Senlin Ascends

The wonderfully described setting is an alternate history Tower of Babel that never fell and came to be the major wonder of this now steampunk world, its unknown amount of floors each containing its own city.

The titular protagonist Thomas Senlin went there for his honeymoon, promptly proceeding to lose his beloved wife from sight and progressively discovering that the place may not be quite as wonderful, enlightened and straightforward as he dreamed it to be.

The tower is a self-contained world (or even a succession of them) with its sometime strange rules and very dark corners, in which he finds himself vulnerable, nearly powerless. Yet he rises to the occasion with unexpected resourcefulness, resilience and tenacity, shedding some show more naivety yet not losing from sight his ideals. show less

This was one of the most lovely books I almost didn't finish. To certain library books I must ask certain questions: are they worth overdue fines? Perhaps more importantly, are they worth negative karma when late? To both of these questions, Senlin Ascends is an empathetic 'no.' And yet, on the strength of dear Milda's love for the tale and her encouragement, I find myself disregarding my earlier decision to return it.

"You have no idea what the Tower will turn you into!" Tarrou laughed and swatted the air trying to dispel Senlin's sudden piety."

Though the writing is truly gorgeous, the plotting is purposefully meandering. Headmaster Senlin is on a journey with his newly-wed wife to see the famous Tower of Babel. Within minutes of show more arrival, he loses her in the marketplace, and the rest of the story is a journey upward through the levels of Babel as he searches for the lovely, vivacious Marya. What follows is his experiences through the first four levels of the tower.

I suspect if you mix [b:The Pilgrim's Progress|29797|The Pilgrim's Progress|John Bunyan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405982367s/29797.jpg|1960084] with 1001 Arabian Nights, using the language of [b:In the Night Garden|202769|In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales, #1)|Catherynne M. Valente|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320548374s/202769.jpg|196179], you'll probably have a good idea what you are getting into. Senlin is forced to reconsider ideas about Tower of Babel, his priorities, his identity, his relationship with Marya, even his conceptions about how the world operates and how he should relate to other people. It is as much a story of the internal self as one of external events.

"Senlin loved nothing more in the world than a warm hearth to set his feet upon and a good book to pour his whole mind into. While an evening storm rattled the shutters and a glass of port wine warmed in his hand, Senlin would read into the wee hours of the night. He especially delighted in the old tales, the epics in which heroes set out on some impossible and noble errand, confronting the dangers in their path with fatalistic bravery. Men often died along the way, killed in brutal and unnatural ways... Their deaths were boastful and lyrical and always, always more romantic than real. Death was not an end. It was an ellipsis" (page 23).

My barrier and sticking point was the idea that Senlin's journey centered on looking for his wife, Marya. Literally by page eight she has disappeared, so the rest of the story is about her from other perspectives. As a feminist, I find this type of structure deeply disturbing. Given that the story is from Senlin's third-person perspective, one may argue that's completely appropriate, so what's the big deal? The big deal is her placeholder status--replace her with 'ring,' or 'Grail,' or 'eighteenth-century silver cow-shaped creamer' and the agency would be the same. She acts in Senlin's memories of their interactions, she appears as a hallucination, Senlin thinks about her in relation to him, we learn of her actions from third parties, but beyond that there are only the barest paragraphs--in flashback, strangely, of Senlin's memories--of Marya being anything other than an Object. She is a mirage, a holding place for the character's own thoughts and emotions. A telling quote, I think, from page 1:

"Thomas Senlin and Marya, his new bride, peered at the human menagerie through the open window of their sunny sleeper car. Her china white hand lay weightlessly atop his long fingers."

Though that, perhaps, is part of the underlying motif of the story: the absence of women and the fickleness of love/relationships. Early on Senlin is told, "women get sucked up the Tower like embers up a flue," and we begin to get the picture that the destruction will be along gender lines. Outside the Tower, Senlin meets Adam, a young man who is missing his sister. On level three, we encounter another significant male character who will 'one day' return to his wife.

Of course, the search for the Other inspires in Senlin reflections on his own character, and his relationship with Marya. The challenge for me is that Senlin is someone I have trouble liking. It could be because Senlin hits too close to teen-Carol., and I don't mean in the hormonal sense, I mean the sense one has when one is young, overly book-smart, and color-blind to shades of grey. He is the headmaster in his small fishing village and he considers himself a leader of the community, although I strongly suspect the feeling is not mutual. He has harped on the wonders of Babel to his students and fellow citizens, which is no doubt supposed to play into the irony as he discovers the reality of Babel has little in common with his conceptions or his much-thumbed Guide to the Wonders of Babel.

In fact, I found myself wondering about the parallels with my most favorite and sometimes wildly inaccurate guidebook, [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|386162|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)|Douglas Adams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388282444s/386162.jpg|3078186] where vaguely unlikable leading man Arthur also finds himself at a loss, forced to confront wonders and misconceptions. However, Hitchhiker's does it with absurdity and humor, while Senlin does it with gorgeous prose and Victorian sexism. If you'd like beautiful language and imagery without a plot, give [b:The Night Circus|9361589|The Night Circus|Erin Morgenstern|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387124618s/9361589.jpg|14245059] a try.

I absolutely enjoyed the writing, but Woman as Object coupled with the perspective of a man who is difficult to connect to means it was a struggle to read. It did pick up a great deal as Senlin reached level four (page 200/350) and started to embrace more duplicitous planing for the future, but it was too little, too late. The fact that most of the character actions were telegraphed in advance means there wasn't that much surprise. I wouldn't rule out Bancroft in the future, but I'd likely enter into it with suspicion, and that's no way to read a book.


*Many thanks to Milda for her encouragement in getting me to completion!


Original review of my first attempt:


Though the writing is truly gorgeous--think [a:Catherynne M. Valente|338705|Catherynne M. Valente|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1220999852p2/338705.jpg]--the plotting is also meandering. Senlin is on a journey with his newly-wed wife to see the famous Tower of Babel. Within minutes of arrival, he loses her in the marketplace and the rest of the story is a journey upward through the levels of Babel as he searches for the lovely Marya. I haven't read Arabian Nights in more than decades, so there might be a plotting parallel there, but again I found myself reminiscent of Valente, [b:In the Night Garden|202769|In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales, #1)|Catherynne M. Valente|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320548374s/202769.jpg|196179]. I'm not against meandering or loosely connected tales, but in this case, I found it continually irksome that the Grail is his young, beautiful, vivacious and energetic wife. Must we? Really? I'm just so over Twoo Love, or not perhaps even love, as we discover, as Senlin's journey is also a journey of reflection on their past and his own self-discovery. I think even had roles been reversed, or the object of the search the same sex, whatever; for me a plot in search of the romantic other is almost always less interesting. That it falls along lines of traditional gender roles means it is all the more grating.

Of course, the search for the Other inspires in Senlin reflections on his own character, and his relationship with Marya. The challenge for me is that Senlin is someone I have trouble liking. It could be because Senlin hits too close to teen-Carol., and I don't mean in the hormonal sense, I mean the sense one has when one is young, overly book-smart, and color-blind to shades of grey. He is the headmaster in his small fishing village and he considers himself a leader of the community, although I strongly suspect the feeling is not mutual. He has harped on the wonders of Babel to his students and fellow citizens, which is no doubt supposed to play into the irony as he discovers the reality of Babel has little in common with his conceptions or his much-thumbed Guide to the Wonders of Babel (here, I am unfortunately and perhaps negatively distracted by memories of both the Hitchhiker's Guide and the wonders of the Babel fish). I just don't care. Perhaps because I've lived some of Selin's experiences in the Tower--mind you, I was sixteen--but I fail to appreciate the loss of his lofty misconceptions and his encounters with baser human nature. Or his realization on level three that All the World's a Stage. I'm over that. Moving forward please. I'm sure things change as he ascends the Tower, but I'm having trouble caring about the transformation.

So, I gave it an honest try. I absolutely love the language and the imagery, and probably got as far as I did on the strength of that alone. I had strong antipathy towards a wife as Grail, and to Senlin's character as a whole. I'm sure it evolves, because book two implies he captains a stolen airship but at this moment, I'm having trouble caring. It doesn't rule it out for the future, or Bancroft at all, but I wish he'd take that talent and kick it up a notch, either with plotting or with moving outside gender roles. show less

I've tried to start a few modern fantasy novels this year, and I think this is the first one that actually took, a combination of good writing, interesting setting, a likeable protagonist who changes over the course of the book while still remaining likeable, and a fun story. The Tower is, of course, the fantasy equivalent of a Big Dumb Object, but it's exactly he sort of thing you can build an epic sweeping narrative around. My poor straining eyes beg to report that the font sucks, though. Can't blame the author or the book for that, but c'mon publishers. Make it easy on us.

There are some books that are just not made for the big screen - elements won't translate on celluloid and cinematography can do little to change that. This is not that book. This one has the makings of a SF/Steampunk visual feast of vibrant colors and people and a glorious assault on the senses. This would be the quintessential Steampunk Odyssey and I'd probably be first in line to get my ticket. Hey, Dennis Villanueva if you're looking for your next big visual after Dune, come hang out in the folds of this series.

"The Earth doesn't shake the tower, the tower shakes the earth."
- Everyman's Guide to the Tower of Babel, IV. XII

Thomas Senlin never stood a chance. Poor Bugger.

Senlin is a man blindsided by cold hard reality. Lulled into a show more sense of security and social standing in his sleepy portside town of Isguah, the number one tourist destination in this universe was supposed to be as easy as his life had been thus far. A headmaster of great standing becomes a man lost and in denial within a day of wandering near the Tower...not even in it. He is an innocent, naïve and foolish lost soul in the Tower of Babel - the perfect prey to be swallowed whole. And yet, there is something about him that gives the reader hope despite his outright denial of the barbarity and injustices of the Tower. Senlin is a thinker, an analytical one at that. Even without realizing it at first - he asks, why? He is not yet on the verge of the answer, nor is he anywhere near the beginning of his true ascent which I can only guess takes place in further books. But we bare witness to a man's realization of his place in the world and how vast and dark and debauched his "northern light" in the Tower of Babel.

Josiah Bancroft has this ability to hoodwink the reader into a false sense of calm, control, security and hope after plunging the main character into some precarious situations. So lulled into falsehood that you begin to pity Senlin's naivety as he believes:

1. The Tower is good - it can't possibly be barbaric
2. The Baths are the ultimate in civility, decorum, respect and hospitability.
3. Marya is okay. She will find me (Senlin) or she will wait.
4. Everything will be alright.

Bancroft you sly devil. A great introduction to an ingenious premise well executed and full of nail-biting sequences that have you almost ready to shut the book in hopes of saving Senlin. show less

Thomas Senlin is the bookish headmaster of a school in the countryside, recently married, and on a honeymoon trip to the Tower of Babel. In this world, the Tower is an incredibly tall, massive structure where each level is almost a city unto itself, the center of civilization, and Tom’s lifelong fascination. But when they get there, this place of wonders turns out to be nothing like he’s heard or imagined, and when he and Marya are separated, he’s forced to travel into this world of vice and wonder to find her.

Honestly, my summary can’t possibly do this book justice. It’s a mix of Tim Powers’ steampunk and China Mieville’s fantasy. It’s engaging and delightful. It’s about as unique a fantasy as I’ve come across. And show more it’s so good I ordered the set from Amazon before I finished the first volume from th3 library! show less

Holy crap, man.

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My staff pick at Quail Ridge Books:
Though I grew up loving sci-fi and fantasy, as an adult, I think it can be hard to find books that avoid the outdated, exclusionary pitfalls common to the genre. It's also unusual to pick up one of these books and realize it's completely different from anything else you've ever read. Remarkably, Senlin Ascends is able to do both - without tooting its own horn. The settings leap off the page, and each character, no matter how minor, has the depth and complexity of a real person. I can't wait to jump into the next installment in this series.

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This is one of the best books I've read in years. I can't say how refreshing it is to read a sci-fi/fantasy (ish? It's kind of steampunk-y) novel show more that's totally new to me and like nothing I've read before. It also feels so nice to read something in this genre that was written by a man yet doesn't have lengthy paragraphs describing all of the female characters as stunningly attractive angels the main character wants to bang. Women are people! Amazing!

I really can't wait for more. I've already bought the second book and requested an ARC for the third, if that's a thing. (Mr Bancroft, please make this a thing.) This is the first time in a long time I've been excited to jump into a series, rather than reluctant. More! show less

I would give this book 10 out of 5 stars if I could. Summaries that I have read hardly do it justice. A mythical tower, a lost wife, steampunk spiders, a giantess, a creepy undead assassin, air pirates, nefarious public figures, and poor Senlin stuck smack dab in the middle of it all. One of the best fast paced adventure stories I have ever read.

I picked this up while my husband was in the hospital, a different sort of lost spouse, if you will. I often felt as timid and powerless as Senlin and, in that, his journey was also mine. I found strength here, in this story, in Thomas Senlin. If he could find the courage to do these amazing things in the face of such a culture of depraved immorality, I could also survive. I'm tearing up right show more now writing this review.

Thank you for the ride, thank you for the push, thank you for this marvelous story, Mr Bancroft. I can't wait to read the next one. show less