Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft

This book is really unique, wildly imaginative, features incredible worldbuilding and characters with depth, and is a novel you should really give a chance. The third novel in the series got released a few days ago, and the last one is slated for release in 2020.

It's unbelievably difficult to put into words why this series is so special, but among the litany of fantasy featuring grumpy veteran soldiers in a medieval setting being released on a regular basis, this book is in a completely different league.

It's whimsical, charming, lovingly filled with an incredible amount of detail, meticulously crafted, gripping, thrilling and immersive.

Give it a shot, at the very least because you won't find anything even remotely similar anywhere else.

 

I'll buy it if it's on kindle. Sold well.

I'll throw something in once I've read it in a few weeks.

 

I have it, I was in the 3rd floor chapters and stopped. I'll probably finish it at some point, but - and I know I'm being reductionist here - the book has a great hook, but so far it's been directionless. I do think the author has good - even great - prose, but the content didn't engage me enough for me to finish right away. I certainly don't think it's gripping or thrilling, but I fully allow for the possibility that I'm shallow and have no appreciation for fine things, so maybe it's just a book for smarter people than me.

Does anything happen later? Like, at all?

 

Oh yeah, the latter half, maybe the last third of the book, is where the worldbuilding takes a bit of a backseat to the plot—or rather the plot starts taking over. It definitely gets more action-y and thrilling.

 

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST THREE BOOKS

I've just finished The Hod King. I can't really say I enjoyed The Arm of the Sphinx and The Hod King. Three things have kept me reading: the mystery of the Tower and everything that entails (the sixty four paintings, the Bridge of Babel door, the purpose of the Tower, what the Sphinx is up to), what Luc Marat is about, and whether Senlin would be reunited with Marya. Those are the plot hooks that have indeed hooked me. Before I get to those, however, I will first talk about other things.

Bancroft certainly has a style full of his unique flair and with such stylized prose, I think it's a matter of taste. You'll either like it or you won't. To compare to another author with a standout style of writing, Scott Lynch: the prose in the Lies of Locke Lamora worked for me. Bancroft's style in the Books of Babel does not. I won't say it's bad, the man obviously knows what he's doing, and it's easy to read, but I didn't like it. Regardless, I appreciate that Bancroft doesn't really linger too long. The prose is very descriptive, but it conveys it more with word choice rather than laboured and overwrought, overdetailed, overlong passages of description. I'll take colorful brevity over bloat.

The structure is easy enough to follow, though it's another thing left to the reader's taste, I think. There is a small amount of jumping back and forth in time (for example, The Hod King begins with Senlin having infiltrated Pelphia, and only then Bancroft winds back time and actually describes how this happened) but only very inattentive readers will be confused by this. No problem here.

Senlin Ascends stays with one Point-of-View character, Thomas Senlin. Alongside being the protagonist, he also serves as the reader's stand-in when he learns more about the world of the Tower. The sequels expand the cast of characters and other POVs appear. I would even say that other POVs rather dominate the sequels. While Senlin holds most of the pagecount in The Arm of the Sphinx, I have to say that reading The Hod King I had the impression as if Senlin had gone from the main protagonist to a second-rate one. Perhaps the author really enjoyed Edith and the characters on the airship. Whatever the reason, I was bored through much of the 3rd book. Edith fails to hold my interest and reading her chapters (and the POVs of other characters in her plotline) was often a chore I powered through. I'm sure she has a personal motivation that drives her and a character arc that happens, but I wasn't interested enough to notice either. I'm kind of surprised that I'm so indifferent to a protagonist with a steampunk robot arm, but there you go.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that Senlin's story in The Hod King has a 1st act and then the 2nd and 3rd are literally squeezed into a chapter each. The Black Trail was infinitely more interesting to me than Edith's great big steampunk warship. Senlin has clear goals in front of him. Find Marya. Learn more about Luc Marat's plans. It seems to me that the author was really bored with Senlin perhaps, and that's why his plot became the red-headed stepchild. The reunion with Marya is disappointing--first of all, setting it during a noisy rollercoaster ride was a curious and in my opinion, bad choice. They barely have time to talk as they have to shout over each other. The key revelation--Marya and Senlin's daughter--is withheld from Senlin until he learns about the child from the Duke, moments before being thrown into the Black Trail. So, that plot hook evaporates and apparently nothing comes of it. I also am not sure if Marya is... jealous? that Senlin kissed Edith. Woman, you married another man but Senlin confesses a kiss and you're like "well then go and be in love with that other bitch". I hope I completely misread this and The Fall of Babel offers some more substantial resolution to this plotline, which The Hod King unceremoniously abandons in an unsatisfying place.

Edith... is doing things. She talks to many people with ridiculous names that all blend together into slop from which no one stands out about the Brick Layer paintings. Iren gets a girlfriend or something. Voleta apparently dies and gets necromanced back to life by the Reddleman, who himself is a necromanced Red Hand. Yawn. A whole book's worth of plot on the "Sphinx mysteries" side of things and I still don't know more than I did at the end of The Arm of the Sphinx.

As for the last plot hook, Luc Marat--for how much is said of him, for how big a deal the Sphinx apparently thinks he is, he is barely in the book, given literally a few pages to graduate from a shallow character in The Arm of the Sphinx to apparently the main villain by the end of The Hod King. I do not buy him being this great threat, a looming dread, an aspiring tyrant bent on dethroning the Sphinx. I don't buy his mecha-beetle which appears at the very end of the 3rd book, I don't buy how it's excused while clashing with his stated ideology. In The Arm of the Sphinx he professes loudly his hatred of the Tower, the Sphinx, the clockwork machines and knowledge in the books he orders his hods to black out. Then when he appears in The Hod King, he has a giant mecha, a techno-terror which rivals the Sphinx's creations. Those developments are unearned.

What I hope for from the final book: the revelation of the mystery of the Tower, the paintings and the Bridge; what the hell happened to Adam at the top of the Tower? he wasn't in the 3rd book at all; something more substantial to resolve the Senlin-Marya plot; much less Edith, though I suspect this is a fool's hope.

EDIT: Why I'm so apathetic towards Edith. The reader is with Senlin since the very beginning of his adventure in the Tower and follows Senlin's changing character and goals even as his core motivation remains clear.

Edith appears briefly in the first half of Senlin Ascends, then rejoins the plot at the end of the book as a Wakeman in the Sphinx's circle of influence. And here is my problem. Her "origin story", so to speak, how she became a Wakeman, what contract she signed with the Sphinx, for what reasons, how exactly she lost her arm and met the Sphinx for the first time--all of this happens off-screen. Bancroft clearly wants the reader to buy into the character, given that by The Hod King she has usurped Senlin's place as the main protagonist.

I personally cannot draw the line between the more optimistic and spirited Edith Senlin meets in the Parlor and the perpetually anxious and resigned Edith who rejoins the plot at the end of the first novel. The anxiety remains her standout characteristic throughout the two subsequent novels and this does not make for a character that engages my interest. This is primarily what made her chapters a chore to read.

Her motivation -- something something Tower lightning catastrophe paintings oh no -- doesn't seem like it comes from her, rather like it was transplanted into her from the Sphinx, whom in turn I find to be a frustrating character. Edith therefore doesn't have agency in her own plotline.

Is her motivation that she wants to keep her friends safe? All but one are safe aboard her airship! Senlin went to Pelphia to find Marya. Take the ship and get your other friends to safety, then you can come back for Senlin and Marya and get the hell away from the Tower forever. What, the Sphinx won't let her? As far as I can tell, the Sphinx doesn't give a rat's ass about the world outside the Tower and has plentiful resources to manufacture or recruit more servants and agents. She released dozens of Wakemen into the Tower, what makes Edith so special? The Sphinx made vague threats about taking back her clockworks if contracts go ignored, but Georgina Haste provides at least one example of a rogue Wakeman who has full use of the clockworks even though she serves Luc Marat. Hell, the Red Hand hardly seemed like he was doing the Sphinx's work while serving as Pound's enforcer.

So, is Edith motivated by wanting to save the Tower from a disaster predicted by the Sphinx? Why? She's perfectly aware that the Tower is populated by terrible people. Morally corrupt civilizations stacked on top of one another, exploiting a population of slaves.

Edith's motivation is unconvincing and I don't care about her.

 

I found this series to have a strong start and then escalating disappointment. The points you ask about are resolved loosely if at all, and the promise of a coherently explained setting is never upheld. The series runs on gestures towards exploring mystery, but with little actual resolved mystery.

 

I'd just finished reading Babel (which is well written but meh) when I saw this thread. I felt compelled to give it a go, I've downloaded the book and I quite like it so far. Bancroft is a very good writer, there's no doubt about that, but I think that the constant flashbacks are going to get on my nerves if they continue.

 

Flashbacks remain a constant, if progressively less frequent, element of the first 3 books. I can't say anything about the 4th book because I stopped reading it early on and I doubt I will ever pick it up again.

 

I'll finish the first book and then we'll see. As I said, it is quite well written, and the premise is interesting.