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Summary
Summary
The first book in the word-of-mouth phenomenon debut fantasy series about one man's dangerous journey through a labyrinthine world.
"One of my favorite books of all time" -- Mark Lawrence
The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of luxury and menace, of unusual animals and mysterious machines.
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.
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.
This quiet man of letters must become a man of action.
Author Notes
Josiah Bancroft is the author of five novels, a collection of short fiction, and numerous poems. His books have been translated into eight languages. Before settling down to write fantasy full-time, he was a college instructor, rock musician, and aspiring comic book artist. When he's not writing, he enjoys strumming a variety of stringed instruments, drawing with a growing cache of imperfect pens, and cooking without a recipe. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Sharon, their daughter, Maddie, and their two rabbits, Mabel and Chaplin.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bancroft's brilliant debut fantasy, first in a planned series, stars the eponymous Thomas Senlin, a provincial schoolmaster. Thomas and his wife, Marya, honeymoon at the Tower of Babel, a notable tourist attraction. No one knows how high the tower is, as its upper stories are hidden behind a permanent fog, and many other things about it are also mysterious and dangerous. Upon losing Marya in the massive crowd around the tower's base, Thomas begins to climb in the hope of meeting her again. Every one of the tower's staggeringly original individual rooms, many of which have their own cultures, could make a setting for a novel all by itself, and the suspenseful plot and cleverly handled side characters add to the surfeit of riches. The relationship between Thomas and Marya is touching, well-established, and, most importantly, egalitarian. At once steampunk and epic, surreal and yet grounded in believable logistics, this novel goes off like a firework and suggests even greater things in the author's future. Agent: Ian Drury, Sheil Land Associates. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Alastair Reynolds excels at world building his impressive backlist attests to that but hes also a master at constructing complex technological, far-future societies peopled by fully rounded characters. In Elysium Fire (Gollancz, £14.99), the Glitter Band is a vast ring of spatial habitats orbiting the planet of Yellowstone. Each is a self-governing autonomy, where citizens vote instantly via brain implants on matters political and social. Violent crime is rare in the affluent Glitter Band, and the judiciary known as the Prefects instead investigate crimes related to voting. When brain implants cause a series of deaths across the habitats, its down to Inspector Dreyfus, ably assisted by sidekicks Parver and Ng, to track down the killer. Elysium Fire is a tremendously assured read, a fast-paced page-turner that delivers a well thought out story and characters youll come to care about. In Josiah Bancrofts debut novel, Senlin Ascends (Orbit, £8.99), originally self-published in 2013, schoolteacher Thomas Senlin and his bride Marya make the four-day journey across the desert to honeymoon at the fabled Tower of Babel, armed with a guidebook to the tower and high hopes for the future. Soon after their arrival, however, Senlin loses Marya in the teeming crowds at the base of the tower, and so begins his heart-rending ascent of the levels or Ringdoms, each one a brilliantly drawn other world as the mild-mannered, reasonable Senlin searches in desperation for the love of his life. What is remarkable about this novel, quite apart from its rich, allusive prose, is Bancrofts portrayal of Senlin, a good man in a desperate situation, and the way he changes in response to his experiences in his ascent. Senlin Ascends has been garnering a lot of praise, and rightly so. Chris Becketts stunning third collection, Spring Tide (Corvus, £15.99), gathers 21 previously unpublished stories ranging from the fantastical to the mainstream. The volume is framed by two stories, Cellar and Sky, which chart the descent, literally and metaphorically, of loner Jeremy Burnet, who discovers thousands of mysterious rooms beneath his suburban semi. In The End of Time, the ethereal Eli lives through the life span of every creature that ever existed on Earth, while in The Great Sphere opposing factions fight for domination of a sphere embedded in a mountainside and etched with abstruse pronouncements. The two finest stories are Rage, in which the narrator is made to face up to his own and the wests hypocrisy in a meeting with an African youth in a Malawian cafe, and Spring Tide, which simply but with devastating effect uses the metaphor of the tide to bring hope to a fractured marriage. Arthur C Clarke award-winner Beckett depicts frail human beings struggling with often overwhelming emotional trauma and occasionally achieving redemption, set against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. The result is a brilliantly different take on what it means to be alive in the 21st century. Brooke Bolanders short fiction has been garnering acclaim and awards since 2015, and her debut novella, The Only Harmless Great Thing (Tor, £8.25), is a fractured, episodic alternate history told in her characteristically poetic prose style. Skipping between the early years of the 20th century and the near future, the narrative follows the terminally ill Regan, dying from radiation poisoning, and linguist Kat. What links these women are elephants, which in Bolanders fable communicate with humans by sign language. Regan is teaching elephants to take over the lethal job of the Radium Girls women employed to apply luminous paint to watch dials while Kats task is to use the matriarchal elephants handing down of stories to each successive generation as a warning to humanity of the dangers of stored nuclear waste. Bolanders meditation on exploitation is made all the more poignant by being inspired by two real-life events: the radioactive poisoning of female workers in the US radium industry between 1917 and 1926, and the electrocution of Topsy the elephant in 1903. Imagine a world in which everyone is hardwired into social media and virtual reality, where the need to read is a thing of the past and digital instructions give us all the guidance we need via voices in the head. Imagine a society addicted to constant online approbation and incessant entertainment Now imagine the effect on this society when all this is ripped away and human beings are left to their own devices. Thats the intriguing premise of Nick Clark Windos compulsively readable The Feed (Headline, £16.99), a terrifyingly bleak dystopia extrapolating from our increasing reliance on social media. Six years after the Feed collapsed, brought down by hackers, Kate and Tom are searching for their abducted daughter in a ravaged landscape reminiscent of Cormac McCarthys The Road. Windos first novel is a noirish thriller told with verve and some fine plot twists. Eric Browns latest novel is - Eric Brown.
Kirkus Review
In his debut novel, Bancroft takes readers into a steampunk world revolving around the great attraction and mystery that is the Tower of Babela colossal structure rising up into the heavens that devours the unwary with intrigue and danger.One such unwary is Thomas Senlin, a school headmaster from a small fishing village, whose rosy ideas of the Tower lead him to honeymoon there with his young bride, Marya. But the two villagers are unprepared for the "big city"especially a city so capricious and indifferent as the Tower turns out to be. Thomas loses track of Marya before even making it inside the Tower's gargantuan walls, and from there he begins his desperate quest to find her within the Tower's heights. The nave and awkward headmaster is thrust into a world of treachery, drugs, hedonism, art, theft, airships, political feuding, soul-numbing violence, and above all secretssecrets that he begins to see form a whole and a clue to the Tower's true nature. Will Thomas be able to keep his soul as he learns the Tower's often deadly rules, or will he simply be one more person broken by the Tower? (The true import of Thomas' quest won't be found herethere's a sequel coming, naturally.) Through it all, Marya seems to drift just out of his gripbut in her place, Thomas painstakingly assembles a ragtag team of allies and friends, if friendship can ever be true in a place where loyalty is just another currency and the powers that be have placed a price on Thomas' head.The lush setting holds the reader through a slow start, but once the plot gets going, it ticks along with the tight precision and artistry of a well-wound watch. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This series opener follows the transformation of judgmental headmaster Thomas Senlin, tourist, into something entirely different. He and his new bride, Marya, begin on their honeymoon, traveling to the fantastic Tower of Babel. Almost immediately, Marya is whisked away by the crowds. As Thomas journeys through the drama and pitfalls of the tower, from the beer pits of the first level to the theater of the second and beyond, he learns that perhaps the world is more complicated and messy than he'd thought. Senlin is something of a bumbling rube, which allows the reader to learn about the world as the lead character does. The Tower of Babel holds great promise: there is clearly more going on there than meets the eye, even as Thomas becomes aware of more and more of its nuances. The pacing seems slow there is a long, long buildup as Thomas tries to find any trace of Marya and a whirlwind conclusion leading into the next phase of Senlin's story but it allows for in-depth development of the setting.--Schroeder, Regina Copyright 2017 Booklist