#Review - The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft

The Fall of Babel (Books of Babel, 4)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 11 November 2021
Available as: PB(638pp), audio, e
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(PB): 9780356510866

Another in my occasional series "David catches up with reviews he should have done last year, but didn't".

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of The Fall of Babel to consider for review.

This is the fourth in Bancroft's series, The Books of Babel, set in a massive tower that stands over a desert. The tower contains, stacked one upon another, numerous polities ("kingdoms") some of which have been explored in previous books and which contrast wildly with each other. It also has its downtrodden serfs, the Hods, who are in rebellion; an enigmatic technologist, the Sphinx, who whole not exactly running the whole tower, influences events; and a host of characters, chief among whom is Thomas Senile, once an innocent schoolteacher who came to the tower on honeymoon with his wife Marya. Separated in the hustle outside the Tower, the two have been trying to find each other ever since, accumulating adventures on the way.

The Fall of Babel, though, doesn't begin with Senlin, it follows another character, Adam, who disappeared a couple of books ago attempting to reach the very peak of the Tower. Bancroft indulges the reader whose memory of precisely who is who and who is where by giving a summary of the position in the style of one of the Tower's periodicals, "The Daily Reverie" - ('A Refresher for the Devotees of the Senile Saga'). This reinforces the sense that Bancroft has been cultivating, in various ways, of the whole sequence as taking place before our eyes, perhaps on a stage, but it's also very useful to the reader who finished the previous book some time ago!

I won't try to summarise events here, but will just say that everyone we've come to know and love (or n to love) returns here: Maria and Senlin, of course, but also Edith, Voleta, Reddleman, Bryon and their enemies, principally Luc Marat, the leader of the rebellion. There's perhaps a more focussed, linear plot than in some of the earlier books, with Adam doing his best to understand the history and origin of the Tower from his study of the strange society that lives atop it, to Maria and co on the Sphinx's flag (air)ship, the State of Art, seeking to prevent a disaster in the Tower's workings by frustrating Marat's sabotage plans. Senile, and his friend John Tarou, are aboard The Hod King, Marat's vessel, which wreaks havoc as it burros through the masonry of the Tower. 

There's lots of satisfying combat, and lashings of the quotations, historical references and steampunk(ish) technology that makes these books stand out - they have their own peculiar, slightly sulphurous, tang, rooted I think in the degree to which the Tower has "gone wrong" and fails to live up to the intentions of its creator, the mysterious Bricklayer. His purposes becomes much clearer in the final section of the book which overturns one's whole understanding of the origins, and destination, of the Tower. Bancroft also manages - a minor miracle I think -  to draw together not only the threads of plot (hard enough) but the, how can I say this, moral threads that link the characters: primarily of course the complex relationship between Senlin and Maria, but also the various histories, animosities and misunderstandings between the other characters. 

Indeed, this book possibly pays more attention to the latter than the former. I hadn't expected this. In previous instalments the story felt very much as one of Our Heroes desperately seeking to defeat Marat's evil plans/ save the Tower from a catastrophic malfunction. While that aspect is still here and still very much the explicit driver of the story, once I got to the end I did wonder if the group had actually done much of this themselves or if other forces would have sorted it anyway. Nevertheless, at the same time, the story had explored much more than I expected of the relationships and histories of the main characters and in very different ways - Senlin, imprisoned by Marat, has lengthy and deep conversations with him, Adam finds his and his sister's life literally made into a spectacle by a ghoulish documentary producer, and so on. These histories and the way they play out on this final instalment of the series were often rather moving and always deeply interesting, rounding everything off in a much more satisfying way that mere action (also, much more satisfying than my poor description conveys).

So, a good ending to this series, I think - if a rather different one than I'd have expected given the first three books. I'd recommend, though of course of you've been reading these you'll want to read this one anyway and if you haven't, it's is obviously NOT the place to start.

For more information about the Fall of Babel, see the publisher's website here. 

Review - The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft

Art by Ian Leino,  design by Lauren Panepinto

The Hod King (Books of Babel, 3)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 24 January 2019
PB, 567pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of The Hod King (thanks, Nazia!)

The first - and very welcome surprise! - about The Hod King was that it's clearly not the final volume in The Books of Babel, Bancroft's sequence set in the immense, titular Tower which contains countless independent states or "Kingdoms" and lures travellers from afar to their doom and a life of slavery. I had it in my head that this was a trilogy, I don't know if it was originally advertised as such or I just assumed because, you know, fantasy trilogies. Either way, it ends with things cruelly unresolved and I think that we can expect more.

The second surprise was that there's a little less of Thomas Senlin here than I had expected. That doesn't mean he's absent - far from it - but in a story that switches back and forward to tell different aspects of the same story, the key sections (at least to me) were those featuring Edith, Iren and Voleta. They've set out in the Sphinx's (the cryptic guardian of the Tower) flagship, The State of Art (captained by Edith) and while their mission is bound up with Senlin's, they are operating independently. Both are tasked to infiltrate the Kingdom of Pelphia, the source of many of Senlin's troubles in Senlin Ascends and Arm of the Sphinx, Senlin incognito, and the flagship through diplomacy and a show of force.

There's an agreeable blurring of objectives here. Senlin, as ever, is seeking his lost wife, Marya and The State of Art is supporting that with the Sphinx's approval. But Marya must also seek a lost painting which contains information the Sphinx needs to prevent catastrophe, and the Sphinx also seeks intelligence about the stirrings of the Hods, the bonded slaves who port goods up and down the Tower.

The Hods are taking centre stage in this book, as they begin to stir and resist their dreadful fate, and a lot of the focus is on different approaches to them. There is the bigoted Ancien Regime cruelty of Pelphia (a starkly realised if repellent creation, a polity where the university has been extinguished and replaced by a gambling club where fops bet on hods fighting in the arena. There are those who sympathise with the Hods' revolutionary stirrings. There is Senlin, who seems both to sympathise with the Hods and to have - still! - a sense of respect for law and order which leads him to denounce them. There are others, besides, and above all, the Sphinx: what is her game?

This book presents the same teeming, detailed cross section of a bizarre and self-absorbed world as its predecessors, the narrative staying fresh despite this being Book 3 and despite the reader being, of course, much more familiar with this world than on opening Book 1. There was a certain bottom-drops-out-of-the-world in Senlin Ascends that simply can't be recaptured, but even so, many new mysteries crop up, relating to the origin of the Tower, the identity of the Sphinx and the intentions of the Hods. And through all of this, the relationships between Edith, Iren, Voleta and the others grow and develop, remaining comic at times but also often tender and even touching.

At the same time, it has to be said that by telling the story from one point of view then leaving at a cliffhanger moment and going right back almost to the start to follow a different strand, Bancroft does test the reader somewhat (at least, this reader). I'd have preferred a more frequent cutting between the strands, although I can see why, in terms of managing information and creating he did this. Part of my frustration has to do I think with the rather small print in this book (I must begetting old!) which meant it took me longer to read than I had expected, so closing the loop on those plot strands wasn't quick. If you have older eyes I'd strongly recommend reading this as an e-book so you can adjust the type size.

So - a series that, three books gone, is in rude health and still great fun to read. I'm eager to see what happens in Book 4...

Review - Arm of the Sphinx by Josiah Bancroft

Arm of the Sphinx (The Books of Babel, 2)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 15 March 2018
PB, 398pp

I'm grateful to Orbit and to the awesome Nazia for an advance copy of Arm of the Sphinx.

So. That tricky second book, eh? Following the acclaim for Senlin Ascends (my review here) Orbit have published the successor volume quickly, although we'll have to wait till December for The Hod King. So how good is it as a followup?

Indeed, how do you followup the central premise of that book - that the Tower, beacon of civilisation, the Lighthouse of the world, is really just a squalid mess of competing statelets, bleeding tourists dry and making them into hods - hopeless slaves doomed to port cargo up secret stairways in the Tower? (Not only a wicked thing to do - but pointless: as we know or son learn, the world in which the Tower stands has railways, airships, lifts, electricity and indeed, still more advanced technologies).

Bancroft therefore gave himself a tough task. My judgement is that he succeeds in making Arm of the Sphinx as compelling a book as Senlin Ascends. There isn't anything to quite match the creeping realisation of the truth about the Tower, rather, after we see a bit more of it - the Silk Reef is another fantastically drawn level - Senlin - or should I say Captain Tom Mudd? - and his crew are forced to seek refuge for their ship while carrying on repairs and are therefore "ashore" for much of this novel.

That doesn't mean that nothing happens, but the book isn't (after the opening section) the swashbuckling story of derring-do that Senlin's life seemed to be turning into at the end of the last book. Rather, it becomes a quite taut, psychological study of the different cremates as they kick their heels in a most strange part of the tower, and are tested in various ways (not least, in their faith in Senlin).

Through that testing, we learn - perhaps - more about the true nature and purpose of the Tower itself (this, if anything, is the counterpart to the horror in the first book at what it has become: something of a redemption, or at least, a possible redemption. But what we learn is from a very unreliable source who is, as becomes clear, pursuing their own agenda and keeping secrets from the crew - even while encouraging them to share their own secrets. That sharing isn't altogether a bad thing (certainly it means that Tom himself reaches a better place) but the overall setup is worrying. Having escaped Finn Goll, are the crew now just pawns of someone else?

So, this book gives the reader plenty to reflect on and sets up some dramatic confrontations in The Hod King. There's a well-drawn, three-dimensional roster of characters with Senlin, in particular, having moved on from the self-obsessed, heedless tourist of the earlier book to a resourceful and capable protagonist. And the team are now being drawn into wider - and older - mysteries. Arm of the Sphinx is a worthy sequel to Senlin Ascends and is neither just "more of the same" nor simply marking time to the next book.

But, oh, WHY do we now have to wait so long for the next book?

Review - Senlin Ascends

Cover by Lauren Panepinto

Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, 1)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 18 January 2018
PB, 432pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Senlin Ascends.

I can honestly say this is the strangest book I'd read for a long time. Indeed it's hard to describe exactly how strange it is.

It would be easy just to list the sorts of book it resembles in one way or another - the eighteenth century picaresque novel where the hero travels through an indifferent or hostile world, gradually having corners (and other parts) knocked off; the bureaucratic horrors of Kafka; Meryvn Peake, perhaps; or even Pilgrim's Progress. There's swashbuckling, a heist and a touch of fantasy or even SF in the fearful Red Hand, a murderer who, upon injecting a mysterious substance from a bracelet, gains superhuman strength.

It would also be easy to summarise the plot: Thomas Senlin, a rather self-satisfied provincial schoolteacher, travels with his new bride (once one of his pupils... um...) to the world famous Tower of Babel for a holiday, in fact for their honeymoon. In the bewildering market at the base of the Tower he's parted from Marya and enters the Tower to try and find her. Passing through its various levels he meets tormentors, perils and finds few friends. Gradually he learns more about the nature of the Tower and becomes better at navigating its dangers.

But neither approach would convey the sheer verve, the atmosphere, the audacity of the book. To begin with, the concept. All we are told about the Biblical Tower of Babel is that it was an overreachingly high tower whose builders were pretty pleased with themselves. Despite the name, and the references to the land of Ur, I don't think we're meant to believe that the Tower here is somehow a surviving Biblical Babel. The scope of Bancroft's invention is much wider than that. Here we see a construction so vast it can contain whole cities - even mini states - on each level ("ringdom"). The walls are hundreds of metres thick and nobody knows how high the Tower goes as its top is hidden by clouds. Each level is starkly different - some are grim, medieval seeming places, others are bedecked with modern comforts. In the book we only see three - the Basement, the Parlour and the Baths - but these are each thoroughly, indeed disturbingly, realised.

Senlin at first approaches the Tower with high hopes. The wonder of the age, it surely contains supremely enlightened specimens of humanity - wise, brave, learned, generous, civilised? Trusting in his copy of Everyman's Guide to the Tower of Babel, Senlin is totally unprepared for the reality - one of theft, degradation, torture and not a little horror (I shuddered at the fate of the hods, shaven slaves reduced to carrying baskets of coal and building materials up the tower, and the implication of there being "wifemongers" in the Tower). Senlin's initial experiences - the first third of the book, when he's reeling from what happens, but still in denial at how bad things are - perhaps seem rather slow in comparison to the later parts when he has, to a degree, accepted the situation and begun to fight back but this allows Bancroft to pick up the pace as the story races towards its conclusion.

It also allows him to have Senlin grow and become more likeable and outward focussed as the story progresses. The Senlin of the early pages is definitely self absorbed, complacent and even somewhat deluded. By the end of the book, he's suffered losses and suffered and committed betrayals - and is a much more likeable person for it. He has even, perhaps, disproved what he is told early on: "There are no friends in the Tower". Perhaps. the group that forms around him is uneasy, riven with secrets and agendas and with diverse motives. Rather like the Tower as a whole, in fact.

In all, a fascinating, chewy read, full of wonders; battles, monsters, cowardice, redemption and hope. The start of a trilogy, this is one you'll not want to miss - start reading them now, get into the basement, as it were, and start climbing.

But keep your wits about you, and trust nobody.