Hardcover, 368 pages
Published March 27, 2013 by Josiah Bancroft.
"The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel of the Silk Age. 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 airships and steam engines, of incredible animals and mysterious machines. While honeymooning in the Tower of Babel, Thomas Senlin loses his wife. A mild-mannered headmaster of a village school, Thomas Senlin is drawn to the Tower by scientific curiosity and the grandiose promises of a guidebook. It seems the perfect destination for a honeymoon. But soon after arriving in the Tower bazar, Senlin loses Marya in the crowd. Before he can find Marya, Senlin must first discover himself. 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. But if …
"The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel of the Silk Age. 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 airships and steam engines, of incredible animals and mysterious machines. While honeymooning in the Tower of Babel, Thomas Senlin loses his wife. A mild-mannered headmaster of a village school, Thomas Senlin is drawn to the Tower by scientific curiosity and the grandiose promises of a guidebook. It seems the perfect destination for a honeymoon. But soon after arriving in the Tower bazar, Senlin loses Marya in the crowd. Before he can find Marya, Senlin must first discover himself. 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. But if he hopes to find his wife, he must do more than survive. This quiet man of letters will have to become a man of action"--
Very unique world, with a compelling plot, and plenty of mystery. It was a bit slow to start, and I had to get used to the narrator's accent, but soon I found myself wanting to listen more. Senlin definitely feels Bilbo-esque in his naivety and how he gets pulled into things without meaning to. I'm excited for the next book!
I loved this. We start with priggish headmaster Thomas Senlin and his young bride going to the center of civilization on their honeymoon, and things start going wrong for Tom quickly. I had entirely forgotten how delicious an unlikeable protagonist is, and Tom is pretty unlikeable!
This book is almost as if Jasper Fforde or Nick Harkaway wrote Piranesi. It's zany, horrifying, sweet, and action-packed.
The good souls don't have the means or mind for it, and the bad souls will only bleed you dry.
Senlin Ascends had such a unique concept, prose and setting that it was easy to get sucked in and want to read more. Like Senlin I was swept up in the whimsy and wonder but also the dark and mysterious nature of the Tower.
Whenever my wife lost track of me at a pub or a party, all she had to do was follow the chimney. I gravitate to fires. People leave you alone if you're stirring a fire.
As Senlin progresses through this labyrinth of a Tower more questions are raised than answered and I was keen to keep on reading and learn more, get some payoff and get that desire to read more.
One has to tell lies that don't hide the truth.
Ultimately Senlin Ascends is all …
The good souls don't have the means or mind for it, and the bad souls will only bleed you dry.
Senlin Ascends had such a unique concept, prose and setting that it was easy to get sucked in and want to read more. Like Senlin I was swept up in the whimsy and wonder but also the dark and mysterious nature of the Tower.
Whenever my wife lost track of me at a pub or a party, all she had to do was follow the chimney. I gravitate to fires. People leave you alone if you're stirring a fire.
As Senlin progresses through this labyrinth of a Tower more questions are raised than answered and I was keen to keep on reading and learn more, get some payoff and get that desire to read more.
One has to tell lies that don't hide the truth.
Ultimately Senlin Ascends is all build up and introduction and no conclusion. As the book reached the final quarter I wondered if I was enjoying it that much to keep reading. I didn't dislike the story but four books is a large commitment when I'm not immediately hooked.
Flattery in portraiture guarantees a long but miserable career.
Ratings for the series improve so I will give Arm of the Sphinx a spin before making my final decision.
It is easier to accept who you've become than to recollect who you were.
I like that Senlin autocorrects to Senile, as I imagine everyone in the Tower suffers a little from senility. Also worth noting that this series has been on my to read list for almost three years, which is a significant amount of anticipation.
More like three and a half stars. I was slow to get going on this one, mostly because, while half my brain was focused on the story, the other half was distracted by the idea of a D&D campaign set entirely in an infinitely tall tower. Once I got going, though, I enjoyed this quite a bit.
I can't put the finger on what I didn't like in this book, but it felt too long, the characters didn't feel fleshed out, and the main character doesn't get interesting until about 4/5 through.
Apart from that I liked the setting, this big, enormous tower with a kingdom (or "ringdom") on each storey. Too much is kept from our knowing, which is slightly frustrating but makes me want to keep reading the series. The unreliable guidebook gets tired fast, and I don't miss it. I just hope to see more of the tower, and I hope that the end that's been hinted at during the market scene will happen. I need my Chekhov's unfinished tower summit.
I got stuck around 40%. I just couldn't connect to the story or the characters. However I have been in a reading slump so maybe it's me and not the story.
Sorry to say this landed in DNF.
I am somewhat in love with this book. It's not perfect, but I like it's originality. It's set in a mostly non magical world, but it is utterly bizarre all the same. The nearest 'feel' I can think of is the Gormengast books. You can tell that the author has another life as a poet: there are times when I read sentences out loud to myself, just to enjoy the sound of them.
The endings of books are the hardest things. But for the end, I enjoyed Senlin's ascent.
It's an adventure and it deals with human values and natures, and a bit of steam technology. I like the myth of the tower of babel as it is presented here. The ringdoms we got introduced to were fascinating and cool to learn about.
The culmination at the end felt too cluttered to me. On the one hand I understand that it should feel kind of epic compared to everything that came before. But it can't feel like a proper resolution in any case, since there is a second book, and it feels very different from the rest of the book in what kind of conflict and resolution it has.
And I guess, I preferred the naive Senlin of the beginning of the book to the more scheming one at the end.
This is a very good book. I don't really know what to say about it other than that. I'll probably need to read it several times, and then let it decant for a year or two.
The writing is magnificent. On occasion, there are telling intertextualities: there are long chapters which are redolent of Kafka (the schema of the book is quite similar to 'The Castle'). There are echoes of Gene Wolfe, Samuel Delaney or of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. Perhaps Walker Percy. Or Bunyan.
Although the main character is male, as are many of the actants, there are several strong women, including the lost wife who, at first, I feared might be little more than a McGuffin, but who, while she is not seen directly, plays an important role as a character in the story. i suspect she is one aspect of the goddess.
When I first joined Twitter a few months ago, it seemed like this book was all anyone in the fantasy scene was talking about. I now see why.
If you've traveled abroad with friends or family to a place whose language you do not know, the opening of the book will feel very familiar. There's an anxiety to such tourism that can be beaten back with proper planning, but never entirely eliminated. Invariably, there's a moment on such a trip where you look up and can't see your travelling companions. In that moment, there's a flash of terror at being lost, at their being lost, at a separation rendered impassable by a wall of incomprehensible language and custom.
If you're prepared, and a seasoned traveler, then you already have plans in place -- contingencies for exactly that moment, and after an initial flash of anxiety, the joy of exploration returns …
When I first joined Twitter a few months ago, it seemed like this book was all anyone in the fantasy scene was talking about. I now see why.
If you've traveled abroad with friends or family to a place whose language you do not know, the opening of the book will feel very familiar. There's an anxiety to such tourism that can be beaten back with proper planning, but never entirely eliminated. Invariably, there's a moment on such a trip where you look up and can't see your travelling companions. In that moment, there's a flash of terror at being lost, at their being lost, at a separation rendered impassable by a wall of incomprehensible language and custom.
If you're prepared, and a seasoned traveler, then you already have plans in place -- contingencies for exactly that moment, and after an initial flash of anxiety, the joy of exploration returns and all is well.
The first 3rd of Senlin Ascends crystallizes a traveler's anxious fantasies so acutely that it's almost difficult to read. It teeters precariously there for almost exactly the amount of time I could stand, but Bancroft's skillful rendition of that experience drove me through it and into the adventure beyond.
The Tower of Babel is masterfully rendered, mysterious, intriguing, and at once both fantastic and banal. It is difficult to describe the setting without spoiling the material, but is steampunk, complete with airships and strange devices. The Tower is a strange, and fascinatingly corrupted place, built upon layers of inequity. Each layer of the Tower seems content to look down at those below as they uneasily pretend to ignore all the layers above them.
At the opening, Senlin is a stuffy, obstinate know-it-all, who seems entirely too fragile to endure any sort of adventure whatsoever. The title itself is a clever description of the story, because it is not the story of a tower being ascended, but of Senlin ascending it.
Bancroft's writing has a stylish, stuffy aesthetic that is perfectly suited to his character's story, forming an elegant synergy between prose and plot.
It should be noted that this is merely book 1, and so Senlin's story does not end in this volume. Senlin Ascends is about the character's evolution, and so it chronicles that very effectively, but it is clearly the beginning epic arc and it does not conclude his story.
I started this book merely to see what all the fuss was about, and now I'm combating the desire to cast aside my list of works to be read to delve immediately into Bancroft's sequel. This is a very compelling story, and a delight to read. I highly recommend it.
Un libro que tiende más a lo steampunk que a la fantasía de siempre, con un protagonista un poco fuera de lo común (¿cuantos directores de escuela has visto salir de aventuras?).
La estructura del libro hace que hayan 3 formatos de historia, uno por cada piso que visita el prota, y cada una rozando otros géneros totalmente distintos.
Me ha encantado, y me ha dejado con unas ganas locas de saber que pasa con Senlin después de ese final.
Absolutely superb, a full throated 5 stars.
Shades of a Hitchhiker's Guide acerbic humor, and a Dantean setting and plot. Tonally the book reminds me Titus Groan, that other overlooked gem of hard-to-categorize fantasy. The setting is brilliantly novel, and the story wonderfully unique.
Bancroft has a poetic sensibility, and his passages are as moving as they are gripping. I can't praise this book enough. Easily catapulted to the top my year's reading list, and Bancroft to my authors to watch.
