known for his initially self-published debut novel Senlin Ascends (2013). I needed a few days to settle my thoughts on the ending. It’s definitely unexpected but quite fitting both character-wise and thematically. It wraps up the character arcs satisfactorily with some anticipated confrontations and conversations. And there are a multitude of revelations about the Tower, something speculated on by multiple characters over the series. I think I would have liked if there had been one more chapter at the end, but I am quite satisfied with how it all wrapped up. Josiah Bancroft, please do not read this review. I love your previous books, and I would prefer your memory of my thoughts on your books remains that way; leave it in the state of innocence and happiness just like Senlin before he entered the Tower of Babel. Now, let’s get on with the review. One winner will be chosen at random. Contest spans several platforms. One entry per person, please. Open to everyone, everywhere.

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